Finally, it happened! Today's MacWorld keynote didn't have Steve Jobs on stage, and it was also the last Apple keynote at MacWorld, at least as far as things are looking now. Anyway, I guess the decision is final, and MacWorld 2009 is the last one having Apple present. I know, it's sad, but let's stop crying and take a look at the highlights - was this really a unique event, or just a sad ending?

Well, no more black turtleneck, that's a fact! :) Phil delivered the keynote wearing a blue shirt and jeans, and talked about the new stores in Munich, China and Sydney, pointing out the impressive fact that 3.4M customers are visiting Apple's stores weekly, so "who needs MacWorld any longer," I could say... but let's not be mean and get back on track, shall we?

iLife 09 was announced with a bunch of new features, as well as new versions of iWeb and iDVD 09. If you're into social networking and posting your photos online, than I am sure you'll be glad to hear that iPhoto now includes Facebook and Flickr support, with face tagging(yes, that's face recognition in your pictures, followed by tagging according to the people appearing in those images, without having to sort them manually!). :)

Garage Band now allows you to purchase artist lessons for $4.99, and that's awesome for the music lover I am. Of course that you won't be able to take lessons from all obscure artists/bands you can think of, but I am sure this feature will send a lot of people sky high... ;)

The big thing we were all waiting for finally arrived - the new 17" MacBook Pro features up to 8GB of RAM, new NVidia chips, LED backlight capable of 1920x1200 resolution, is 0.98 inches thick and weighs 6.6 lbs, adding a $50 anti-glare option, but its battery is now much better than before, with up to 8 hours work time! The problem is that now the battery is larger and non-removable. Whatta a pity...well, nothing is perfect. You get you Mac, you use it for about 3 years, than you will probably go pay some cash to get a new battery...or a new Mac.

Looking at iTunes, we have new prices, but leaving those aside, most important thing is that, by the end of Q1, all songs will be DRM free!

I know there could be more to say about the keynote, but I think that, apart from finally deciding to let iTunes music go DRM-free, Apple didn't come up with anything really revolutionary. Face recognition-based tagging has been done before, as well as the other highlights of Apple's last MacWorld presence, only that all these weren't made by Apple, so... welcome to 2009!

If Santa didn't bring you the iPhone 3G unlocked as you wanted it, you shouldn't blame the poor old man, I am sure he did everything possible to give you what you wanted, but I am sure he's no member of the iPhone Dev Team...so seeing the iPhone 3G unlocked earlier than previously announced wasn't something he could have any impact on. Anyway, the good news is that we can finally get the iPhone 3G unlocked!

According to The Wall Street Journal's Yukari Iwatani Kane, "A group called the iPhone Dev Team released a free piece of software called 'yellowsn0w' that unlocks the iPhone 3G. The software lets users reprogram the phones so they can work on any wireless network based on the same technical standard."

The funny part is that on the official iPhone Dev Team blog, the iPhone 3G unlock is still in a beta stage, so there's no PIN support just yet, and the "yellowsn0w" application's version is 0.9.5. To make things even more interesting, some UK guy calling himself "Jody Sanders" is trying to sell the freely available iPhone 3G unlocking tool "at a bargain £19.99," claiming that "We can now fully unlock the iPhone 3G for use on any GSM network for just £19.99 DIY (£49.99 in-store at either London or Birmingham) - just in time for the release of the iPhone 3G PAYG in the UK (available from Carphone Warehouse and o2)."

Leaving the funnies aside, here's what Kane added to the report: "An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the iPhone Dev Team's work, only saying that Apple doesn't support unlocked iPhones in the U.S. Apple offers such phones in Germany and Hong Kong "where government regulation requires it" but they usually come at a steep price." Nothing new there, don't you think?

Anyway, it's good to see that, Beta or not, the iPhone 3G unlocked managed to get so close to perfection. After all, some people say two iPhones are better than one, while others think an iPhone that's unlocked is much better. So...what do you think, huh? ;)

As I was expecting, last year's Apple rumors got refreshed as soon as everyone managed to wake up after the New Year night, but I wouldn't stumble into this topics once again just to tell you same things once again. After all, previous rumors were saying that Apple will release some NVIDIA-based Macs, but no accurate details were available. Now, we're still on the unofficial side of the story, but we have plenty of details about these Apple rumors, so let's take a look at them, shall we?

The source of the latest news regarding what Apple could come up with this week is AppleInsider, and they just managed to found out that the Cupertino-based company will release "a 17-inch MacBook Pro with a fixed internal battery and a new version of the Mac mini, both of which will feature chipsets from NVIDIA" in just a few days, "as early as Tuesday."

Another story brings really interesting news, since even a small chance of seeing a 28-inch Mac these days makes me shiver. Wow, so could it be true? That remains to be seen, of course, so until we get to see the new iMacs, Mac mini and Mac Pro showing up, all we can do is hope that Apple finally decided to play it big. After all, size seems to really matter these days, with LCD monitors becoming larger with each month, and since the prices are going down... why not?

The new technical details part of these Apple rumors say that the new Macs will use the NVIDIA MCP79 (GeForce 9400M) chipset, and a high-end MacBook Pro version is expected to use the powerful 9800M graphics chipset. Even more, the 28-inch version I mentioned above could use Intel's X58 chipset, working together with a Nehalem-based processor, although details are quite sketchy at this time.

These being said, I think tomorrow's keynote may reveal a lot more than these last-minute Apple rumors, so...get ready for the MacWorld 2009 keynote!