LiveBlogging the Keynote
Chris Seibold and I are here at MacWorld and we are going to do something a little different this year. We are going to live blog the keynote, providing context and opinion on what is, and what isn't announced today. Join us at 9 AM PST
8:44 There is a different feel to MacWorld this year, people aren't quite sure what they are going to get with Phil. For concrete evidence that the excitement just isn't there note that I lost a three dollar bet to Hadley last night when not a single person was camped out for the keynote.
All that said most of the people we talked to yesterday thought we'd see a bumped up Mac mini. Hadley wants an iPhone nano but everyone is rooting for a reason to waste the kids college fund on some must have gadget.
8:54 Hadley here, remembering what it was like to be live at the keynote. Kinda bummed I'm not there, but happy I was there for all the historical Steve keynotes.
I don't think there will be any huge announcements today at all. Phil will go over Snow Leopard, announce iLife and iWorld 09, maybe announce a new Mac mini, but that's it. Chris, what do you think?
Chris here, answering Hadley's question. I'm not sure what the keynote will bring but I am certain that Phil won't be able to build up the fervor that Steve did. Can you imagine Phil getting people to actually want to buy an iPod hi-fi? Well even Steve couldn't get people to buy an iPod hi-fi but while he was introducing it you wanted it. Good luck Phil, you'll need it.
9:06 We are following the other sites and seeing what is announced and then providing context for you, stay posted.
9:11 Phil says it is all about the Mac today! Annouces iLife 09, one of three things he is promising to cover.
9:15 iPhoto is getting bumped up by the addition of faces and places. Yep, the program will now recognize faces and be able to tell where you took the pictures. Sounds like fun for most but a blast for hackers.
9:16 As predicted we are getting the iLife chat, what's interesting is how this all the iPhoto updates fit in with the context of Google releasing Picassa (free!) for the Mac.
9:19 iPhoto is getting quite an update. Google maps, Facebook and Flickr are all in the new iPhoto.
9:20 iPhoto books is one of my favorite features, I've always thought the quality is so high, I'd be interested to see how much higher it is going to get.
9:26 Faces, as you would expect, groups photos with the same people in them into something called smart albums. Sounds like iTunes, I wonder if they'll have a genius function so you can see who should've been in your pictures. I guess getting your old sig oth out of your library will now be much easier too. If you like iPhoto you're in heaven so far. If you're not an iPhoto fanleave your number in the comments and we'll give you a wakeup call when the iPhoto stuff is over.
9:32 Phil is moving on to iMovie. In a surprise announcement Phil says iMovie '09 will be even better than iMovie '08. Great new stuff in the program for advanced users.
9:35 All this iMovie stuff reminds me of how a few years ago Apple really thought that Video was going to be the next big thing. The interesting thing is that it is, but not is a way Apple envisioned. People care less about editing features than sharing features, a la YouTube, Seismic, etc.
9:41 Apple is big intop maps today you can do animated maps in iMovie. iMovie will also have a slew of cool new effects. No word on if third party plugs are making a comeback (color me doubtful).
9:45 Oy, Garageband time....this is time-filler stuff, get to the good stuff, Phil. No one cares abotu Garageband!
9:51 Sorry about the glitch. Hadley says I'm fired as soon as the keynote is over. Anyway, Garageband might not be a total snooze fest anymore Apple is adding lessons and famous artiust t teach to play their songs
All this iLife goodness ships in late January for the customary price of $79 for a single user license and $99 for a family pack. Up next iWork! Boredom ahoy!
9:58 Wow, Chris Pirillo has a live audio stream, kudos to him, listen in here live to the keynote (and check back here for commentary) http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chris-pirillo-live
10:01 Phil is going over new templates for iWork, "really fun" flyers and business stuff. Cuase, hey, business is supposed to be fun. Does anyone really use iWork anyway?
10:02 iWork shipping late January, $79. Yipee! But wait, there's more iWork.com. Collaboaration in iWork documents. Good thing Google or someone didn't implement something like this first.
10:05 Good news, there's a new Mac box set coming. You get Leopard, iWork and iLife for $169 total. Sweet and easy.
10:08 Does anyone actually use iWork that much? It seems like Office for the Mac is so dominant I'm having a hard time understanding all this focuss on the collaboration features for iWork. It is all moving to the web anyway.
10:09 That's it for iWork (thank god). Moving on to hardware. New Mac mini? Nope. New MacBooks? Nope. New 17" MacBook pro!
10:12 Now Apple announces there version of the Netbook for this down economy, a multi-thousand dollar 17" notebook, just what folks need as they browse for a job!
10:13 But there's a matte screen option, pros will have to to buy the 17"! Integrated battery (boo?) A souped up chip, bitchin' video etc. So Hadley, any must haves for you yet?
10:16 The best thing about the new 17" MacBook Pro? The battery of course! You can tell because Phil is rolling video about it. You'll get up to eight hours on a single charge. A swappable battery takes up too much space, by using an integrated battery battery Apple is able to keep the exat same too big dimensions of the 17" MacBook Pro as before.
10:23 Video is over and Phil is talking again. The video rambled on about battery tech but seemed to mostly justify why the battery wasn't removable. No wonder Steve didn't show up, this stuff is boring.
10:26 One last thing: iTunes. New pricing 99 cents, 69 cents and $1.29. To be clear if the song is less than six years old it is 99 cents. After that the music folks get some flexibility.
10:29 Phile talks about iTunes plus (no DRM, higher quality encoding). The iTunes plus catalogue should hit ten million by the end of the quarter.
10:30 Phil is wrapping it up. Guess who is playing out MacWord this year? Tony Bennet... What the hell????
10:33 I am without words here, Tony Bennet? This is depressing, what a way to end something like MacWorld with.
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I’m very excited about Faces.
Faces will be very useful, unlike Picasa’s version which only can identify if there’s a face or not. Be interesting to see if it can identify a person at various ages.
Also, iWork saving to MS Office document formats is very welcome and will make Pages a viable alternative to Word.
But after this fairly uninteresting final keynote, all you can say is:
RIP MacWorld
Here’s something interesting that I took away from watching the keynote just now. They are no longer taking shots at Microsoft. That’s ancient history. Now they’re taking shots at Google. Google, in many ways, is now directly competing with Apple in terms of software.
iWork.com now competes with Google Docs.
iPhoto competes with Picassa.
Android competes with iPhone.
Gmail competes with MobileMe.
The problem for Apple, of course, is that Google gives away those apps for FREE, and their products are nearly as good, and at least one, Gmail, is superior.
Which frankly puzzles me. Apple’s foray into software, many would argue, is to sell hardware. They have much more incentive to give stuff away more than Google does.
Nice observations, Beeb.
It makes me wonder if the fanboys can vilify Google the way they once did with Microsoft. It’s a different challenge, since Windows was a fairly easy target. The hints of criticism I see around Google mostly have to do with privacy and information gathering by Google, as opposed to the monopoly and illegal tactics meme toward Microsoft.