MacWorld '09 Round Up January 7, 2009
Posted by Chaim Gartenberg in : CES and Macworld , trackback
Well, it’s January, which means Apple’s MacWorld event is here, and today, at their (last) keynote, they announced a couple of Mac related things (sorry – No iPhone Nano today folks 
). For all the details on what Apple did come out with, read on!
iLife ‘09 -
The latest update to Apple’s iLife applications, it includes updates to iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and GarageBand.
iPhoto ‘09 adds two new ways to sort your photos: faces and places. Faces is a new facial recognition feature allows you to sort your pictures by who is in it — kinda like on Facebook, but this is done automatically. Places, as the name suggests, is sorting by place, working with both Google Maps and, if your camera supports it (i.e. iPhone camera), the GPS data attached to the picture, to identify the location. If it doesn’t manage to work or if you want to override it, you can can enter a location manually, and iPhoto will recognize and organize it.
Also added is Facebook and Flickr support, for not only exporting pix, but updating too. So if someone tags a person on your Facebook profile, it will update in Faces as well. Two other interesting features are slide show themes and a new book available for ordering: Travel Books, which is self-explanatory.
iMovie ‘09- Apple seems to have listened to the complaints on this one. In iMovie ‘08 many users (*cough* me *cough*) were unhappy with Apple’s removal of more advanced features from the program such as advanced video edits. Here they bring in some of those more advanced features, and they also added requisite new themes, including a very cool Indiana Jones-esque map thing, that lets you show where you are going on your trip. A nice update.
GarageBand- Only one really interesting new feature here: the “Learn to Play” feature, which, in 9 basic lessons, teaches you how to play songs on piano and guitar. So whats cool? That real artists (Sting, and John Fogerty) have signed on to this, and you can buy videos of them teaching you how to play their songs ($5 a video, and it’s in high def!).
iWork ‘09 – New iWork stuff, but lets face it, unless you work in business (which you might) you won’t be really needing most of the new stuff here. Those interested, see Apple’s page here.
iWork ‘09
17″ MacBook Pro -
The 17″ MacBook Pro finally gets the new update the other 15″ MacBook Pros got late last year. This machine is much more powerful though, with a better (although non-removable) 7-8 hour battery (yes you get 7-8 hours of battery), depending on the graphics card you’re using; the MacBook has two graphics systems installed on it — the integrated Nvidia graphics, which uses part of RAM for memory and is useful for the less-demanding Word documents, music playback, or web browsing, or the more powerful 512 MB Nvidia discrete graphics, which is handy for graphic-heavy programs like photo editing or even gaming — and since Apple allows you to easily switch between the two, you will drain more battery on the latter than the former, although with superior graphics.
It also comes with a better Intel Core 2 Duo processor (up to 2.93 GHZ- basically desktop power), higher resolution screen (1920 x 1200– basically the most crisp, nicest-looking screen you’ll see today), up to 8 GB of RAM, and the option of either a 320 GB hard drive or a more reliable, though much more expensive, 256 GB Solid State Drive. This computer really is loaded, and for those heavy photo-editing users out there this is perfect for you– if you can stomach the insanely expensive starting price of $2,800!
The New 17 inch MacBook Pro
Finally, some stuff EVERYONE out there (who has an iPod – as I said, everyone) should care about:
iTunes Music Store -
First, Apple announced that there will be new pricing for songs in the store – 3 levels – $.69, $.99, and $1.29. – since the music companies want more flexibility for pricing (new stuff will be higher, old stuff lower – works out).
Second, Apple announced that iTunes Plus, the section of iTunes that allows you to get higher quality, DRM Free (DRM= Digital Rights Management- copyright protection, what prevents you from sharing music and putting your bought iTunes Store music on different devices like cell phones, other Mp3 players etc.) music, is finally being extended to the rest of the music in the store. Now when you buy a song from iTunes, you could put it on any device you want (that is, of course, once it fully comes out in the coming months- not all songs are covered right now, but a lot are)!
Finally, Apple announced that the iTunes Music store on the iPhone, which formerly only worked over Wi-Fi, is now being extended to the 3G (and EDGE) networks as well. You can now download music anywhere, at the same price and quality, and its synced over to your computer later when you resync with iTunes. This is something which iPhone users have apparently wanted.
So, all in all, an interesting, if lower key, final Apple keynote. So long, good buddy.
Pix from Apple.com
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