Here is your daily Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock news and rumors report  for Oct. 21, 2010. Rumors confirmed and new products debuted at Apple’s Back to the Mac event, with debuts for the new Mac App Store, the OS X 10.7 Lion operating system and new 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch MacBook Air laptops. Investors curious to see how Apple plans to keep its line of Mac computers, now accounting for just 33% of the company’s revenue, relevant in the age of the iPad should read on.

Apple Unveils App Store for Mac, Launching on OS X 10.6 in Next Three Months: As expected, Apple debuted a new version of its popular Apple App Store for the Snow Leopard operating system that runs the company’s line of Mac desktop and laptop computers. The new storefront will come to current Mac users sometime in the next 90 days, according to an announcement  by Craig Federishi, an Apple vice president. The new storefront will also play a major role in the company’s upcoming upgrade to the OS X platform, OS X 10.7, nicknamed Lion. (More on Lion below). As with the App Store running on Apple’s mobile platforms, publishers of software on the Mac App Store will receive 70% of each sale with Apple pocketing the remaining 30%. Also, learning from past conflicts with App Store publishers and users alike, Apple has already issued guidelines for App Store application submissions and approvals. The full guidelines are not dissimilar to those recently published for the iPhone and iPad App Stores.

Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” Officially Unveiled: As rumored, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at this week’s Back to the Mac event to discuss details of the latest version of the operating system OS X. It’s expected to ship in mid-2011. The OS X 10.7 — codenamed Lion in sticking with the company’s tradition of naming OS X upgrades after jungle cats — will bring upgrades to the operating system that bring it closer in line with the features of Apple’s mobile operating system iOS. It’s been predicted for some months that Apple would begin bringing its Mac operating system closer in functionality and aesthetics to the popular iPhone and iPad devices, and Jobs’ emphasis on “bringing iOS innovations ‘back to the Mac’ ” has confirmed those rumors. New features to OS X will include the Mac App Store, expanded multitouch inputs via Mac trackpads, App Home Screens that will replace the OS X Dashboard, “auto save” for app documents and other changeable data, and apps that resume functioning when the device is reactivated.

Apple Unveils Ultra-thin 11.6- and 13.3-inch MacBook Air Laptops: Among the other rumors made reality at the Back to the Mac event was Apple’s confirmation of new 11.6 and 13.3-inch ultrathin MacBook Air laptops. The new laptops retail starting at $999 and are already shipping from Apple’s online store. Lacking both optical and hard disc drives, the new MacBook Airs can be turned on instantly without lengthy boot sequences. They don’t lack for memory though, with 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor models offering 64GB of storage at $999 and 128GB at $1199 alongside 1.86GHz processor models with 128GB of storage memory at $1299 and 256GB at $1599. New features include the FaceTime voice chat app. Tech blog Engadget noted that the new MacBook Airs do not ship with Adobe’s (NASDAQ: ADBE) Flash pre-installed, which implies that Apple’s campaign to encourage development on other media platforms and HTML 5 is far from over. Flash reportedly runs fine on the new laptop after being installed from the Internet.

As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.