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Macworld 2009 Keynote

I've been busy today so apologies for the lateness of this post. I almost entitled it "Macworld 2009" before adding "Keynote" when I remembered that there is more to Macworld than just the keynote. And, of course, that's something IDG will be banking on next year when Apple will sadly be absent.

Phil spent a lot of time on iLife and iWork. I won't say much about them except that the Keynote Remote is an awesome idea.

Onto the 17" MacBook Pro. There's been a lot of disappointment with Apple's recent pro notebook releases, and Apple has luckily made some excellent decisions with this new one. It's glossy but you can thankfully change it for a matte screen for $50. It's considerably faster than the 15" one (up to 2.93 GHz, 6 MB cache, up to 8 GB RAM). It comes with a 320 GB 5,400 RPM hard disk that can be upgraded to either a 7,200 RPM disk or a 128 or 256 GB solid-state drive (I didn't realize they made SSDs so big nowadays - they're really advancing within the market). Like the 15", it comes with two Nvidia graphics chips and a large glass trackpad.

Like the 15", it's also Firewire 800-only. Luckily FW800 is backwards-compatible with FW400 so it's just a case of using an adapter, but that's one more thing to carry around with you. Not really a deal-breaker though.

There is some controversy over the battery. You see, it's fixed. I see that as a good thing for some and a deal-breaker for others. It will give you up to 8 hours of "wireless productivity" which is 3 hours more than the 15". It will also take much longer to deteriorate. For me, as someone who doesn't own spare batteries, I see that as a very useful thing.

However, if you regularly use your machine outdoors for more than 8 hours at a time, or are planning a trip to the Amazonian rainforest where it might be days before you see a power outlet, that could be a problem. So it's neither great nor terrible - it all depends on your needs. I can see third-party manufacturers filling this gap in the market though, much like the iPod "battery packs" that you can strap on.

The base model is still the same price - $2700. The 128 GB SSD adds $500 to the price and the 256 GB SSD adds $900. SSDs have now reached the point where their storage space is comparable with that of a regular laptop hard disk. Hopefully SSD manufacturers will now focus on lowering the price because they are still far too expensive.

It's going to be 3-4 weeks before they ship but Apple is accepting pre-orders today. If you select the matte screen it changes to 4-6 weeks.

The other announcements can be summed up quite quickly - fixed-price iTunes tracks are a thing of the past and Apple will now adopt price tiers of $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29. 8 million songs DRM-free today, the entire catalog DRM-free by the end of Q1. You can now purchase songs from the iPhone itself.

I was hoping Apple would go out with more of a bang considering it's their last Macworld but I guess their whole point was that they didn't need to save their big announcements for Macworld any more, as people would listen wherever and whenever it was. I wasn't expecting much to interest me as it's mainly geared towards their consumer line, but I was disappointed to see nothing of Snow Leopard.

Update: You can now view the keynote video online.