Macworld Expo officially came to an end on Friday evening, and some people say it wasn’t like how it used to be in the past. The show floor seemed boring and lacking new and exciting products. Booths after booths of iPod cases and speaker systems, and small software companies. There were only a handful of booths with unique and new products announced at the show. I only spent about 30 minutes at the Apple booth before leaving to check out the rest of the show floor. What could IDG do to increase attendance without Apple?

I think IDG World Expo (the company who runs Macworld Expo) needs to rethink how the 2010 show is run and make it more like SXSW (South by Southwest) where they show media creators who use Macs in their workflow whether they be artists, directors, or podcasters.

I got some hands-on with iLife and iWork ’09 on Wednesday, and the new features in iPhoto ’09 seemed convincing and I can’t wait to get more in-depth when it arrives later this month along with the new iMovie ’09 and the rest of the iLife suite. Amazon.com also has the new Mac Box Set available which includes the former products along with Mac OS X Leopard.

We’ve uploaded some video to our Blip.tv channel from the keynote, and more should be coming shortly. We’ll also have some reviews of the products that won the Best of Show award from Macworld Magazine and interviews with the companies, stay tuned.

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.

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.

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.

Sound off in the comments below. Thanks to CoverItLive.com for making this live blog possible.

We’re in San Francisco and the Macworld 2009 keynote line has begun! Two people were in line as of 8:15 PM Pacific time and we expect the line to grow slowly until people get in the line early Tuesday morning. Photos have been uploaded to our Flickr account and video will be uploaded to our Blip.tv channel tomorrow from our trusty Flip Mino HD camera.

Our keynote coverage will begin tomorrow at 8:45AM Pacific time and you’ll find our coverage on our home page early in the morning. Bookmark this page to get the latest Macworld Expo 2009 coverage.

The typical shrouded Apple booth photos are now up on italian site SetteB.IT, along with the “Even the small talk will be big” banners that are not to be confused with the Apple banners typically seen (ex. “There’s something in the air”). These banners were put up by IDG World Expo show management throughout the South of Market (SoMA) area promoting the show.

However, something oddly missing are the teaser banners that we’ve seen in 2007 and 2008 from Apple that were highly speculated by the Mac community. Last year, “There’s something in the air” was predicted to be an ultra-thin notebook computer that would be added to the MacBook family, called the MacBook Air.

Two banners believed to be put up by Apple could hold what is being introduced on Tuesday.

There are two banners above the show floor entrances that seems to be put up by Apple however, folded up in secrecy. What could it be? Find out on Tuesday, January 6th during our live keynote coverage here on ConnectReviews. The best thing to do is to add us via RSS to your favorite feed reader.

UPDATE: AppleInsider has posted larger, higher resolution photos of the banners as well as a shot of the inside of the mobile production truck outside Moscone West showing an individual on stage.

Macworld is almost 4 days away, and here are my predictions for the last Apple keynote at the show. Phil Schiller is scheduled to give his keynote on January 6th, 2009 at 9am Pacific time, and we’ll be covering it live here on ConnectReviews.

1. New iMacs & Mac minis
With the recent introduction of the new 24″ LED Cinema Display using the new DisplayPort standard, the iMacs are unable to connect to these new displays. Expect a new iMac, with a slimmer design and a Mini-DisplayPort replacing the older Mini-DVI port. The new systems should include the new NVIDIA MCP79 platform chipsets that are already inside the latest MacBook line. All systems will be upgraded to newer generation Core 2 Quads available in mid-January. The Mac mini has had it’s fair share of updates, but it hasn’t had one since August of 2007. This either means the Mac mini will be phased out and replaced with a new Mac mini-tower with more expandability, or upgraded to the latest standards that the new iMac will include.

2. New Cinema Displays
The older aluminum Cinema Displays have not been updated since WWDC2004, and still look dated compared to the black glass and aluminum style of the latest products from Jobs and Co. Along with new Cinema Displays using LED-based panels and Mini-DisplayPort, look for an adapter to connect these new displays to older Macs using DVI and Mini-DVI connections.

3. iLife & iWork ’09
I don’t know what Apple could add to their iLife suite, so it may not get an update, however, another revamped version of iMovie with more pro-style features would be nice. In iWork ’09, there will be small enhancements and tweaks to Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. There’s also a possibility that Apple will put the office suite up in the “cloud”, similar to MobileMe, which brings these applications to the PC. Steve has been showing off new Keynote transitions and builds in his latest keynote speeches, so these should be expected.

4. iPhone nano
A smaller, cheaper version of the iPhone 3G, with 4GB of storage, available in multiple colors like the new iPod nano and with features like “Shake to Shuffle” and Nike+iPod integration.

5. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
Apple will totally put Microsoft behind with the latest incarnation of Mac OS X. Snow Leopard (10.6) will include a long-awaited Cocoa-based Finder, expanded use of Data Detectors used in Mail.app, and OpenCL technology that will optimize use of the Intel processors in every Mac. Phil will show off increased speed in iLife ’09 apps like iPhoto and iMovie.

Get a reminder for our live keynote coverage below!

What are your predictions? Leave them in a comment below!

It’s almost that time of year, where the Apple fanatics gather for a week in San Francisco to experience the latest and greatest products from Apple (for the last time) and the other vendors. We covered Macworld Expo last year on MacSpark, our sister site for all things Mac, but for this year’s coverage, we’re consolidating things here to provide you with a better experience. Details for keynote coverage and show floor coverage are inside!

We want to cover the expo in a way you can enjoy, but we need your suggestions folks! Leave a comment below and we’ll take them into consideration.

Stay Updated

Subscribe to our RSS feed in your favorite feed reader, or right inside of Firefox or Safari. Don’t know what RSS is?

Bookmark our Macworld Expo 2009 page that will show all the latest posts, and give you a brief rundown of the announcements after our keynote coverage ends.

Keynote Coverage

We are planning to cover the Phil Schiller keynote live on our website on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 starting at 9am Pacific time. Details as to where the keynote coverage will be located will be announced shortly.

Photo & Video Coverage

Photos and video coverage of the expo will be uploaded daily starting on Monday, January 5th and continue until Wednesday, January 7th. Visit our Flickr page for photos, and videos will be uploaded to our Blip.tv channel.

Happy New Year from the ConnectReviews team!