iLife ‘09: It looks like iMovie ‘09 is fixing some of the “dumbing-down” that occurred with the previous verison. I don’t do much with DV nowadays, but I would be interested with giving the new iMovie a try. The interface - with those weird pop-up menus - is wandering into dangerously un-Mac-like territory, though. Hmm.
As for iPhoto, I never really did use it, but the new features for geotagging and Flickr and Facebook export look cool. The face recognition is… a little creepy, I think. Can it work with pets, I wonder? Or how about children that have grown into adults?
GarageBand’s new tutorials look cool, but I can’t help but wonder if they’re more gimmicky than useful. I’ll keep an eye on reviews, and if they’re positive, maybe I’ll pick it up and give learning the guitar one more try.
iWork ‘09: Evolutionary steps. Nothing too exciting in my opinion. I wonder how iWork.com works? Are they PDFs?
17” MacBook Pro: Lust-inducing. However, I’m not too hot on the non-replacable battery idea, even if it does last for eight marketing-hours (six and a half human-hours, maybe). I’m currently having problems with my 15” MPB’s battery; it only lasts about five minutes, and when it empties out, it powers off hard instead of going to sleep. Seventeen-inch laptops are a bit too big for me, though - not to mention expensive.
New iTunes stuff: No DRM! Yay! I already upgraded everything that iTunes would let me to the DRM-free versions. The lack of DRM is one of the reasons I’ve been heading to Amazon’s music store first instead of the iTunes store recently.
Staggered pricing! Um… yay? I guess this is something that had to be done in order for the music companies to let Apple sell DRM-free music, but, well… nobody likes paying more. They’re saying that significant chunks of the library will use the cheaper 69-cent rate, though. Well, we’ll see.
Phil Schiller: I’m watching the live restream of the show. Phil kinda looks like my dad, and I think he’s doing a good job. If Apple reverses their decision to not come to Macworld any more - and I think they should - I think he’ll do a competent job of keynoting in the future.
