Macworld 2009 Keynote coverage summary

So, I’m seeing lots of mixed feelings about Macworld.  Some are super excited about the software, others think software stinks and they just wanted their hardware updates.  I’m in the middle.  I’m not super excited about the software, but I’m not disappointed about the lack of hardware updates either.  I knew they weren’t going to happen.  I’ve talked about the reasons why Apple wouldn’t release another iPhone, and what I think their take is on the Netbook scenario.  I’m not saying that I’m right, but I certainly wasn’t expecting anything big to be released during the Macworld Keynote.

Macworld Keynote Updates
For those of you that didn’t watch the Keynote on Tuesday, or for those of you that didn’t read the blogs/feeds/streams that were posted, here’s the summary:

Macworld 2009 released some updated software in the iLife ’09 suite.  These applications include iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand and iWeb.  They also released the new 17″ Unibody MacBook Pro, and they’re working on DRM free iTunes music, with a tiered pricing scale starting under a dollar.

iPhoto Faces and Places:
iPhoto got a couple revamped features that are pretty neat.  Faces enables face recognition and organization – the application recognizes a face, asks you to tag it with a name, and then appropriately recognizes all the other photos with that face in it.  You can then sort the pictures by person of course or *drumroll* integrate it with facebook’s photo tagging feature!  Very nice.

Organize photos by face

Facebook integration

Places is similar, but instead of recognizing faces it recognizes locations by way of geotagging.  This way you can track your vacations or follow somebody’s travels.  Follow somebody?  Sounds a little creepy.  From engadget:

9:27AM This tool would be great for stalking. You can really pinpoint where someone has been. Stalkers, take note — your software has arrived.

iMovie has been completely rebuilt and you can tell.  They have some really cool new features that make it easier to edit your movies and control the sound and video separately.  They also have some really cool new features like video stabilization (which the crowd at the Macworld Keynote went WILD over – I heard the yelling live through Chris Pirillo’s live stream).

GarageBand has some new music tutorials that teach you how to play different instruments.  They also have different guest celebrity artist that they showed on screen at the Keynote.  They claim that they’ll be continuously adding more artists to their database.

There were a few other announcements that I didn’t really pay much attention to because they were for programs that I’ll likely never use.

Towards the end of the event they announced the new 17″ Unibody Macbook.  There are a couple special features on this new Macbook: an 8 hour irreplaceable battery that gets 1000+ charges and should last for about 5 years under normal use – which is longer than other notebook batteries in case you’re wondering.  The CPU speed is optionally available all the way up to 2.93 GHz, which is astounding, and up to 8GB of RAM and an optional 256GB SSD.  Pretty respectable.  Oh, it’s also the thinnest 17″ notebook on the market.  Nice!

Overall, not an amazing set of releases, no big surprises.  That’s fine.  We all know what Apple’s potential is, and they’ve been reaching it lately with their iPhone and new Unibody Macbooks.  Just have a little patience and we won’t be disappointed – <whining for=”new iPhone”>”Are we there yet?!”</whining> Almost… Almost.