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Macworld ’09: Day One Wrapup


keynote emptystage Macworld 09: Day One Wrapup

Ok, so maybe only one of our predictions were true at the Phil Schiller keynote on Tuesday morning. No new iMacs, Mac minis, or iPhone nanos and we were left wondering, "Where's the rest?" We have a full wrap-up of day one at Macworld Expo 2009 after the break.

ilife09box Macworld 09: Day One Wrapup

The first announcements included iLife '09, with new versions of iMovie, iPhoto, and GarageBand. The coolest feature of the entire iLife '09 suite is the new Learn to Play feature inside of GarageBand. You can learn how to play the guitar, keyboard, or other instruments with guided tutorials. There are also Artist Lessons available for $4.99 each from John Fogerty, Sarah McLachlan, Sting, and other popular artists. The new iMovie '09 brings back some pro-style editing features that iMovie '08 was lacking. Some of them include precision editing, which allows you to precisely edit certain clips and their in/out points on the timeline. iPhoto '09 adds Places and Faces in addition to Events. Places brings your geotagged photos into Google Maps and allows you to see where your photos were actually taken since some cameras have built-in GPS now. Faces recognizes the people in your photos and sorts them on a corkboard-style interface that's perfect for party photos. Facebook and Flickr export were also added.

The next announcement was the new iWork '09, with improved features throughout the suite. Keynote now brings us some of the features that Steve has used in his past couple of keynote addresses. One of them includes Magic Move, which picks an object that you want to move from one place to another between slides. It's somewhat hard to explain, so there's a tutorial and example available at the Keynote page on Apple's website.

Both iWork (available now) and iLife '09 (available late-January) will sell for $79 or $99 in a family pack. You can also purchase the Mac Box Set in late-January for $169 which includes Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, iLife '09 and iWork '09.

09mbp17openleft Macworld 09: Day One Wrapup

After the software announcements, Phil moved onto hardware. He talked about how successful the new MacBook family was with the new precision unibody enclosure. He then went on to introduce the new 17-inch MacBook Pro, which brings the unibody enclosure to the thinnest 17-inch notebook available. The new 17-incher uses new battery technology, which can bring up to 8 hours of battery life (depending on the graphics chip used). The battery is non-removable, but it should have three times the life span of the industry standard. The notebook will be available in late-January and will cost $2799 for a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB DDR3 memory, Nvidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M GT graphics, a 320GB hard drive, and a SuperDrive.

iTunes Plus was the last and final announcement at the keynote, bringing 256kbps AAC encoded songs to 8 million of the songs in the iTunes Store. In April, three pricing tiers will be introduced with songs costing $0.69, $0.99 cents and $1.29 with the majority of songs at $0.69 cents.

We'll have more hands-on from the show floor tomorrow here on ConnectReviews.



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