Macworld: Keynote Live-Blog Highlights

Big Phil (Schiller, that is) took to the stage right on schedule and after some self-congratulatory numbers and overview of Apple's global reach, he got down to what today's all about: the Mac.

9:10 am But first, some software to feed the Mac with iLife '09, with iPhoto covered first. In addition to Events (released last year), you can now organize by Faces using new face detection capabilities and Places, which uses geotagging and Google Maps (for photos taken by non-GPS-enabled cameras that aren't geotagged) to catogorize images by location. And there's built-in support for Flickr and Facebook.

9:23 am The overflow media room has just been invaded by a class of junior high schoolers with media badges. I suddenly feel even less important.

9:28 am Phil's still going through a fairly straightforward demo of Faces and Places in iPhoto. While we wait for the next new new thing, here's a reminder of the lengths to which Phil has gone to entertain Apple audiences in the past--a death dive stunt with the original Apple iBook at the MacWorld New York 1999 keynote address (via Thinkingbricks.com).

9:38 am The iMovie application is up next with the ability to add picture-in-picture to your videos, cutaways to shots, and place the audio only from a video clip into the background of an existing video sequence. It also offers image stabilization.

9:43 am Garageband 09 gets updated with the new Learn to Play feature that teaches guitar or keyboard via a video instructor. In addition to a generic Apple instructor named Tim, you can also learn songs from Norah Jones, John Fogarty, and Patrick Stump of Fallout Boy (nicely covering a lot of generational bases).

9:55 am We're about an hour into the keynote, and we're still on software, with Phil introducing iWork '09. It's got updates to Keynote (new animation tools, transition effects, and a remote feature that lets you control it with an iPhone), Pages (um... a full-screen view... wow), and Numbers (table categories, easier formula creation). Not exactly barn-burning stuff, but useful.

10:05 am If you want the new iLife software, you're going to need Leopard.

10:08 am One more iWork thing... it's moving to the cloud at iwork.com, which lets you share business documents for viewing in browsers (but not editing) as well as editing (much like Google Docs).

10:11 am Here comes the hardware... 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro.

10:16 am 1920 x 1200 display, 700:1 contrast ratio, matte display (with anti-glare option for $50), glass trackpad, up to 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo, 8 GB memory 1GHz DDR3, GeForce 9400M + 9600MGT built in.

10:19 am Rumors were right... the 17-inch has a non-removable battery. But! It can provide up to 8 hours of use (when using the 9400M graphics processor) on a single charge (up to 1000 charges). Phil: "If you need to exchange it, we have a program."

10:25 am Hrmmm... One Last Thing™ already, and it's iTunes. Where's the Mac mini?

10:30 am The iTunes skinny: three tiers of pricing ($0.69, $0.99, and $1.29--with more at the bottom tier than the top); DRM free tracks (8 million today, entire 10-million track library soon); iTunes Wi-Fi music store for the iPhone changes name to just iTunes music store and can download tracks over 3G networks.

10:32 am That's all folks. Now here's Tony Bennett to take us on home. Still waiting for that Mac mini...

10:38 am According to reports from other media folks nearby, the 3G music downloading is live. My EDGE-y OG iPhone feels left out.

10:40 am And that's a wrap. No Mac mini (at least during the keynote), no quad-core MacBook Pro, no home server, no Snow Leopard demo, no iPhone nano, no iPhoto on the iPhone. As usual, more disappointment than joy for fanboys/fangirls. We'll have more coverage of iLife, iWork, and the new 17-inch MacBook Pro later today.

--Agen G.N. Schmitz