MacWorld 09

The Apple Keynote for MacWorld 09 is over. According to Apple this will be the last keynote as this is their last year as a participant for the expo. Sadly enough it wasn’t Steve Jobs who delivered the final keynote. Instead he left that task to his marketing man, Phil Schiller.

I was following the keynote last night via Gizmodo and MacRumors (before the site was hacked). I was only getting the text update and the images provided by Gizmodo. At that time I was a bit underwhelmed. This morning though when I got up, I watched the streaming video of the keynote. I must say that my opinion changed.

Phil Schiller is no Steve Jobs but I think he did ok. Not spectacular but I wasn’t bored to death. That had a lot to do with the products that they presented.

The heart of the keynote was the software. iLife 09 and iWork 09 in particular. I must say, from the keynote they did a wonderful job. I love how Apple uses technology that’s already available but pieces it together in a way that makes you just say, wow!

iPhoto’s new features includes Faces, a facial recognition algorithm that allows you to tag people in your photos and from that it will look at your other photos and look for the people you’ve already tagged and ask you to confirm if that’s indeed them. If it is, it can group photos according to the person.

Another feature is Places which uses geotagging to group photos according to where you took them.

iMovie 09 also sports wonderful new features.

iWork 09 is also updated. Pages haas been given a new full screen feature. This has been done before by other software but Apple recognized it’s usefulness and adapted it as well.

Numbers got updates as well and improved sorting and other features to make using spreadsheets better.

Keynote got some new transitions, new ways to build slide animations as well as a new remote application for the iPod Touch and the iPhone that will allow you to control your presentations via your device.

So the software was the focus this year and it’s really great once I saw it. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

The third thing they talked about was the new 17″ MacBook Pro sporting the new unibody design. What makes this baby standout is the fact that it doesn’t have the removable battery. Instead it has a new built-in battery which is specially designed for the MacBook Pro. Apple says because of this, it has been able to design a battery that will last 8 hours on a single charge and can be charged for 1000 times. This battery has a typical life span of 5 years. More than double the industry standard.

Another option for the 17 is a $50 anti-glare option. This is a feature that most pros have been clamoring for.

Apple’s “One More Thing” for this keynote is the announcement that iTunes is going DRM free. Yahoo! It is abandoning the single pricing scheme though. Apple will be pricing songs in three price points. 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29.

Apple is also opening up it’s iTunes Store to 3G network. A feature previously unavailable. iPhone users can now access the same store via 3G. Allowing users to download songs wherever and whenever.

However in my opinion the biggest show stopper of the keynote was neither software or hardware. It was Tony Bennett. A fitting closer to a great MacWorld tradition.

All in all it was a good keynote. Not great. But it was ok enough. I will surely miss MacWorld Keynotes, a ritual of mine for the past several years.