MacMost Now 182: New iLife 09, iWork 09, 17-Inch MacBook Pro and DRM-Free iTunes

A look at today's Apple announcements at the MacWorld Expo, including new updates to iLife and iWork, a new 17-inch MacBook Pro, and changes to how iTunes sells music.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now.  Today Apple announced iLife 09, iWork 09, a new 17" MacBook Pro, and some great news about iTunes.  Let's take a look.
Apple's senior vice-president of marketing, Phil Schiller, took the stage today at the MacWorld Expo.  He started off by talking about iLife 09.  iLife 09's going to have new versions of all of the iLife apps.  He highlighted some of the new features, like for instance iPhoto is going to be very much revamped with some new features like the ability to tag photos based on faces and it will use facial recognition technology to figure out who's in your different photos.  And it's also going to have the ability to use the GPS information stored with some photos to find out what location those photos were taken in and some maps things that will allow you to hook that location from the photos to maps that you can view.  Then you can group photos by their location or even build the maps into slideshows that you can create with some new slideshow themes in iPhoto.  
Also new in iLife 09 is GarageBand 09, complete with lessons you can get for guitar and piano taught by professional teachers and also some artists' lessons taught by some famous musicians like Sting and John Fogerty and Sarah McLachlan and the like.  
Also getting an update is iWork, with iWork 09.  Not only will this feature new versions of the software, like Pages and Number and Keynote all with new themes and new features, but it's also going to feature iWork.com, which will be this online space where you can collaborate with other people that have iWork.  You can post your documents up there and share them with people you specify.  They can even edit those documents and add notes to them right there on the web.  
There's some interesting new pricing for the iLife and iWorks suites, too.  They're both going to still be available for $79 apiece and $99 for Family Packs of each one of those, but there's also going to be a $49 option to buy iWork with a new Mac.  
There's also going to be this thing called the Mac Box Set.   The Mac Box Set is going to be $169 and with it you get Mac OS 10, iLife 09, and iWork 09.  
Apple also introduced a new 17" MacBook Pro.  Now this was kind of expected and it's pretty much the same thing as the 15" MacBook Pro, but with a larger screen.  There's a pretty good processor in it and you can go up to eight gigabytes of memory.  There's a new battery in it; it's not a removable battery but the battery boasts up to nine hours of battery life and a thousand charges using some new technology.  You can also, as an option, get an anti-glare screen and another option is to get a tuner and 56 gig solid state drive.  You can get the new 17" MacBook later this month and it will be $2,800.
Hardware and software weren't the only announcements.  The last one was for iTunes.  It looks like iTunes is going to be DRM free by the end of this first quarter.  As a matter of fact it looks like eight out of the ten million songs are DRM free right now.  There's also going to be three prices for songs from now on:  sixty-nine cents, ninety-nine cents, and buck twenty-nine cents.  The higher tier songs are going to go all the way up to 256 megabits per second AAC files--pretty high quality.  
For more information go to my blog post at MacMost.com where I have all the details.  I'm headed off now to San Francisco where I'll be going to the MacWorld Expo, looking around at the vendors and looking for the most interesting Mac and iPhone products to feature them on future episodes.   You can follow my exploits there by using Twitter.  Also I'll be posting a new newsletter later this week and of course I'll be posting something from MacWorld Expo later this week.   You can subscribe to this podcast using iTunes as well.   
Till next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Comments: 2 Responses to “MacMost Now 182: New iLife 09, iWork 09, 17-Inch MacBook Pro and DRM-Free iTunes”

Daniel

15 years ago

DRM-Free! Great call for the New Year Gary.
Glad to see it. The updates to iLife and iWorks sounds good too.
Thanks for the updates.

Andrej

Gary, thank you very much for your video casts. I've learned a lot from you.

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 182: New iLife 09, iWork 09, 17-Inch MacBook Pro and DRM-Free iTunes

Comments: 2 Responses to “MacMost Now 182: New iLife 09, iWork 09, 17-Inch MacBook Pro and DRM-Free iTunes”

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