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