The first big Apple Expo of the year has now taken place. This time they didn't really have much to announce other than a new 17" MacBook Pro, iWork '09, iWork.com, and the removal of DRM from most iTunes purchases.
Probably the biggest news from MacWorld is that songs sold on iTunes will now be in 3 tiers from most music labels. Prices are 59p, 79p, and 99p and are based on the "newness" and popularity of the tracks. Songs already purchased from iTunes can be upgraded at a cost of 20p each (or a fixed discounted price for all of them in your library that can be upgraded) to 256kbps and DRM free.
The release of teh 17" MacBook Pro has turned a few heads, and not just because it's unibody enclosure and 8 hour battery life, but because the battery is no longer a user replaceable component (but can be replaced by a techie at an Apple Store for the princely sum of $179, so around £100) - it's now hidden away inside of the case. Another change they've made is that the graphics are no longer ATi-based, but have changed over to nVidia cards that support two different modes of running. There is also the option of a Solid State Drive sized at either 128Gb or 256Gb.
iLife and iWork have been updated for 2009 with a slew of new features. iPhoto 09 now features facial recognition so you can sort photo's by person, ability to upload photo's directly to Flickr and Facebook, Geo-tagging (enables features such as Places and Travel Maps), and improved editing tools. Personally I still think Adobe Lightroom is better, but the facial recognition is definately something I'm interested in trying. The biggest changes for iMovie 09 is the addition of video stabalisation and "Themes and Maps". Garageband now features lessons from famous recording artists to help you play your instrument of choice. For iWeb and iDVD I wouldn't say there's anything of interest that has been updated for them, other than maybe the ability to alert Facebook users to updates to your iWeb site. Similarly, with iWork there aren't really any new features that are special; but they have now brough iWork to the web by creating a web based version of it which can interact with the offline version.
