Today, Apple announced four key products at its “Back to the Mac” event:

- An application store for OS X

- Facetime for the Mac, which links with Facetime on other Apple devices

- An instant-on MacBook Air, 11” and 13” models, starting at $999

- The next major version of the Mac OS X, “Lion” (and iLife 11)

Individually and as a collection, these new product announcements are interesting. Apple is extending the value it delivers to its Mac customers by launching a combination of new hardware (MacBook Air) combined with an innovative operating system (OS X Lion), building out a collection of new complements (OS X application store), and further linking Macs with Apple’s other thin computing devices (via Facetime).

If we step back, and consider today’s announcements from a broader perspective, we can gain some insight about Apple’s overall corporate strategy with respect to its position in the future of computing.

Apple’s recent product innovations have largely focused around thin devices, first the iPod, then the iPhone and Touch, the Apple TV, and recently the iPad. The new MacBook Air coupled with the new Mac OS X Lion represents a natural progression from the iPad. While Apple’s other thin devices are better suited for consuming content and media, the new MacBook Air is Apple’s first thin device that is particularly well suited for creating content and media (note that Apple is referring to the new MacBook Air as “The Next Generation of MacBooks”). Meanwhile, the new OS X application store extends Apple’s success with iTunes and the App Store to the Mac environment, thus further establishing Apple’s presence in cloud services and online media. Facetime, along with other services such as MobileMe, provides the linkages that begin connecting all these thin devices and services together.

Looking broadly, Apple is now pushing the frontier on two key fronts. On the one hand there’s thin device computing with the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and now its new MacBook Air products; each targeting a distinctive market segment, roughly arranged by those customers seeking to consume (iPod) or create media (new MacBook Air). On the other hand, Apple is developing a range of cloud services and online media with iTunes, the current App Store, and now the new OS X application store. iTunes already operates across platforms and, despite its name, now includes much more than music, given it also provides a gateway to movies, TV shows, Podcasts, Audiobooks, and so on. As Apple continues to push forward on these two fronts it will soon have developed a full and coherent line of thin device hardware, a unified and powerful operating system (iOS/OS X, and slight variants), and a tightly integrated set of cloud services and online media.

In closing, today’s product introductions, along with Apple’s rapid progression over the last decade in thin devices and cloud services, brings into stark relief the gap between Apple and the historical high flyers in personal computing, such as Dell and HP. It appears Google is the only company that fairs a chance to stay competitive in this breakneck race.

(I just posted this to my blog and submitted the post to HN. If you enjoyed the read, I'd appreciate an upvote (article title is "A broader view on Apple's 'Back to the Mac' Event").