Steve Jobs introduced the new Mac OS X Lion today, the 8th major version of the Apple operating system.  It’s got some impressive specs, and Jobs demoed many of the highlights for familiar apps that received an upgrade with Lion.

iLive, GarageBand and iMovie, for starters, have all gotten some nifty updates for things like facial recognition search, auto beat-fixing and greatly improved video editing and sharing options for sites like Facebook and Vimeo.

The running theme of today’s press event was unification, as many of the features from OS X and iOS have been rolled into one.  This is evident in some of the new perks included in Lion, which have incorporated a number of iPad and iPhone features into your netbook experience.

The iPad’s multitouch capabilities, for instance, have been added to Mac OS X Lion, applied to device like the Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse.  This new feature, set up through a terminal called Mission Control,  enables a more natural flow through work, sing swipes and gestures, recreating the netbook interface experience all together.

Other aspects of Apple’s mobile device experiences are being ported to their netbooks, including FaceTime, which is available in beta now.  There will also be an App Store for Macbooks, which will be accessible directly from the doc.  Apps here will be pricier than those for the iPhone and iPad.  Expect to see the new App Store launch within the next 90 days.

The big announcement of the day, however, is the launch of the new MacBook Air, a seemingly forgotten device for Apple these past two years.  It’s thinner, lighter, features a FaceTime camera, and comes in two sizes. The 11.6-inch 64GB 1.4 GHz is priced at $999, while its bigger brother weights in at 13.3 1.86GHz 256, for $1599.

In all, it seems that Apple is really looking to streamline consumers experiences across its many devices, taking pieces of what worked on one, and applying them to another.  It’s a necessary step for Apple to take, if it hopes to continue to attract a broad range of consumers as Android takes hold of the mobile sector.

Google and others, most recently Samsung, are leveraging their own operating systems and platforms for a similar affect, retaining customer loyalty by replicating access and features across a number of devices.  Attracting developers is important here, as apps will be a shorter-term way of creating that streamlined experience—another reason why Apple’s upcoming App Store for Macbooks is so interesting.