Mac Authority: Business as usual
The Macworld Keynote had no great surprises, no great fanfare, but a few genuinely interesting products. Alex Kidman opines on Apple's latest "surprise" Macworld offerings.
Even in the absence of Steve Jobs, Apple still snuck a few innovations out the door. At the same time, it managed to deliver one of the least surprise-filled keynotes in the company's history.
Confused? Well, for a start Apple had already set the bar pretty low. No Steve Jobs to begin with, although based on reports on his health, that's probably a wise move; I doubt anyone wants him to kill himself simply to deliver a keynote.
The company had also announced early on that this would be their final Macworld Keynote, with an emphasis on its "own" events (US publishing giant IDG actually owns the Macworld name and branding, and runs the expo) instead. As such, the odds of them coming out with a blockbuster announcement were pretty low. That didn't stop the always reliable Apple rumour mill from churning around everything from Mac Mini refreshes to Apple Home Servers and plenty more besides. In typical Mac Rumour fashion, very few of those actually happened.
So what did Apple announce? Well, in the "less innovative" space, there's the almost predictable refresh of the 17" Macbook Pro line, which joins its siblings in coming in a unibody aluminium casing with a clickable trackpad. The 17" line had lagged in this regard since Apple went unibody late last year, so it didn't really surprise anyone. It probably shouldn't shock anyone that Apple also went for an integrated, non-user-replaceable battery as well -- Apple seems to love integrated batteries.
Except this time there is some innovation, at least in the reasoning for the battery being an integrated unit. Apple's gone to some lengths to try to justify the embedded battery, via this video which is also embedded on Apple's web site. It's rather sickeningly self-congratulatory stuff, but also interesting if you're keen on both industrial design and different battery technologies. Plus, there's a huge roll of Lithium Polymer in the video to ogle over.
The proof will be in whether the 17" Macbook Pro can indeed match Apple's big eight hour claim while actually working wirelessly, or if this is just more hot air. Apple wouldn't be the first company to make over-inflated battery claims, but when you price your notebook starting at $4,499, you'd better deliver on some of those claims. Especially if the top memory configuration (add $2,100) costs as much as a whole entry level Unibody Macbook itself.
A moment's silence, if you will, for the Mac Mini. No love today from Apple for you, tiny headless box.
Getting away from hardware, though, there's the software picture, and again there was a mix of "not that thrilling" and "could be interesting" applications. I was surprised that little mention was made of Snow Leopard, but presumably that's part of Apple's "own event" strategy; they'll try to generate hype for that all on their own.
iWork and iLife both get upgrades by the end of the month at $129 each, which is reasonable pricing for what's on offer. I'm honestly less thrilled by iWork than iLife, but then Pages is just about the only part of the package that I personally use on a very regular basis. As a basic office suite, it's certainly got a good price point, and I do know people who swear by Keynote (and swear at Powerpoint) who will love the cheap Keynote remote functionality that can be added to iPhones.
iLife '09 has more meat for the average consumer, especially with iPhoto's new geotagging "Places" feature, and especially the facial recognition "Faces" technology. Again, not innovative across the entire industry, but it depends on how it actually works for real photo libraries, not just the ones that Apple choses to show off at an expo.
Finally, there was the news that Apple intends to offer pretty much all of its iTunes music offerings in the DRM free "Plus" format at a variety of prices -- US $0.69, US$0.99 and US$1.29. No sign of the immediate cheaper pricing here, although the offer to upgrade existing purchases (50c/song, 30% of album price or $1 per music video) did pop up in my iTunes library this morning. More interesting, I suspect, will be seeing how well the Australian telco networks hold up to the strain of offering those larger Plus files over 3G, as that's been added as an option for iPhone 3G users from today.
I suspect that 2009 will be the year that Apple goes back to concentrating on software as a big part of their business. Having shifted over totally to Intel-based computing, they're playing in a much more commodity space on the hardware front, but if they can hook in (or retain) customers with good applications, the hardware will sell itself. It also helps the company transition away from the whole "Cult of Steve" perception, only because they can use other figureheads to demonstrate the software as and when they need to.
Oh, and "one more thing", as Apple declined to do so for two keynotes now.
The official press releases for the 17" Macbook Pro, iLife '09 and iWork '09 have filtered their way into my inbox by now, and guess who the main source of quotes within is? That'd be Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. Perhaps the Cult Of Steve isn't dead yet... just resting.
Other Blog Entries written by Alex Kidman:
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