MacWorld 09

The last Apple keynote is over. The last kick off of apple to a conference totally devoted to its majesty finished with many mixed emotions. First of all Steve Jobs was the big absentee of the MacWorld. His troubled health took its toll to its devotion to this company. He is well, but stayed away from the spotlight. That is also something that was a good move, because, Apple needs to walk away from his shadow. It is time to show that Apple is much more than Steve Jobs. It is the collective effort of thousands of people. Steve just showed the spirit. Regarding the results of the conference were impressive, but not as impressive as I would expect. Let's see in detail the new products.

MacBook Pro 17 inch - That is the flagship of the Apple laptops. It is the biggest, best, meanest laptop apple ever released. With a 2.66 GHz Intel Core Duo, the Classic dual graphics card, it seems like the bigger brother of the 15 inch. But there is a big difference inside. An non detachable battery. That came as a surprise to many apple fans and it was for sure not widely accepted. The difference is the battery that has no shell, and it is build in, saving space, resulting in a 40% bigger battery. Personally I am not sure if I like it. A non detachable battery, regardless the fact that lasts 7-8 hours, is a non detachable battery. Great inconvenience if you want to swamp batteries or if you just want a back up battery.

iLife 09 - The flagship application here is the iPhoto. iPhoto that is now compatible with the geo positioning of the photographs, and the amazing face detection. Places and Faces, added to the Events make the iPhoto the ultimate photo sorting utility. And here we are discussing a face recognition software, and we still talk about mixed emotions. Imagine being able to give commands like "Find pictures of Elena, in Paris, for her birthday." Amazing.


I have also to mention the iMovie that is the fusion of the iMovie HD and the new iMovie. For those who follow the apple events, Steve Jobs, last here announced the complete rewritten iMovie, that had the skimming and a library of all the movies, that you have in your collection. It was easy to cut and paste clips together, but it was missing all the cool effects, such opening titles, transition, filters etc. The new version has all those features back. What we need to see is if those old plug ins from iMovie HD are compatilbe with iMovie 09. My gut feeling is no.

iWorks - Here the major innovation is the introduction of the new on line service, that allows users across the internet to share and edit documents on the fly. Amazing. And for me, it is great the support of MathType and Endnote, both highly used by scientist across the world. I have to mention here that the trial version of the Keynote Remote ROCKS! Probably the greatest remote that the iPhone can be used fir this.


iTunes - DRM free music. This was Steve 's vision form long ago. He had an open letter to the music industry, on that a while back. It is something welcome, but I am not sure if it really qualifies as MacWorld announcement.

While I am spending time with those apps I will let you know my impressions.