MacWorld Expo 2009 Puts Rumours To Rest

Apples MacWorld Expo 2009 kicked off yesterday (click HERE for more info) and it's main objective seemed to be to kick every rumour in its teeth and send it running, tail between it's legs, back to the Mill ( The Rumour Mill, get it?).

An iPhone Nano someone shouts! Bigger capacity Mac Mini shrieks someone from the sideline! iNet-Book please!? No, no aaand no my fellow geeks, unfortunately not.

Opting out of shock tactics this year, Apple instead uncovered some relatively un-amazing products though to be honest, for the people not expecting iJesus iNcarnate, they were all relatively beneficial.

The iLife '09 upgrade was a nice and expected announcement with some handy new features officially integrated into iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand and iWeb.

iPhoto now has a Faces & Places feature that automatically assigns your  iPhone or GPS enabled camera photos to the location they were taken on Google Maps. You can also now create travel photo-diaries of sorts that can be viewed online by friends and family. iMovie's latest additions consist of a few new editing features and the new Precision Editor that lets you zoom in on a tiny piece of film and allows you to cut and juggle it around, along with the audio.

GarageBand has had a major update; Lessons. You can now learn guitar and keyboards that are purchasable in the new Lesson Store integrated into GarageBand. These aren't ordinary lessons though, oh no, these lessons are brought to you by celebrities. Sting, Patrick Stump of FOB, Ben Folds and Norah Jones have all given a helping hand though that's only naming a few (and probably most well known). There's also new guitar features that recreates the sound of certain amps and stomp boxes which is actually pretty darn cool. iWeb was given a relatively small update including an FTP client and widgets for RSS, Youtube video and i-sight integration.

iWork (even though still in it's Beta stages) has had some very interesting new additions. With Keynote, you can now have Magic Move, transitions, 3D effects and a wireless app called Keynote Remote that allows you to use your Iphone or Ipod Touch to control presentations although this is sold separately.

The new and improved 17inch MacBook Pro was also announced for a release date of early next month and, along with the other aforementioned bits and bobs, has also had it's fair share of updates. It comes with either 2.66GHz or 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo processor's, a new 1600x1200 HD LED back-lit screen and the standard 320gb of storage. The big word about this new MacBook Pro is the battery which Apple promises will last you 8 hours and 1,000 charges. This is all down to the fact that the battery is now integrated into the casing which allows for another 95W/h battery to be added.

And of course, the news that everyone had on their lips but no-one dared declare as fact was the now official DRM-Free iTunes. That's right folks, Apple will now sell their music without any Digital Rights Management. The upgrade to the dubbed "iTunes Plus" will cost users an extra 20p per track to upgrade to DRM-Free so it's down to the users discretion if they feel the upgrade is worth it. However, all new releases will be more expensive than the older releases and the even older releases will be less than the newer releases (get it?).

So new software, one new piece of hardware and DRM-Free iTunes. Is everyone still as Mac Happy as they were? Or were you expecting iEverything as a late Christmas present? Let us know in the comments below.