Live At Apple’s Final Macworld Keynote

No matter if you’re a casual Mac user or a rabid fanboy whose heart beats only for Apple, Macworld is the place to be for all things OS X.  This year’s show is notable for two reasons: It marks the last time that Apple will participate in the expo, and Steve Jobs (the face of all things Apple) will not deliver the keynote address–that job goes to Phillip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.

Although we aren’t going to experience the thrill of a Steve-note, we’re hoping that what is announced will be equally as exciting. Will we see the rumored iPhone nano? A revamped Mac Mini? New iMacs? Keep those fingers on refresh, as we’re live from San Francisco’s Moscone Center West! Our coverage, after the jump.

Six minutes left to showtime and the usual Apple buzz is in the air, despite the absence of Jobs. Attendees are placing their last minute bets as to which new products are going to be presented.

Time to silence the cells and pagers–show’s about to begin!

The lights have dimmed, and applause rocks the house as Phil takes the stage.

Phil’s showing slides of Apple stores that have opened in China, Germany, and Australia. Really hyping the beauty of the retail outlets and that there are 3.4 million visitors per week.

9.7 million Macs sold in 2008. 37.7 percent growth.

Three new products on the plate. The first to be spoken upon is iLife ‘09. Part of the package is iPhoto ‘09 which lets you organize photos around people–”Faces”. Uses Face Detection technology. It finds the face in photo so you can click on it and assign a name. That’s it. Face Recognition IDs people across multiple photos. You can click those photos to help the software ID those face to return better matches.

“Places” organizes photos based on location. Pulls up a map that has pins to show where photo was taken. Uses  geo tagging technology. If your older photos don’t have geotags, you can click on pic and name the location. Maps are pulled from Google Maps.

Places has Facebook and Flickr integration. Nice touch. If a Facebook friend tags a photo, it syncs with iPhoto.

“Slideshow Themes” opens panel that lets you select music, timing, and a theme. Uses face detection to center photos. More applause. Syncs to iPhone and iPod touch.

Geotagging works within “Books” as well. Phil’s about to demo iPhoto ‘09. Layout is very similar to ‘08.

Face detection and recognition is being demoed. Seems very simple and intuitive to tag family and friends in individual photos or batches.

Now iMovie ‘09.  new Precision Editor and Advanced Drag and Drop. New features to silence critics that stated iMovie ‘08 was too stripped down.

It’s demo time for iMovie’ 09.  Interface looks very similar to ‘08. You can now drop a clip into a movie, open a menu, and only add the audio.

New “Action” feature lets you quickly cut together different angles of multiple shots. A/V heads in attendance seem to drool over it.

New anti-shake stabilization looks awesome! Really smoothed the visuals of African safari footage. Will it be as effective in actual use?

New animated map shows a red line that traces your routes around the globe ala Indiana Jones based on your photo shoots. Very very nice.  Great for creating pro-looking clips.

GarageBand ‘09 has new “Learn to Play feature. Opening the program, you’re greeted by an instructor and an image of the instrument that you wish to learn. Showing Blues guitar chords and music. Consider it Guitar Hero for the serious amateur?

“Artist Lessons” lets you learn from pros: Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy,  Sting,  Sarah MacLaughlin, Norah Jones, and others! Artist lessons are $4.99. You get lyrics and notations for selected artist song. Can create your own mix. Artist Lessons gives you a  bit of the history on a song’s creation.

iLife ‘09 is $79.99, ships late January.

Next up: iWork ‘09.

Presentations ‘09 has new “Magic Move” that adds transitions between two photos. Demonstrated new “Swing Transition” by showing the name “Bush” flip into “Obama.” Gets a pop from the crowd.

New themes. Very clean and professional looking.

“Keynote Remote”–new app for iPhone or iPod touch, controls Keynote on your Mac vis Wi-Fi. 99 cents in the App store.

Pages ‘09  has full screen view that fills screen. Phil says that it’s designed to keep you from being distracted from e-mail, other apps, and such. New templates for newsletters, posters, flyers, business correspondence.

Numbers ‘09 has new “Table Categories” and over 250 formula functions for spreadsheets. New templates that, of course, have a very nice visual appeal.

$79.99 for iWork ‘09. $99.99 for family pack (available now!). Buy a Mac and iWork together, and it’s just $49.99. Mac Box Set, $169, has iLife, iWork, and Leopard in one pack. Ships in late Jan.

New iWork.com takes Apple even further into the realm of cloud computing for sharing and downloading docs. Icon with a doc has a iWork.com button. Can add comments to docs and e-mail to others. User on another Mac will get an e-mail, and then “View Doc” to go to iWork.com. It looks remarkably like the iWork desktop app. Works within IE, Safari, Firefox.

It’s a free beta, but will be a pay service eventually. Launches today!

OK, here’s the payoff: New 17-inch MacBook Pro.

o.9 inches thin. World’s thinnest 17 incher. Just 6.6 pounds.

60% greater color gamut. 1920 x 1200. ANTI-GLARE OPTION!

FireWire 800, ExpressCard/34, three USB 2.0. Mini-Displayport.

Up to 8GB of memory. Up to 2.9-Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo option. 320GB HDD option. 256Gb SSD option.

Unibody design. Glass trackpad.

We’re now watching a vid about innovative battery that offers 8 hours of juice. Allows 1,000 recharges, which is three times greater than average.

Back to Phil who’s hyping the battery technology. Discrete graphics=7 hours. Integrated graphics=8 hours. Nvidia GeForce 9400M/9600M graphics.  $2,799, and ships later this month.

One Last Thing, of course!

Phil mentions that iTunes has sold over 6 billion songs. 10,000,000 song library. Where is this going?

Price change. Used to be 99 cents per song, but in April you’ll see 69 cents songs, and $1.29 songs. Hmmm…

Starting today, 8 million songs will be DRM free. More musical freedom.  By the end of Q1, all songs will be DRM free!

iTunes now offers Wi-Fi and 3G music downloads on the iPhone starting today.

Phil introduces…..Tony Bennett??? He’s performing live and actually still sounds pretty good. Tony belts out “The Best Is Yet To Come”.

Mr. Bennett slides into a second song, “I Left My Heart In San Francsico”…free concert?

Mr. Bennett closes to a standing ovation. The crooner still has is it.

Phil closes out the show.  My mission? Track down the new 17-inch Macbook.