MacBook Pro 17-inch battery replacement plan

One item from Philnote which I didn’t touch much on was the announcement of the new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro that comes with the new in-built battery that Apple claims can run up to 8 hours and takes 1,000 charges. With it shipping only after 4 to 6 weeks, we still won’t know how much mileage Apple’s claim goes.

But they have announced the cost of replacing the battery should it fail. AT US$179 (pre taxes), which comes up to something between S$270-S$300 for the battery to be replaced. So just hope those “claims” are somewhat close, or it will be expensive to replace them.

New Google Quick Search Box

If you are a QuickSilver user on the Mac, you will be familiar with Google’s new Quick Search Box. Quicksilver allows you to search, launch applications and many other functions via a few quick key-presses, all within a small window that pops up when you activate it. Quick Search Box, now currently at beta, works similarly. Hit a key combi and a small window pops up over all other window on your Desktop and you can key in search terms to look for items on the web, or applications on your Mac.

The similarities are not surprising as Nicholas Jitkoff, of QuickSilver fame, is part of the team behind this new project from Google Code. As it is still in beta, do try it at your own risk and help develop it by contributing to the app’s Discussion Group. Download here

3rd Party web browsers available in App Store

Weeks back we constantly read reports about Apple dismissing applications for iPhone apps that replicate apps made by Apple, eg Podcaster, Opera web browser.

But just the past week, new web browsers appeared in the App Store – Incognito, Edge Browser, WebMate and QuickSurf – each appeared to provide web surfing functions like Safari.

Besides the basic web surfing, some apps attempted to differentiate themselves with features not available in Safari, with less hits than misses. For example, to key in the URL for Edge Browser, you’d need to exit the app, go to the Settings section to fill the URL, just to get full screen browsing. Or Hot Browser comes with a “shake” the iPhone to get a randomly hot site.

There will definitely be more such browser apps coming up but if it ain’t free, I don’t see any reasons to switch from Safari.

As the One last thing at PhilNote, three changes to the iTunes Store were announced before Tony Bennett slide out from the back to sing Macworld goodbye. These changes were not surprising as news leaked out days days before Macworld of deals that were agreed with the four major music labels.

Almost two years after Steve Jobs posted his Thoughts on Music where he discussed about DRM and the iTunes, Apple finally announced the removal of Digital Rights Management (DRM) from all the music available in iTunes, starting with 8 million songs immediately and the remaining 2 million tunes by April 2009.

When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

What prevented Apple from sealing the deal earlier, like Amazon did in September 2007, was Apple’s reluctance to allow variable pricing for the music as the labels will prefer to mark-up prices for new hits.

Along with removing DRM from all tunes, there will be three tiered pricing of all tunes. Although not specified by Apple, most speculated that the pricing will be as follows: 69 cents for back-catalogs, 99 cents for standard songs and US$1.29 for new or popular releases. This tiered pricing structure will begin from April.

Those tunes that are DRM-free, will be available with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding that is comparable to what Amazon is offering. For existing tunes, you can update them to the DRM-free format via iTunes for just 30 cents per song or 30 percent of the album price.

However, with the current setup of iTunes, Apple doesn’t allow you to upgrade selectively – its either you upgrade ALL of your old tunes or not, which can be an expensive affair at 30 cents per tune.

Lastly, for iPhone users, they can purchase the music over the air via Edge or 3G network, in addition to WIFI.

With iTunes going DRM-free by April, will it mean Apple fans in Singapore hoping to access the world’s biggest online music store will get their chance? Though there are music stores available (like SoundBuzz, Nokia Music store), they have almost always tagged their music with Windows Media DRM, even their websites don’t welcome Mac users. Should Apple launches iTunes Music store in Singapore, I won’t be surprised should it become the main source for legal online music within the shortest time.

The updated softwares – iLife’09 and iWork’09 – are definitely worth looking into. Again, these are not revolutionary changes to the two application suits, but a maturing of softwares that targets the general consumers, but sprinkled with professional features that are made easy to use. Yes, even your grandma can definitely do those edits with these new tools.

You can see the new features here at their respective pages – iLife’09 and iWork’09. But here are some of the more interesting new features.

Pages

With iWork’08, Pages had gain tools and features that can match Microsoft Word. The updated Pages in iWork’09, hopes to improve your workflow and productivity when you are writing your documents. The new Dynamic Outliner tool makes it easier to organize and structure your thoughts while the Full-screen mode helps you to focus without distractions from your other applications.

There is also a focus to integrate the various applications within the iWork suit. In Pages, you can now do mail merge with spreadsheets done within Numbers. Previously you can only do so with the Address Book. This will be popular with the business world as many uses the spreadsheet to consolidate business associates and contacts for mail distribution.

Other improvements includes the integration with MathType and Endnote for creating sophisticated mathematical equations and adding citations respectively.

Numbers

Numbers was introduced with iWork’08 and it had marginal success over the incumbent Microsoft Excel. Much of the complains were the small sets of functions that were available in Numbers. With iWorks’09, Apple has expanded the function list to include up to 250+ functions. There is also a new Formula List view that gives an overview of all functions used within a spreadsheet.

Numbers also includes a new feature that can create table categories based on datas in existing tables. There are also some new charting tools to give you attractive looking charts for presentation.

Also as part of the tighter integration among the iWork application, any charts from Numbers that are pasted into Pages documents or Keynote presentation are automatically linked to the Numbers spreadsheet. Any changes in Numbers will be reflected in Pages or Keynote when you update the chart.

Keynote

Keynote has become my main tool for creating attractive looking and interactive presentations, especially when Powerpoint feels much bloated and slow when compared to Keynote. What makes Keynote stand out is also the interesting transitions that you can apply to individual objects or slides. With iWork’09, Apple has added a few more bells and whistles to the list – Magic Move, Text and Object based transitions and more 3D charts and chart animation.

But what I like best in the new Keynote, is the availability of the Keynote Remote – using your iPhone or iPod Touch to remotely control your presentation via WiFi. You can view your presentation note on your iPhone screen, or also view the upcoming slides. To control your slide, you just need to swipe your finger across the screen on your iPhone.

iWork.com

Lastly, Apple also introduced iWork.com, a web-based service that allows you to share your iWork documents, presentations and spreadsheets to anyone with a browser. This works across most modern browsers and operating systems and also can be viewed in iPhone/iPod Touch.

iWork.com at the moment, is an open beta which anyone can subscribe to via iWork’09. With it, comes 1GB of space and each document will be up there for 120 days. Apple said that it will become a fee-based service when it is officially released but not much detail on how it will be charged. Hopefully, this will be provided to MobileMe users as a new service.

iWork.com allows you to upload your Pages document, Keynote presentation and Numbers spreadsheet online for you to share with others to view and to comment. You can’t let others edit the document, unlike Google Docs. But others whom you have invited to view that document, can leave comments and notes on the document.

Your uploaded file is presented as you created it, with the same layout, fonts, graphics and the user-interface is just like an iWork application, minus the editing tools.

When you upload, you are also given the options to prepare the files in various formats – iWork’09 or iWork’08, Microsoft Office and PDF - which your viewers can easily download in the format of their choice.

Though the functions of iWork.com is quite fundamental – upload for viewing and sharing – the potential of Apple to develop this as an online collaboration and editing tool is there, though Apple might not do so to protect the iWork suit.

With its cross-OS and browser interface, iWork.com can become a useful productivity tool for business users who are looking for instant feedbacks on their documents.

As the display of the document online is exactly as what you have done offline, iWork.com can also be portable presentation tool that you can have without having to lug your laptop around. Just grab any work station and you can have your documents ready for show and tell.

To buy or not to buy?

Like iLife’09, the iWork’09 suit costs S$138 for a single license and S$168 for a 5 license family pack. In the US, you can pre-install iWork’09 onto any new Macs purchased by paying additional S$72 but that unfortunately is not available in the Singapore Store.

So are the new features worth the money? If you are an iWork’08 user, the updated features might not be sufficient to pay for a completely new pack as there are no upgrade path for existing users. But if are still a Microsoft Office user, I’d strongly recommend that you have a look at iWork’09. Try iWork’09 free at this page and see for yourself.

The updated softwares – iLife’09 and iWork’09 – are definitely worth looking into. Again, these are not revolutionary changes to the two application suits, but a maturing of softwares that targets the general consumers, but sprinkled with professional features that are made easy to use. Yes, even your grandma can definitely do those edits with these new tools.

You can see the new features here at their respective pages – iLife’09 and iWork’09. But here are some of the more interesting new features.

Putting Faces and Places in iPhoto

The most exciting improvements to iPhoto, though might on first look mere cosmetic, is the introduction of Faces and Places. Those two, add to that with Events, gives you a much more intuitive way of organizing, viewing and sharing of your photos, as briefly touched on in this post at 37signals.

Apple realized that people don’t just want to find photos. Go back to iPhoto’s domain: it’s that situation where you have a bunch of photos and you want to look at them and share them. When you’re in that situation, you don’t just want to see random photos. You want to see and share photos of certain things. Like photos of your wedding, photos of your trip to Maine, or photos of that dinner in Paris. These are Events.

With Faces, iPhoto lets you easily sieve through tons of photos and group them of a particular person on an easily accessible page. Need to find all the photos of your wife or your Mom, just tag a few of the photos and let iPhoto identify the photos taken of them easily. Added with sync support to FaceBook, you can easily upload photos of your friends whom you had named in iPhoto, when synced will be converted into tags in FaceBook and your friends will be automatically notified about these new photos. My concern is how good the detection is when the person is not looking directly at the camera.

As for Places, you can track the photos taken at various places on your previous holidays, or find all the photos taken over the years at a particular spot in the country. However, as most of us won’t have a GPS-equiped camera (or iPhone, at least till last year), most of our photos need to be painstakingly geotagged for Places to be effective.

Themed slideshows and Travel Maps are beautifully done, but are mostly cosmetic than useful. How many Sliding Panels slideshow do you want to see before it becomes passe?

I’d love to use iPhoto just because of Faces and Places, but I’d think twice as I still prefer to organize my photos via the Finder than to have all my photos imported into the iPhoto Library, something which Aperture and Lightroom allows.

Pro-app features in iMovie

iMovie meanwhile, have a few new tools that you might find only in professional applications – video stabilization, precision editing of both the video and audio tracks, green-screen and picture-in-picture effects (need to activate advance functions to see them), just to name a few.

Video shooting is becoming more available now to consumers, from small handhelds like Flip Video, to traditional video cams from Canon, Sony etc to even higher-end DSLRs like Canon 5D MkII and Nikon D90, we will definitely see more home-made videos being shot. But as most of us don’t have access to steadycams, many if not most of our videos will be like watching the Blaire Witch movie. Having video stabilization built into iPhoto, a previously pro-app only feature, is a boost for all. To see it in action, see it here. However, do note that you will need to run your raw clips through iPhoto’s Analyze for Stabilization option before stabilization will be set, and it will definitely take time if your clips are long. This feature itself, is definitely worth the money paid for iLife.

The improved editing and effects tools will definitely push more consumers not just to shoot videos, but also to edit them and share them with friends and families.

GarageBand, iWeb and iDVD

GarageBand has become a popular tools not just for musicians to record and produce their music, but also for podcasters to mix their podcasts for their shows. It has also become a useful tool for ring tone creation for your iPhone. With iLife’09, GarageBand now takes on another role in your music life – as your personal music teacher.

They have included Basic Lessons, using videos and interactive features on GarageBand to teach you piano and guitar lessons. For more advance classes, you can even enlists help from famous artists like Sting, Sarah McLachlan and Norah Jones to teach you how to play their tunes. Though you will need to pay for these Artists Lessons via GarageBand’s built-in store.

IWeb wasn’t mentioned during the keynote but Apple’s collaboration with Facebook also extended to iWeb. When you link your iWeb site to your Facebook account, whenever an update is done to the site, a notification will be sent out to all your friends in Facebook. Other improvements includes updates to the widgets that you can add to your site – RSS feeds, YouTube videos and Google Maps and Adsense to name a few.

Nothing new in iDVD except probably some new themes to the mix.

To buy or not to buy?

So is it worth spending S$138 (S$168 for 5 License Family Pack) for iLife’09?

YES, if you want to make full use of the photos and videos you took. Apple has made these tools that will give your photos and videos an attractive and professional look and more importantly, in an affordable and very easy to use package.

Do check it out at the nearest Apple store and test them out.

Update: If you buy a Mac on or after January 6 that shipped without iLife’09, you can get the upgrade at a cool S$18 with Apple’s iLife Up-To-Date Program. Do read up the details on how you can get your upgrade before the end of March.

(REUTERS/Robert Galbraith)

Phil Schiller took slightly more than one and a half hour presenting Apple’s final keynote address at the Macworld Expo. It was, a mostly good and efficient presentation by Phil and though what he presented wasn’t earth shattering, Apple is pacing themselves for a difficult year ahead.

The hits

Here is a quick recap of the products that were presented:

• iLife ’09 – with new iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand and iWeb, available at the end of the month at S$138 (single user) or S$168 (family pack)
• iWork ’09 – with improved Keynote, Pages and Numbers, available now at S$138 (single user) or S$168 (family pack), get the Trial copy to try out the features
• iWork.com – a new beta fee-based web service to share your iWork’09 documents, spreadsheets and presentations,
• new 17-inch MacBook Pro – with unibody case and an built-in battery that lasts up to 8 hours on a single charge and has a 1,000 charge cycle, available soon from S$4,388
• DRM-free iTunes Music store with flexible pricing and over-the-air purchase and downloading of the music onto iPhone 3G

The misses

So after looking back at the recap of pre-Macworld rumors, here are the items that didn’t turn up:

• there is no Mac mini, no revamp iMac, no iPhone nano, no new Mouse, no large iPod Touch
• no Snow Leopard demo
• iWork sort-of goes onto the cloud (just sharing but not editing like Google Docs)
• no web-based iMovie (never thought so)
• and no Steve Jobs

No surprises there. With the current economy situation, introduction of any new revolutionary hardware might faced with lukewarm response from the consumers, pair that with increasing cost of manufacturing, we were stuck with only the introduction of the 17-inch MacBook Pro, while many, including myself, were hoping for a make-over of the Mac mini. This and other hardware revamps, will definitely pop up sometime over the next half of the year.

As for the iPhone nano, I believe we won’t see it appearing anytime in the future.

Snow Leopard, as we already know, will not be one with many new features, but more an improvement of OS X 10.5 Leopard. There will be more bug-fixing, code optimizing and bloat reduction, and we will probably see the announcement of its delivery at WWDC’09 in June.

So how was Philnote?

As for the keynote address itself, Phil Schiller performed remarkably well, considering he has such huge shoes to follow. We felt that he started off with a tinge of nervousness, his pacing was a tad fast and he rattled on and on about the feature lists like a robot. As my friend Wai Keong said, he needs to learn to be a cocktease and milk the crowd with the new features. But as he progressed, he sounded more relaxed and the pacing was much better.

Having Tony Bennett I guess was a hit and miss for the audience, though the choice of songs – The Best Is Yet To Come and I Left My Heart In San Francisco – sure leaves many with more things to discuss, especially with Apple leaving Macworld Expo after this year.

I will look into those new products announced yesterday in the next post.

Goodbye Macworld Expo, hello … ?

So that, is the end of Apple’s involvement with Macworld Expo. No more anticipating at every start of the New Year for new products from Apple. No more pre-Macworld Expo speculations and rumors flying around.

Predicting the next new Apple products has just been made more difficult by a few notches. Instead of the annual events, we just have to wait for Cupertino to start sending out cryptic press invites to know when they will make any announcements.

You know, that might be more fun.

• Stream and watch the keynote here
• Or download the keynote in iTunes here

Just gonna make one – no new Mac mini, but a MacTV – putting the Mac into the AppleTV.

It will have at least 1 TB harddisk, with an option for an optical drive or a second harddisk, with mini Display Port, HDMI port, component video port and a mini DVI port. There will also be Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 support and 802.11n WIFI and BlueTooth built-in.

There will be a new Media Server software that will replace Front Row that can manage and edit media – a part iLife, part Front Row hybrid application.

There will also be an update to the Remote software for the iPhone that can control the new Media Server software, but also comes with a remote Touch Pad to serve as a mouse, and a full-screen keyboard so that you don’t need to BYOKAM.

Lastly, when you press Comd+Ctrl+SpaceBar+Z, a rainbow will form just on top of the Mac TV to give it a nice glow.

That’s my last minute Macworld 2009 prediction.