KEY POINTS:
Well, that was interesting. Apple made some announcements today, but many were expecting some great new hardware - there wasn't even a mention of a new iMac or a new mini. Rob Griffiths, a Senior Editor at Macworld magazine, told me he wasn't really surprised, but he was definitely disappointed. Unlike me - I was both.
Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, presented his keynote today, first telling everyone how well Apple did over the previous year, as is normal. He said his keynote would be 'Mac focussed' ... but then he introduced new software.
This comprised iLife and iWork '09. iLife comes free with new Macs or you can buy the new version if your Mac supports it, while iWork is a suite you need to buy. Both require OS 'Leopard' 10.5.6-plus.
iLife is one of the stand-out features of getting a new Mac. It bundles software for editing movies, looking after and editing photo collections, making websites and making music, plus more. The apps reference each other, look deceptively simple but produce incredibly professional results after a very shallow learning curve.
iMovie '09 looks excellent in that it adds features deleted from the previous, and oft-derided, iMovie '08. iMovie '08 produced great results but it really threw those used to the editing and audio-editing power of iMovie HD '06. Many users, including myself, therefore went back to the earlier version.
A new advanced mode adds a Precision Editor which supports advanced drag-and-drop of clips onto the timeline. A pop-up menu adds various options included dynamic themes, animated travel maps and automatic movie stabilisation for smoothing out shaky footage.
The audio track can be edited separately - thank goodness! - by revealing the audio tracks, and audio can extend beyond edit points again.
Video effects are applied live and you can roll over each one to see the results in real time.
iPhoto 09 is Apple's default image cataloguer and editor. The 'Events' category has been joined by 'Faces' and 'Places'.
Faces uses Face Detection technology so that you can name a person in a photo and iPhoto '09 finds the face in the photo. That person appears in the Faces list. This is also tied to iPhoto '09's Smart Album feature so you can automatically create an album of images containing pictures of specific people.
Places shows a map with pins where photos were taken thanks to GPS Geotagging, like the camera in the iPhone and in other new digital cameras. You can add geotags to older, non-geotagged photos (the map technology comes from Google Maps).
iPhoto 09 also adds support for Facebook and Flickr without plug-ins and new built-in themes for slideshows, printing and book-making.
GarageBand 09, Apple's pretty-damn-awesome music creator and editor, has a new Learn to Play feature using built-in HD videos. iWeb 09 and iDVD 09 are also part of the new suite.
iLife 09 ships at the end of this month for $179 including GST through the Apple Store or Apple Authorised Resellers.
The iLife Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorised Reseller on, or after, January 6, 2009. There is a shipping and handling fee of $19. (iLife '09 requires Mac OS X version 10.5.6 or later - full system requirements and more information on iLife '09 can be found here.
iWork '09
The other announcement was iWork '09. Keynote '09, which Schiller used to present his keynote, is like Microsoft's Powerpoint but with cinematic effects built in (it can open and save Powerpoint presentations). The new version has Object transitions, Text transitions: swing transition, energy shimmers, Anagram ... New themes include Kyoto, Showroom, Brushed Canvas and Venetian. Magic Move is like 'tweening' - you can set up your slides and Keynote does all the options for moving objects between the slides.
Pages 09 is Apple's word processor/page layout component of iWork. The new version lets you exclude everything except your writing when you want to focus, and there are new templates plus support for MathType formulas. There's also support for EndNote, for those publishing papers.
Numbers 09, Apple's spreadsheet, now has table categories, a new 'categorise by this column' choice and automatic table creation based on categories. There are more powerful formulas and over 250 functions, plus interface improvements.
iWork '09 is available now through the Apple Store and from Apple Authorised Resellers for $179 inc gst.
Apple also unveiled a new service called iWork.com which was supposed to launch as a public beta today. It wasn't there when I tried it. (Apple expects it will eventually be a paid service.)
iTunes and music
Starting today there will be 8 million songs, from all the major labels, DRM free. The iTunes entire library should be DRM free by the end of this quarter.
And now users can now download all songs on any Wi-Fi and 3G networks on different devices (like non-Apple cell phones), and it's the same selection as on a Mac or PC, at the same price and the same quality.
You can preview and purchase any music on iPhones at any time and from anywhere, and it syncs back to your computer. This starts today.
Other big news was that the flat pricing model of iTunes is going to change from April. There will be three price points.
New Mac hardware
But what about the hardware? Well, a new 17-inch MacBook Pro was shown off. But that's all. It's pretty impressive though - it's the world's thinnest 17-inch notebook and weighs just 2.99kgs.
It has a 2.93GHz Dual Core CPU (Intel has released a quad-core CPU for laptops - where's that option, Apple?). The new 17 MBP ships with 4GB RAM but supports 8GB RAM. The hard drive is 320GB as standard, with a 256GB solid-state drive as an option.
It has three USB 2.0 ports and the bigger new glass multi-touch trackpad.
But its most innovative feature is the new battery, which lasts up to 8 hours on a single charge. It can be fully recharged about three times more than the previous model. The new battery uses Apple's custom-designed Lithium Polymer technology with adaptive charging to reduce wear and tear; a chip in the battery monitors its health.
Will Apple be adding this battery tech to the 15-inch MacBook Pros? One would hope so!
The 17-inch has an LED backlit display showing 1920x1200 pixels at 133dpi. This is driven by an integrated GeForce 9400M graphics processor (with the 96500M GT with 512MB memory as an option). Plus there's an anti-glare screen option (at extra cost) which removes the glossy glass front plus replaces the black bezel with a metallic one, to address the criticisms of pro photographers. Some hated the glossy screen.
The new pro laptop has an ecologically sound Epeat Gold rating - it's arsenic-free, BFR-free, mercury-free, PVC-free and highly recyclable. It ships with 34 per cent less packaging.
The new 17-inch MacBook Pro will ship at the end of January and set you back $5099.
But no new iMacs?! No new mini! More on this later ... but don't fret too much. I wouldn't put it past Apple to introduce new iMacs and a new mini in the next few months, now that Apple is free of having to introduce new gear at Macworld every January.
- Mark Webster
