Macworld, the annual expo dedicated to all things Mac, was launched today in San Francisco.
The announcements of new upgrades was a mixed bag, but we’ve rounded them all up for you to digest in one easy read.
GarageBand ‘09
This year GarageBand is going to get beginner friendly with the addition of learn-to-play features. The software will come packaged with 9 beginner lessons for guitar and piano, but you will then be able to purchase “Artist Lessons” from a built-in store. At a cost of $4.99 a lesson, you can learn how to play particular songs from the likes of John Foggerty and Sting, produced exclusively for GarageBand.
iLife ‘09
As shocking as it may be, iLife ‘08 has gotten an update into iLife ‘09. How do they come up with these names? Hours of research, I’m sure. While there were no Earth shattering updates to this, iPhoto ‘09 did get two new features in the form of “Faces” and “Places”.
Faces will allow the software to do facial recognition so that you can organize your photos by people. Say you want to bring up all of the pictures you have of your cousin Sue. Just start a search for Sue by clicking on one image of her, and the system will try to find all of the images you have that she is in. Sure there will be some mistakes, but still a very handy tool for organizing your photos.
Next up was Places which will allow you to geotag your images. A goodly number of camera now support geotagging, and this feature will now allow you to organize photos by location. If your camera doesn’t support this feature, you will be given the option to enter location information manually.
iMovie ‘09
Video enthusiasts will get lots of new toys to play with this year in the way of image stabalization, new themes, effects such as aged film, move the audio track from one clip to another and so on. Sounds like there are ton of new features this year for the amateur film makers out there.
iWork
The Apple produced office suite saw a lot of updates this year. While Keynote, their presentation application, got new effects such as transitions, the most intriguing update was the remote app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Once installed you will be able to connect to the presentation on your Mac, and then show the entire presentation file right threre on your device. Very handy for people on the go, or say you are doing a lunch meeting.
The big announcement, however, was the launch of iWork.com. You will now be able to click a button, enter an email address, and share the document with that person for review. They can also make edits to it, you can share notes with each other about it and so on. For now you can sign up for a free beta test of it, but it will eventually become a paid service.
MacBook Pro 17″
MacBook Pro 17″ models saw huge technical advancements, especially in the field of batteries. Depending on the style of video chip you choose, you can expect 7 to 8 hours of life from a fully charged battery. This is 30% ahead of the industry standard, and you will also get 1,000 charges from your battery, which is three times the normal amount.
While the new features of the MacBook are impressive (2.6 GHz, 4 GBs of RAM, 512 MB of video memory, etc), the price is a jaw dropping $2799 for the basic configuration.
iTunes
iTunes got the coveted last announcement spot with the news that songs will now be priced at $.69, $.99 and $1.29, but all of them will be DRM-free. There are currently 8 million songs available without the draconian copy protection, and by the end of the month that number will grow by 25% to ten million.
iPhone users will also be able to now purchase songs no matter where they are via the 3G network. You will get the exact same quality as you would buying it on your computer, and you will be able to synch it off your phone to your computer next time you attach the two.
Conclusion
While there were some interesting new features to the existing products, where was the Mac Mini? The entry level Mac has not seen an update since August 2007, and while Apple sold a record number of Macs in 2008, their entry level options are sorely limited. Disregarding the now severly outdated Mini, your cheapest option for an up-to-date system is the $999 MacBook.
I have said for years that Apple would be dangerous if they would pay more attention to budget conscience consumers, but yet they ignore them once again, even in this current economy. Bad move, Apple, bad move.
