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Macworld 2009 Impressions…major letdown -
Posted on January 6, 2009 by Tom

Well it’s been and gone, Apple’s last ever Macworld Keynote, and boy was it not worth waiting for. For those people hoping Apple would go out with a bang, sadly they didn’t. Anyone hoping for a new product or even an updated Mac mini, look away now. We were treated to ’09 updates to the iApps, a new service called iWork.com and finally the predicted Unibody MacBook Pro 17″. Here’s a brief rundown of what you missed.

  • iPhoto ’09 – Geotagging now shows a map of the location GPS tagged photos were taken, smart facial recognition lets you tag a persons face and iPhoto automatically groups photo’s of the same person together, pretty cool. iPhoto now also links with Facebook and Flickr.
  • iMovie ’09 – Updated Themes, video stabilization, advanced audio editing, GarageBand style action pop up video editing for enhanced precision.
  • iWork ‘ 09 – Updates to Keynote, Pages and Numbers. Keynote can now be controlled using an iPhone or iPod Touch. App is available on the Store now for $0.99. Not much else exciting, more themes, more transitions, more formulas, you know the score.
  • iWork.com – Online site were people can share Documents, edit and add comments, download files in Microsoft Office, PDF or iWork format.
  • Mac Box Set – For Mac users still using OS X Tiger, Apple have a great offer which includes Leopard, iLife ’09 and iWork ’09 all for $169.
  • MacBook Pro 17″ – Unibody enclosure, 2.66GHz (option for 2.93GHz), 320GB Hard Drive, 4GB DDR3 (expandable to 8GB), Nvidia chipset, Dual GPU’s (9400m integrated, 9600MT dedicated), Glass Trackpad, new non-removable Battery uses clever on chip technology to constantly monitor cell usage. Promises 8 hours of battery life and up to 1000 charging cycles.
  • iTunes DRM Free – Well nearly, 10 million songs on iTunes, of them 8 million are now DRM free, new pricing structure $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29. Entire catalogue to be DRM free by end of quarter.
  • iTunes WiFi Store – You no longer need a WiFi connection to access and download songs, a 3G connection is adequate, with a full library still available.

So no sign of the much anticipated Mac mini? Is Apple saving it for it’s own event? Probably. Not even a preview of Snow Leopard, it really was a massive letdown. Here is a rundown of some of the rumors that didn’t make it to Macworld (a lot).

  • Mac mini
  • iPhone nano
  • Apple Cinema Displays
  • iPhone tethering
  • Apple Netbook
  • Mac Pro updates
  • iMac updates
  • Mac Tablet
  • Mac Home Media Server
  • Snow Leopard