Jobless: MacWorld 2009 Summary plus In-Depth Analysis

With Steve Jobs taking a break with his family amidst news about the state of his health, the annual and final MacWorld keynote by Apple is going ahead with the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, Phil Schiller. I think its sad that its come down to this, clearly in these difficult economic times, its becoming less viable to hold annual trade shows when there are much cheaper and cost effective ways to promote their products. Apple obviously now see themselves as big enough to no longer need the consumer-hype driven by shows like MacWorld, and the associated pressure with having to ‘have things ready by January’. Given this prior to the keynote, I didn’t see Phil announcing anything major as it would in some ways undermine this silent message which they seem to be conveying. Despite this, I really hope that MacWorld doesn’t follow the route of the ill-fated MacWorld Boston, and we will continue to see an Apple-less MacWorld for many years to come.

So I guess its time to take a look at some of the news, products and features which have been announced today in the Keynote, along with some constructive opinion. Here’s the basic rundown if you’re not bothered reading the detail.

• iLife ‘09 is to be released at the end of January for US$79 or US$99 for the family pack. Comes free with new Macs.
  • iPhoto ‘09: Face recognition and geotagging
  • iMovie ‘09: Enhanced UI, context sensitive menus, video stabilisation, travel maps
  • Garage Band ‘09: “Learn to Play” instrument mode and “Artist Lessons” (my 2-cents is that this feature is a one to watch)
• iWork ‘09 is to be released at the end of January for US$79, US$99 for the family pack or US$49 with new Macs.
  • Keynote ‘09: New charts, transitions, “Keynote Remote” for the iPhone/iPod touch
  • Pages ‘09: Full screen view, new templates, MathType and EndNote support
  • Numbers ‘09: Category sorting, new formulas and charts
  • New service called iWork.com allowing document sharing
    • Free while in beta but will eventually be fee-based
• Mac Box Set to be released at the end of January  combining iLife, iWork and Leopard for $169
• 17 inch MacBook Pro available “Late January” for $2799
  • The thinnest 17-inch notebook available, weighing in at 6.6 pounds/3 kilograms
  • Same unibody construction as the MacBook Pros released in October
  • Available in glossy (same as the October MacBooks) or matte (NEW)
  • New Intel Processors, up to 8GB of RAM
  • 320GB drive and 4GB RAM default
    • Option for 256GB solid-state drive
  • In-built, non removable battery
    • 8 hours (40% bigger) , 1000 charges (+3x over industry standard)
• DRM-Free Songs on iTunes are available from today!
  • Three price points – 69c (NEW), 99c and $1.29 (NEW)
  • DRM-free available on $1.29 which are at a higher bitrate
  • 8-million DRM free songs today, all 10-million songs by the end of March (Q1 2009).
• iPhone 3G can now can access the iTunes music store via 3G
• Tony Bennett sung at the end. Not my taste but so ended a smooth and unsurprising Keynote.

Interesting omissions…

• No major iPhone updates: no 32GB model, no firmware, no iPhone nano
• No iMac or Mac mini updates
• No Snow Leopard updates: still no news on a release

And if you want to hear about the other added features and some of my thoughts, read on…

iLife ‘09

It seems that Apple are unsurprisingly once again going down their annual route of releasing new versions of iLife. With the exception of last year, they have been continuously updating the suite since 2003 and now they’ve added some interesting new features which seem to fill the void between other products available on the market today while adding a small but probably large enough number of consumer oriented features which will distinguish iLife from other products on the market. iLife ‘09 ships at the end of January for US$79 or US$99 for the family pack with updates mentioned for iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band. However, as always, iLife is still free with all new Macs.

iPhoto adds two major features, Faces (facial recognition) and Places (geotagging). These clearly are useful technologies to have in an image sorting application, but they’re essentially playing catch-up to features which have been around for a while in other applications (eg. facial detection in Facebook and geotagging in Google’s Picasa). I can imagine especially with the camera and GPS in the iPhone how these features could come in handy, although personally I’m going to be waiting to see how reliable the facial recognition works as in the past it has been a little sketchy. Both features allow manual editing, a must especially if the facial recognition technology doesn’t fruition or if I’m going to be continuously shooting from my GPS-less point and shoot.

Aside from these major features, Google Maps now intergrates into iPhoto, providing Street View and aerial maps of geotagged areas. Additionally according to Schiller, “We’ve added a lot more depth — we have support for Facebook and Flickr, that’s built right in.” Once again, a catch-up feature, nothing to get excited about.

iMovie seems to be definitely improving this year with added features, some of which don’t address the bizarrely removed features from previous versions like speed controls; generally though it seems like Apple have gotten back into the ballpark with their consumer focused video editing suite. Jazzy new consumer oriented features include “Context sensitive menus for clips, you can make new movies with dynamic themes: titles, transitions, effects…” and “Animated travel maps — you can create 2D and 3D maps to show where you’ve traveled…” which are nice inclusions that are sure to please everyone.  Around the blogosphere (the live bloggers which are providing me with this information), there seems to be a lot of comments about the ease of use with the new timeline UI, with Engadget commenting that the slicing of two clips to form one quick cut was “very slick implementation”. Other features like video stabilisation are to be added which were demonstrated on a bumpy shot while travelling across the African plains (which CNET by the way made the comment that it “show[ed] a noticeable difference in quality”), green screen support and separate audio editing.

To me, this all sounds like a winner for individuals like myself. While it seems semi-professionals won’t be missing Final Cut any time soon, it does seem that Apple have gone the extra mile to ensure that iMovie is returning to the prominent position it once had for the lower end of the video editing market.

Garage Band this year comes with a killer new feature that rides the wave of all those band simulation games that have been so prominent last year, only this one uses real instruments! “Learn to Play” allows people to watch video tutorials teaching them the basics of how to play various instruments including the guitar and piano through nine simple lessons. On top of this could be the killer revenue raiser for Apple – “Artist Lessons”. Famous musicians such as guitarist John Fogerty from “Proud Mary” will talk about their various songs and actually show you how to play those songs, with other artists including Sting, Patrick Stump from Fallout Boy, Norah Jones, Sarah McLachlan and Ryan Tedder from One Republic also taking part. The thing about this is that it’ll cost you $4.99 a pop for these videos from iTunes, which I’m sure many instrumentalists beginner or advanced would find very tempting indeed.

iWork ‘09

Apple are also making further software improvements to their office suite of applications, although most of it looks like fairly standard, low key improvements that seem to come up with all of these annually released products. Like iLife, you’ll be able to get iWork ‘09 at the end of January for US$79 or US$99 for the family pack, but it will cost US$49 for new Mac owners. Alternatively, people can purchase iLife 09, iWork 09 and Leopard in the Mac Box Set for $169 which is a fairly limited saving considering that Leopard with iLife costs $129 ($9 off if you get it all at once!)

Perhaps I missed something here, but nothing in this suite seems to yell “Buy Me” unlike iLife, which at least has some merit in the new features which at least differentiate it from the previous versions. Keynote is coming with new charts, themes, and transitions between objects and slides! Also available separately is a new iPhone application called “Keynote Remote” his essentially allows you to control your Keynote presentation using your iPhone. While the newness is appreciated, I personally feel that there’s nothing compelling here. Perhaps the stills from the keynote which were made in “Keynote” don’t do the new application any justice but I’m tired of upgrading because I can swivel my slide a different way now. Visually though, the 3D charts which I know shouldn’t be pre-rendered look very nice, so perhaps there’s still some hope that Keynote may exceed my expectations with its amazing eye candy.

Numbers and Pages seem to be even worse culprets, with Numbers having category sorting, new formulas and yes, more new charts, while Pages receives new templates, full screen support and support for EndNote and MathType. While I appreciate the EndNote support which actually serves some purpose for me, there’s even less compelling reason for me to want to get these applications. At best, they may streamline some current tasks which I need to do, but given the upgrade cost, the lack of any innovation certainly doesn’t make me want to budge here. Apple have realised with Snow Leopard that they can’t simply keep adding new features, and have decided to focus on performance. With an office suite, if you can’t create any compelling new features, and you can’t create a better user experience, perhaps the best thing to do is to take a break and ensure that iWork ‘11 has things which I may actually find useful.

17-inch MacBook Pro

The biggest hardware news of MacWorld turns out to not be too big at all. As many people speculated, Apple have upgraded their 17-inch model of the MacBook Pro to the newer design which they released last October, including the new unibody design, the multitouch glass touchpad, and the same array of connectors (Mini DisplayPort, USB, FireWire 800, MagSafe). According to Apple, this will be the thinnest and lightest 17-inch notebook weighing in at 6.6 pounds or about 3 kilograms which is great. However, one thing I am disappointed with is the battery as Apple have gone with the dum decision to go with a non-removable battery. While they state in the Keynote that the battery internalisation is due to wasting space in the battery, the market this will be aimed at are undoubtedly professionals or high-end consumers who will cringe on not being able to use their MacBooks continuously on long trips away from a charge. However, Apple have softened up any potential issues about battery usage by having up to 8 hours of battery life on these new batteries with 1000 charges. While this is a positive step forward, real world tests are yet to show how reliable these figures are (battery figures always seem to overstate their charge), and I think the least Apple could have done is given the option of sticking with an external battery, something which I have on my US$600 Toshiba laptop.

The screen of the new MacBook certainly is stunning; at 1920 x 1200, the screen has 78% more pixels than the 15-inch MacBok Pro, 60% greater color gamut and the choice of a glossy, and a matte screen. The system will be powered by the same NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and 9600 GT graphics processors as the October line of MacBook Pros, but will be updated with new, more powerful Intel CPUs and will come by default with a 320GB hard drive a 4GB of memory, with options to upgrade memory to 8GB (US$1,200), processor (US$300 to a 2.93GHz CPU) and the hard drive to a 256GB SSD (US$900) also available.

Another thing mentioned by Apple is the environmental standards of their laptop range, with all models of the MacBook linke achieving the EPEAT Gold status, essentially meaning that Apple have highly recyclable, toxic-free, energy efficient products.

DRM Free Music on Itunes

Its something that I’ve been waiting on for a while, and actually might make me reconsider a purchase at the DRM-Free Amazon store. Unsurprisingly, analysists have correctly predicted that Apple are moving to a DRM-free model, with 8 million songs without copy protection now available from the iTunes store, and with all 10 million songs expected to be free by the end of the first quarter of this year. Apple are also announcing a new pricing platform for their music, with 69c songs joinging the current 99c model and the all new $1.29 pricepoint which will be DRM-free and at a higher bitrate. Although this point probably needs clarification, at this stage I am lead to believe that only $1.29 songs are DRM-free , which cries out “Apple Tax” all the way to the bank.

Other Interesting Notes

While iPhone users have found the Wifi iTunes music store useful for a long time, Apple have announced that now the iTunes store in its full glory will be available on 3G networks. At this stage, I believe this is specifically for the US, so users abroad will need to check on the status of any changes to this.

Disappointingly, the iPhone other than this announcement and if you’re generous Apple’s Keynote Viewer failed to gain any new functionality, including cut and paste, 32GB models, better cameras, lower priced  ‘Nano’ versions or anything else. Also, there were no improvements to iMacs, Mac Minis, Apple TVs, Time Capsule or any other Apple products which I found quite puzzling. I thought that it would have been a great time to relaunch the Apple TV with new features, perhaps even as an integrated Time Capsule  with better media streaming capabilities and DVR functionality. Also frustratingly, the long-awaited Snow Leopard never emerged. Could this mean that it might be something to look out for in the second half of the year rather than in the first quarter? Probably so, but if any company are going to surprise us, even without Steve Jobs announcing it, surely it would be Apple.