iLife, iWork, MacBookPro 17-inch, and iTunes is finally DRM-Free!

It was, by all accounts, one of the most anxiously anticipated Apple Keynotes in recent history. Just 24 hours prior, Steve Jobs had finally released a letter to the community detailing the reason for his dreadful weighloss over 2008, and subsequent absense from Macworld.

At 9am PST, Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketting, Phil Schiller, took to the stage to deliver the 2009 Macworld keynote-of-death. A visibly nervous Schiller cracked: “Good morning everyone, I can tell you how excited I am to deliver the Macworld 2009 keynote. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you all showing up.” (Laughter) [GDGT]

Apple had come out in mid-December ‘08 with a statement that Steve Jobs would, for the first time in over a decade, not be delivering the much-anticipated Macworld “Stevenote”. The announcement also indicated that this would be Apple’s last year at the IDG Macworld Conference & Expo. They would instead be focusing on their own Apple-controlled events and product launches from now on – a dire mistake, in my opinion. But more on that later.

For the first time, I got to enjoy live audio from the keynote thanks to Chris Pirillo’s live feed – complete with the odd Leo Laporte & co. commentary! I also had GizmodoLive, Technologizer, and MacRumorsLive open for the text and visuals. Sadly for MacRumors they were careless and left some passwords available for anyone to see – soon 4chan.org had control of their live stream and hilarity ensued.

Phil had three things (and one last final thing) to talk about, and executed them in a style Sir Steve would surely have approved. Here’s the summary:

iLife ‘09

iPhoto:

• Face recognition, searching and tagging (Picassa-style, but much better).
• Export photos to Flickr and Facebook (Goodbye Third-party plugins, hope you enjoyed putting food on the table).
• Places: GPS geotagging and search of photos.
• Slideshows: Uses the Face detection technology to correctly contruct “Smart Slideshows”

iMovie:

• Automatic Image Stablisation of imported video (thank goodness!)
• Brand new Timeline editor for Video and Audio (together or separately).
• Drag and Drop video or audio anywhere on the timeline.
• Video Special Effects

Garage band:

• Teaches you how to play an instrument.
• Comes with video instruction from professional musicians.
• Nine basic lessons included.
• Additional downloads can be purchased from within Garageband for $4.99 each. Clever.

iWork ‘09 and iWork.com

All I can say is, goodbye forever Office! I’ve used iWork ‘08 exclusively as my office suite for the last six months and have always enjoyed it, barring a few niggles. This year’s update changes all of that.

I’ve installed it and have enjoyed a quick look around the Three apps this evening. I’ll be using it extensively tomorrow and will report on its performance.

Keynote:

• New transitions: “Magic Move” will animate (tween) movements of like objects upon transistion. It works insanely well when you play with it.
• Chart options: Great new charting tools.
• Keynote Remote app for the iPhone and iPod Touch to control Keynote wirelessly.

Pages:

• Full screen editing of documents. Think WriteRoom… kinda.
• Dynamic outlines (finally).
• Mail Merge with data from Numbers
• Integration with MathType and EndNote.
• 40 great new themes.

Numbers:

• 250 new functions (and a great new Function Browser)
• Table Categories

iWork.com

• Online collaboration suite (think Google Docs, Zoho Office)
• I’m in the beta and it seems really interesting. Will be testing tomorrow.
• Built on the SproutCore Javascript library (as is MobileMe’s web interface).

New 17-inch MacBookPro

Featuring the new Unibody case design and a huge 8-hour (non-replacable) battery, the new High-end MBP is the laptop to rule them all. Let’s see what’s in the 0.96inch deep box:

• Three USB ports
• Mini DisplayPort
• Firewire 800
• 320Gb HDD or 250Gb SSD
• nVidia 9400M and 9600M
• Max RAM: 8Gb 1066Mhz DDR3
• Digital audio in/out
• Expresscard slot
• Gigabit Ethernet (finally! Yay!)

There’s also a $50 anti-glare option available for those of us normal human beings who can’t stand the glossy look.

One More iTunes thing

Not so much a thing, but probably the biggest story of all. iTunes is going DRM-Free. As of today, 8 million of the catologue are being freed (and users can upgrade to iTunes Plus for free). The balance of the catologue will be completed in the coming months. In April, the price-plan will change to a three-tier model. Songs will sell DRM-Free for 69cent, 99cents and $1.29 depending on the label.

Conclusion

It was no Macworld keynote 2007. There was no new iPhone, no new iMacs, and perhaps worst of all – no new Mac Mini. It was, however, a solid and interesting keynote. Great hardware is only as good as the software it runs, and the ‘09 editions of the Apple apps will take strong advantage of the new NVidia-based notebooks that we rolled out in September ‘08.

I suspect that we’ll see a Desktop Mac refresh in April. This Special Apple Event would include lots of news about Snowleopard, a new iMac and (finally) a new MacMini.

[Watch the broadcast at: Apple Events]