I’m going to try to fake it live, there might be a small delay or I might get cut off, who knows? That’s part of the adventure. I’ll be updating this post as we go along, so keep refreshing.
If you have any questions, e-mail them to kbuis@appealdemocrat.com . I’m going to write a more coherent post later and I’ll be clarifying a lot of little things, so if you’re interested in something, let me know.
8:48 a.m. Ken Ray of Mac OS Ken wishes he remembered his PowerBook G4 cord as we’re getting set for the keynote. Only 12 more minutes.
8:55 Five minutes to zero hour. Everyone is milling in, got a seat and and a presentation screen with the usual dark screen. I’ve got a way to get photos that may not work that long, but damn it I’m stubborn
By the way, this is being taken with the camera on my laptop
8:59 Cell phone warning, almost there.
9:03 Lights are dimming. Phil’s out right off the bat
9:04: He say’s he’s thankful everyone came…talking about the store fronts that have opened world wide… can’t see the logo anywhere else.
9:06 3.4 million visitors worldwide a week to apple stores, 100 Macworlds each week (equal to)
9:07 Talking about the mac today
9:07 Huge growth in Mac sales this year, 3 new things today
1) iLife ‘09 – New iPhoto (09)…Events were added in the previous version, natural and intuitive…adding Faces to the events. (someone clapped at the word “faces” Hooray faces”.
Uses face detection. Think Facebook tagging, but it automatically finds the face and asks you who it is. Face recognition will find other photos that look similar and ask you if it’s that person. Phil Schiller says it’s the best recognition out there. We’ll see.
Keeping up with the rhyme scheme, it’s Places now. It uses GPS geotagging in cameras to pinpoint where it is. iPhone has it as well. (by the way geotagging is the camera saying “hey this photo was taken here”)
For those without geotagging, you can enter the location (like Yosemite) and it’ll find it and post it. Uses Google Maps
9:15 Much clapping for faces and places.
And now onto more. Features facebook and flikr in the library. Also does reverse tagging (tagging in facebook so you don’t have to fumble through facebook to find a person)
Slideshow time – They have themes to make slideshows from a collection of photos. The Ballet one displayed faces which were centered on by the face recognition while the Shadow seems to take elements of a photo apart (subject, background, etc.) and transition them in 3D.
New travel book uses geotagging to add a map with the photos.
9:20
And now for a live demonstration. Faces scrolls through photos just like Events would (As you run your mouse from left to right it displays the photos from the beginning to the end of the album).
(sidenote: It’s always sort of creepy how many perfectly exposed pictures of attractive people Apple can whip out in these presentations. Not an awkward smile in the collection…and if you’re looking for photos, i’m snapping them with my camera, but I won’t get them up until later. )
9:24
Now for a places demo…Pretty routine. Shows the pins on the map of every photo taken, go over a pin on the map and it’ll display the photo. Has columns that allow you to sort through them by location and country. It’s like the browse feature in iTunes for searching by artist, album, genre, etc., except it’s by locations.
9:28
New iMovie – New version of iMovie starts to bring back features tossed in version 7. Advanced drag and drop will let you replace, insert or just add the audio from a clip. Also adds video stabilization, dynamic themes, travel maps, stuff he calls too hard to explain without showing. Randy Ubillos Chief architect of video apps who redesigned iMovie last year giving tour.
Aww cute kid in a scripted moment “I’m sure going to miss this place, never gonna forget it.” Overlays that audio over a scenery shot by dragging and dropping.
Showing off how clips can merge with a kid jumping into the water from two different angles. Uses the audio from one angle and easily transitions to the second one. Great for those two camera video shoots everyone does with their kids on vacation.
Anti-nausea tool (I mean anti-stabilization) will crop in and automatically make bouncy video look smooth. Stabilization will make a gazelle running from far away actually show up in the frame more smoothly. It goes from tornado home video to National Geographic. A short clip of a leopard climbing down from a tree can be slowed down and have an effect applied to it relatively easily.
Animated maps added in will allow you to insert a map or globe showing the locations you traveled to (in this case, San Francisco to Botswana). Very smooth and done automatically. Themes add in transitions and titles for the usual professional Apple look rather automatically (My mom will be thrilled if this makes it easier for her, but no idea if it’ll let her use the transitions she bought that didn’t work with the previous version of iMovie)
New garageband
9:42 – Learn to play. Garageband will now offer music lessons.
Showing off HD video built into Garageband…teaching the blues, teaching piano.
Also features artists teaching their music. John Fogerty teaches Proud Mary, Colbbit Calliat, Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy, Sting also show off their music
Saara McLachlan, Ryan Tedder OneRepublic, Norah Jones teaching piano.
Artists lessons are $4.99 a lesson…story behind song, lyrics and notation, orginial tracks, create your own mix, slow them down
“It was 1968, the best I can remember it” Fogerty video…Says he couldn’t play Beethoven’s 5th with chords so he came up with another riff. Teaching the music while giving insight to the making of Proud Mary.
9:48 Wrapping up by saying “hey, we have iWeb too but we’re not showing it off” usual $79 upgrade. Shipping late January
9:49 – Oh yeah, here’s the second thing now
Keynote (presentation software like PowerPoint, but better), he’s using it for the presentation. Magic Move. Keynote will make the transition for you. Showing off a deck of cards being organized from one slide to another. Pretty smooth. Lots of object transitions to liven up a presentation.
Swing transition of text from Bush to Obama. Shimmering light also and anagrams.
New themes, chart animations look pretty, not really exciting people yet.
And of course as I type that, they add a keynote application to the iPhone to run your presentation. It’ll show your notes on the phone in portrait layout, next slide in landscape. $0.99 iPhone App.
Pages (word processing program) adds a full screen view to cut out distractions from your desktop (facebook, chatting, etc.). Dynamic outlines add easy to modify and create outlines (would have come in handy in college)
MathType & Endnote support. Hey, 40 more templates for people to use…
And now onto Numbers (spreadsheet). Was new last year, now to add features people begged for. Categorizing by column, more formulas added that shows the list of the functions and actually explains what the darn things do. Plenty of fun charts for number crunchers and financial guys. Linked charts allow changes made to a chart in Numbers to change in Pages without inserting it again. iWork again $79, now $49 with a new mac. Ships today.
Leopard now required for both iWork and iLife. Now a $169 box set of Leopard, iWork, iLife shipping at the end of the month.
10:03
iWork.com – Upload and notify…think like Google Docs where people can view it online and add comments and notes. And they can download a copy in multiple formats…Don’t have to be copy and pasted anymore into an e-mail. (I’m pinging the hell out of it to get a look at it). Demo shows it exports in different formats and sends notifications easily. Sends an e-mail invite for someone to send it, click on view document, works on Mac or PC. Downloads in PDF, Word or Pages. Also allows Keynote, Numbers to be displayed. Free beta for now, will be fee-based later. (think cloud computing) Can get to it by looking at iWork 09.
Third thing
17″ MacBook Pro – Uses the same Unibody as the Macbooks (all crafted from one solid brick of aluminum). Less than an inch thin, world’s thinnest, 6.6 pounds, world’s lightest (both for 17″ laptops). Also features an Anti-Glare option. Includes firewire 800, but no firewire 400. Almost to 3 ghz processor, 8 gigs of ram max.
Shooting for a longer lasting battery, odds are won’t be removable. Happy video time likely to soften the blow. Charges up to 8 hours, 1,000 charges. Yep, definitely not removable…It’s being spun as “hey it saves space so we can make the battery bigger.” I swear to god they’re trying to make a huge Lithium Ion bomb or something…they’re cramming as much as they can into a tiny space. I’m sure it’s safe though. I sort of hope not because the recall notices will be really interesting to read.
They’re making the green pitch that fewer batteries will end up in landfills because of how long they’ll last and how many charges they’ll take. Of course it’ll last for years and years because it’s basically locked down to the unit. Graphics cards will make a difference in how long they last (using the more powerful one will eat up the battery faster, but only by an hour)
Also offering a takeback program to recycle it. $2,799 and ships in late January. Showing TV ad now. Basically went over everything just gone over in the kenote.
10:24
One Last Thing time – Itunes DARN IT I WAS GOING TO PUT DOWN THE DRM FREE RUMOR LAST NIGHT
Started in 2009 – 6 billion songs sold – 10 million songs available – 75 million accounts with credit cards – Tops in music selling
1) Price has been .99 for three years, starting in April three pricing tiers… .69, .99, 1.29 More will be offered at .69 than 1.29
2) iTunes Plus – DRM free, 256 kbps AAC encoding. Starting toda, 8 million songs, no DRM. (2 million with DRM) should be finished by $10 million
By April, all songs will be DRM free.
3) iPhone – iTunes Music store will allow buying over WiFi and 3G cell networks (alas, no edge for those of us in the Yuba-Sutter area) Same song, same price, same quality over the cell phone. It’ll sync it back from the phone to the store. Starts today. Expect iTunes store to be SLAMMED today.
Tony Bennett is out. Performing “The best is yet to come.” Hopefully it’s DRM free too today. Wouldn’t that be ironic if it wasn’t…
DRM free tracks are up for upgrade, Tony’s getting a standing ovation. Giving thanks and everything
I’m out We’re done.