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!
