Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > January > 06 > Entry
iTunes news the only spark at snoozy Macworld keynote
It’s suddenly clear why Steve Jobs begged off on delivering Apple’s last keynote address at the Macworld Expo today: it was a bit of a snooze.
There was certainly no announcement on par with the introduction of the iPhone or even the more recent unveiling of aluminum-body Macbook computers. Except for an already-expected announcement that all 10 million songs on iTunes will be made available without copy production (or DRM-free, as it’s called), nothing really dazzled at the presentation.
The highlights, which I followed via the excellent Engadget play-by-play:
- iTunes will offer all of its music library, about 10 million songs, DRM-free. Of course, Amazon MP3 has been doing this with its downloads for a while, but Apple has a larger library. The DRM-free revolution begins today with eight million songs available DRM-free. The other two million will be DRM-free by the end of the quarter, Apple says. Upgrading an existing library will be 30 cents per song.
- Music publishers will have more freedom in setting pricing on music. Gone is the one-size-fits-all 99 cents-per-song pricing. Now some music will be made available at $1.29 or 69 cents.
- A new 17-inch Macbook Pro features a longer battery life (eight hours!), but it comes at only one price: $2,799. Ouch. Too much of a good thing? The technical specs on the machine are certainly impressive, but are people really clamoring for a huge laptop that costs almost three thousand dollars? I’m not.
- Apple is introducing iWork ‘09 and iLife ‘09. Most interesting is that Apple is introducing iwork.com, which will be an online space for collaborating on documents, much like Google Docs. Again, are people really desperate for this when a perfectly good free product already exists?
- iLife ‘09 will feature big improvements in iMovie and iPhoto. iPhoto will have facial recognition, the ability to geotag photos on maps and the ability to upload directly to Flickr and Facebook. iMovie improves on the much-maligned iMovie ‘08 by reintroducing features and adding slick video editing features and effects.
- The iPhone 3G will now be able to download iTunes music via the 3G network (previously only possible over Wi-Fi).
- Tony Bennett came out and sang. Awesome, but… safe and predictable. Like the rest of the presentation.
Your thoughts?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Computers, Gadgets, Movies & DVDs, Shopping
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By Dale Roe
January 6, 2009 5:32 PM | Link to this
Of course, Apple would have gone DRM-free earlier at the iTMS if the labels had allowed it (remember Jobs' open letter to the music industry?). The fact that the music giants allowed Amazon to sell DRM-free music first was widely seen as a strategy to get iTunes to bend on it's 99-cent per song model. It appears now that this strategy was successful and I'm afraid the floodgates are open. How long until the labels decide they need another price increase? Who will fight them then?
I'm glad Apple's pulling out of Macworld. It's ridiculous for such a successful company to subject itself to an artificial timetable that creates such unrealistic expectations.
I can't argue with your opinion of the new MacBook Pro, but I'll bet they sell a bajillion of them. I think there's a market for that laptop -- even in this economy -- but I don't shop in that market.
By Greg
January 6, 2009 5:28 PM | Link to this
Where's my MacBook Wheel? I want my MacBook Wheel.