Apple bids farewell to Macworld Expo

Apple bids farewell to Macworld ExpoSan Francisco  - Apple's final appearance at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco in early January was a mixture of heightened expectations, bittersweet farewells and a few titbits about new Apple products.

Michael Gartenberg, an expert from Jupitermedia, said expectations of a major announcement, as usual, were unrealistic. He noted that Mac enthusiasts have grown used to Steve Jobs, the head of Apple, using the keynote speech at the event to unveil yet another breakthrough product.

But there were no major breakthroughs this month. Instead, there was a series of disappointments. Apple announced that this was its final stint at the expo. And, instead of sending Jobs to unveil the company's latest items, fans had to make do with marketing chief Phil Schiller.

Nonetheless, there were some interesting new items in the speech.

Schiller said a breakthrough in Apple's negotiations with the music industry on ways of sharing music had been reached. Jobs has been in talks with four major music companies for two years to get them to drop their insistence on copyright protection for music sold online via iTunes. Until now, only EMI has played along.

But this year, Schiller announced that all the major companies were on board with a new plan, meaning 8 million songs will be available at the iTunes store without copyright protection. By the end of the quarter, that figure could rise to 10 million.

In exchange, Apple has dropped its policy of offering all songs for 99 cents. Popular hits will now sell for 1.29 dollars in the United States. Less popular items will sell for 69 cents. But many songs will remain on sale for 99 cents.

Schiller also focused on the company's software. Apple has updated iLife, its multimedia suite, with special emphasis on its photo finishing software, iPhoto 09.

The program can now automatically recognize the features of people who regularly appear in photographs and sort those photos accordingly. Apple has also embraced geo-coding, meaning photos can now be organized according to where they were taken, regardless of the date.

Apple has also reacted to criticism of its video editing software with a new version, iMovie 09. A previous version had been simplified to make it more accessible, but lacked some professional features for more ambitious filmmakers. The programmer responsible for iMovie received accolades from the audience during a short demonstration of the new iMovie update.

GarageBand, iLife's music application, now allows users to buy online music lessons from well-known performers like Norah Jones, Sting or Sarah McLachlan.

The company also released its iWork. com online service, which allows users of its office package iWork to put projects online, making online collaboration easier.

Schiller also presented the latest addition to Apple's family of laptops, the 17-inch MacBook Pro. A new battery should allow the laptop to run eight hours without recharge. Since it can be recharged 1,000 times, the life span of the integrated energy storage unit should rise to about five years, he said. The move should make Apple the producer of the world's greenest notebooks, he said.

Gene Munster, an Apple expert from Minneapolis-based Piper Jaffray & Co, said Apple wanted to use its final expo presentation to prove that the convention is no longer as important as it used to be. He said the presentations of the software package, the new notebook and the iTunes pricing scheme were nice, but will not kickstart any major changes in the industry. (dpa)

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