As expected, the guru of the cult, Steve Jobs, stepped aside and in his place we had Phil Schiller. For the first few minutes Phil keeps it soft, talking about new versions of iLife, iWork, iMovie and GarageBand, all now 09 branded.


Social networking to the fore

iPhoto, the photo management system, will now include face detection and geotagging, really no more than a catch-up with the functionality already on most recent mobiles: sending photos to your Flickr account and simultaneously letting your friends know where they were taken (to cite the example given by Phil Schiller). In terms of face detection it does basically what Facebook does. If you’re not yet on this social network, you’ll learn this: you can tag friends who appear in photos and name them on the image, so that everyone knows who was at Paul and Jessica’s wedding for example.

Back to Phil (after boring us with his pretty pictures for a good long while): "I hope you're as excited about this as I am." Sure thing Phil! Next please!

Now on to iMovie and GarageBand

iMovie sees the introduction of automatic image stabilisation. On the music and audio side, GarageBand will now offer, amongst other stuff, individual “artist lessons” with well know musicians. Sign up for a video lesson with Sting for just $4.99!

The presentation continues… but there’s a certain lack of enthusiasm in this keynote. Almost as if we were missing a little something, or perhaps someone!

What we expected I suppose… or nearly. Let’s skip the rest of it. Will there be a “One more thing!”? Wait for it!

7:35 pm: We’ve come to the end, finally, but man!

This should throw a bit of cold water on even the most fervent members of the sect. It is though in step with Apple’s announcement that this would be its last time in attendance at Macworld.

For a final appearance, this was kind’ve forced. They did the minimum. At least they were there!

Just about ...

Sad times at MacWorld with only one hardware announcement: the new 17 -inch MacBook Pro.




A new version was of the 17 -inch MacBook Pro has been unveiled by Apple.
It is less than an inch thick (0.98'') and weighs 6.6-pounds.



Among the other features that may want to make you cry  "magic" are:

• a 1,920-by-1,200 LED-backlit display

• a 700:1 contrast ratio (which would be very good for a notebook display, but we had seen a close to 1000:1 on the 15 inch model

• 2 graphics processors: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT (same as 15 inch version)

• 7 hour battery life by default (sadly on a non-removable built in battery), 8 hours with integrated graphics

• storage: 256 GB Solid State Drive or 320 GB HD

• 3 x USB, 1 x Firewire 800

• 4 GB Memory

• Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.66 GHz

The new MacBook Pro comes with a glossy display. An anti-glare option is however available for an extra $50. Apparently according to Apple, comfort is something of a luxury that comes at an extra price.

Apple says it is the lightest 17-inch laptop. PC fans might argue that it's mainly one without a numeric pad.

The Apple Store is open again now. In the United States, you will need to hand over 2,799 $ (£1,949) for this laptop.
These unibodies can pre-ordered and will be shipped within 3 to 4 weeks.

As for the rest of the product lines: the new OS, the iPhone Nano, the mini Mac, new 30-inch Cinema Displays, or even the new version of the iMac; well you will have to wait a bit longer. This MacWorld will be remembered as was one without Steve Jobs and without any major hardware announcement.

If the overall MacWorld keynote failed to deliver much excitement, the one piece of news regarding iTunes, the world's largest music store, is one of greater interest.
The platform will offer music free of limitations, better encoding, lower prices and access to the iTunes Store from the iPhone via 3G.

iTunes Plus : 8 million tunes DRM-free

Songs won't be set free of DRM straight away, but Apple promises that by the end of Spring,10 million tunes will no longer carry digital rights management restrictions.

Songs from $.69

From April on, the 99-cent song model will no longer exist. Instead there will be three price levels, going from 69 cents and to $1.29. More songs should be offered at the low price point.