A daily digest of IT news, curated from blogs, forums and news sites around the web each morning. We highlight the key commentary and demystify the real story.
In Wednesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches bloggers watch yesterday's Apple keynote (sans Jobs). Not to mention an "allium-ish" laptop...
It's that Gregg Keizer again:
Philip Schiller, Apple's top marketing executive, took the stage today in San Francisco to introduce software upgrades, a revamped top-end MacBook Pro and several important changes to the iTunes music store. ... The only new hardware Schiller touted was a revised 17-in. MacBook Pro that, like the smaller MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks unveiled in October, is constructed using an all-aluminum "unibody" case ... The lithium-polymer battery will power the MacBook Pro up to eight hours ... will list for the same $2,799 the current model costs, but it will be configured with a 2.66-GHz processor, 4GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive and the same dual graphics capabilities of the smaller 15-in. MacBook Pro. ... Schiller also spent considerable time touting [a] new version of Apple's ... iWork, its more business-oriented bundle ... a full-screen view in Pages ... a new mail-merge function and 40 new templates in Numbers ... and Keynote Remote, a 99-cent iPhone and iPod Touch application that lets users display a Keynote presentation on the device and control a Mac running a slide show ... iWork.com ... allows users of iWork '09 to upload, then share, documents with others, as well as add comments to shared documents.
Seth Weintraub liveblogged the Philnote:
iWork '09 has made it to the Apple Top Downloads - before it is even Announced! ... Apple Stores: 3.4 million visitors per week. That's 100 Macworlds per week. (That's justification for us bailing on Macworld!) ... iPhoto Faces - organize by Face!!! Wow, are you kidding face detection? I wonder how well this will work? ... Garage Band - Learn to Play. Music lessons. Very cool ... celebrity lessons from Sarah McLachlan, Ryan from OneRepublic, Norah Jones, John Fogerty, Cobie, Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy. STING, wow. ... iWork.com a place to collaborate on applications with co-workers.
Kevin C. Tofel expected more:
Two years ago, nearly to the day, we were at CES when the Apple iPhone announcement was made in 2007. I kid you not when I say that 90% of the hot air burst from the CES bubble that very moment. Instead of talking about the latest and greatest consumer electronics to see in Las Vegas, everyone in Las Vegas was talking about the planned device presented in San Francisco. I cant underscore the nature of that day: Apple effectively trumped the entire Consumer Electronics Show. ... Fast forward to 2009 ... my feeling is one of meh this time around. Yup, theres the unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro with high capacity battery. And iTunes will be going DRM-free, although [with] the 30% DRM tax ... iWork got a new number, i.e.: 09. Anything else? Seriously, these are evolutionary advancements and Im not trying to take anything away from Apple here.
Oh, and it makes John Paczkowski wonder:
Perhaps theres something to be read into the first song of the short Tony Bennett set that closed todays event, The Best is Yet to Come. Apple (AAPL) didnt uncrate the new iMacs or Mac minis that many expected of it this morning. Nor did it demo Snow Leopard, the next iteration of OS X. Perhaps it will in the months ahead, at its own event and on its own terms. And with Steve Jobs presiding, of course.
Here's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' plea:
DRM (Digital Right Management) has been a thorn in the side of music and video lovers for years. Now, Apple, after wheeling and dealing with the major music companies, is killing DRM off for good. ... As amazing as it may seem, I think we may finally be seeing the end of DRM. Well, DRM in music anyway. Now, if the movie companies ... would only get the clue, we'd all be better off.
Weldon Dodd digs into iWork:
When iWork was first announced, I will admit that I had a sinking feeling there was a strong danger that the suite wouldnt see a second release. I wasnt particularly optimistic about Apples chances of producing a word processor and a presentation app that would survive, especially when Apple skipped releasing an update in 07. Today, Im quite happy to see that iWork has not only survived, but is thriving in a third release, iWork 09. ... Apple broke out the polish for Keynote this year, adding several new features that pretty up your presentations and make advanced animation techniques even more accessible ... Keynote can build transitions from one slide to another and animate the movement of the object across the page ... also works on text where it treats letters as individual objects that can be animated. ... Numbers has two big additions functions and categories. Schiller mentioned that Apples goal for this release was to add more features that power-users were clamoring for.
Harry McCracken blogs his favorite moment:
At last years Macworld Expo keynote, Steve Jobs waxed rhapsodic about the Apple engineer who had gone on vacation to the Cayman Islands, shot video, and had trouble editing itand who then invented the all-new, simpler iMovie as a result. He couldnt have spoken more highly about the guy, but he never mentioned his name. ... Today, Phil Schiller devoted a meaningful chunk of his Macworld Expo keynote to an ugrade to ... iMovie that brings back some of the powerful features that folks missed ... Schiller, who demoed iPhoto himself, didnt show off iMovie 09instead, he brought ... Randy Ubillos, one of the creators of Adobe Premiere ... onstage. The softwares creator got to do the demo and receive the applause.
Steve Jobs has often compared computer scientists to artistsand it was a delight to see one such artist get some credit.
Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
