MacWorld Keynote

iLife

iPhoto updates look nice. Faces copies the killer feature from Facebook's photos and does it automatically (wonder how well that works). I've been manually adding tags or notes for people names. Great for searching, annoying for entering, this could be nice. Adding the Places info based on geotagging info is nice and good, they linked with Google Maps. That iPhone relationship is growing. Looks like they're killing MemoryMiner!. And it's integrated with Facebook and Flickr and it's easy to get a slideshow to your iPhone. Very attentive to how people actually use photos today. Very Apple-like. I have a lot of space photos in my iPhoto Library (good for a Wallpaper album and screen savers). I wonder if the geo-location stuff will work? I suspect the geo- prefix is significant.

iMovie looks like another nice update. Added more interesting features with a very interesting UI. iPhoto copied face detection in cameras and iMovie copies image stabilization. And the Google Maps integration continues.

GarageBand has never really interested me. I have looked into using it to create podcasts and ringtones but that's it. Still it's an impressive app and I love that they borrowed the interface ideas for X-ray, their software performance development tool build on dtrace. But only Apple could get Sting to give you guitar lessons. I suspect these would be more popular if they taught how to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

We're expecting snow overnight. I was already thinking if I should go to the Apple Store today to pick this up. But iLife '09 doesn't ship till the end of the month.

iWork

Keynote got some new transitions, themes and some prettiness. I like the new Keynote Remote app for the iPhone. It's probably why they stopped bundling the Apple Remote, they want you to buy an iPhone instead. But showing the slides, using swipes and having a real wifi connection instead of using IR is nice.

Pages gets a full screen view, if you're incapable of turning off other distracting programs. MathType and EndNote support will be big for academics. If they can understand that there are programs other than MS Office. More templates, etc. Update: They didn't mention it but Pages also adds Outlining and Mail Merge from spreadsheet data.

Numbers got new formulas and templates. It can auto create tables from selected cells. There are lots of new chart features and the ability to link charts from Numbers into Pages documents. That's nice. Wonder what other features they added as they try to get closer to excel. I think conditional formatting needs to be better and I need array functions to do my oscar pool (not that anyone else could use it if I did it in Numbers).

So iLife is $79 and iWork is $79, I'll go buy those. I really like the new Mac Box Set product which is $169 for iLife, iWork and Leopard. I might get that for my sister.

Ok, it's probably good that they thinking of an iwork.com. I think it's great that they are just dipping their toe in and doing a beta and that it's not full featured. I'm happy that it works with the desktop app and allows commenting but I'm dubious about the editing features. Though I have no idea who will use this. Not businesses. I doubt students. Not sure if there's any security on the site. Maybe soccer team coaches? It's going after Google Docs but it won't be free.

17" MacBook Pro

Seriously, that's the hardware they're announcing? I was wrong about no laptop updates. I guess this was to be expected, but I wanted other stuff first. It's the world's thinnest 17" notebook at 0.02" less than an inch thick. Um, wow, kinda. Otherwise they bumped up all the features (disk:320GB, memory:up to 8GB, casing, screen:1900x1200, graphics: both 9400M and 9600M GT, etc.). Glossy only with a $50 anti-glare option. Firewire 800 but it looks like Firewire 400 is dead.

And the battery isn't removable. That is bad. Remember those battery recalls? If it happens with this, I have to send in the computer and not just get a new battery delivered to me that I swap out. I don't like that at all. Fortunately I'm not interested in a 17" laptop, but I suspect this will come to the 15" ones next. They claim "8 hours on a charge, and can be charged 1000 times" from the space savings. The magazines will have fun testing that claim. Also it does seem much greener with a EPEAT Gold certification.

It comes in one config -- $2799." 2.66GHz Core 2 Due, 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive and a super-drive. I wonder how long till I hear the complaints of still no blu-ray drive. Ships at the end of this month.

One More Thing...iTunes

Apple and the music companies have negotiated. Apple gets DRM free music (80% now 100% by April). The music companies get variable pricing. Three tiers at $0.99, $0.69, and $1.29. More songs are going to be offered at $0.69 than $1.29. Last is the that iPhone will have access to the full iTunes Music Store over the 3G network, I didn't know it was a limited version before.

So it wasn't a desktop event. It's their last MacWorld appearance, so they now have the flexibility to do events whenever they want. They get the press coverage regardless. With so many product lines now, they can't possibly fit too much in a single 1.5 hour keynote. So I expect a desktop even in the next few months (WWDC at the latest), probably combined with the Snow Leopard ship (making WWDC more likely). Would you really want to buy a new desktop and have a new OS to buy ship in a couple of months? New desktops probably mean new processors with more cores which needs Snow Leopard to make full use of.

iPhone and iPod updates will get their own event. iPhone events have been in early July, so there's a trend. I don't expect a tablet this year. A media server or Apple TV update? I have no idea.