Was I secretly hoping that Steve would pop out on the stage this morning? Yes. I guess in Phil's defense, those are some pretty big New Balance tennis shoes to fill. He was given three things to announce and a "one more thing". It seemed out of order as number 1 was far more exciting than 3 or even the one more thing.

iLife 09 is pure witchcraft. I've said that more than once today. The things they bundled in there are crazy. iPhoto and the way you take photos is going to change everything. While geo locations are nothing new it is going to part of your every day life this year. They also threw in a little face recognition technology. Wait what? Really? It is insane, the demo they gave of the new iPhoto had my jaw dropped to my chest. OK, maybe not really as that would be a funny look. I also realized that I need to pick up my video camera as the new and iMovie rocks. Remember last year when they took away the iMovie we knew and loves and replaces with something that sucked? This year they brought it all back and more. I now have a real excuse to buy that Flip Minio HD that I have been coveting from afar. If the family loves photo books, they will love custom made DVD's! Want to be a musician or just look like one? Now you can with the new tutorials for GarageBand. Let Sting teach you how to play Roxanne. Or maybe you want to tickle the ivories like Norah Jones (I really can't believe I just typed the phrase "tickle the ivories"). They didn't talk about iWeb or iDVD but Phil threw it out there that they are new as well. I am going to go on the record and say that by far the most exciting thing about today was iLife 09.

All new iWorks. Meh, meh and more meh. Nobody likes you iWorks. Sure you serve some sort of purpose and I own you but you do not excite me. I don't want to hear Not Steve talk about you either. I think I almost dozed off during the Numbers preso then he said something that intrigued me a tiny non meh bit. iWorks.com a very interesting collaboration tool. While Adobe Acrobat has some crazy collaboration features how many of you are using them? Not most of my clients. Why? iWorks.com has taken something we really already have and made it EASY. You are working on a pages document and need input from clients or coworkers you simply push a button, down pops what looks like an email and you enter in their email address, do a subject and body and click send. Now your document has been published on iWorks.com and an email has been sent notifying your people that it is there for their input. They log onto the webpage (Mac or PC) and can add comments right on the document. Pretty cool. They can even download it from there in Pages or PDF format. A great concept but I would have to use Pages to benefit from it and that sounds a bit painful. I just don't love that application.

So what is number 3? Ta Daaaaaa a 17" MacBook Pro. What? Couldn't they have just quietly announced that last week? This is it? Your big announcement? And then they went and did something that will get a big BOOOO, they made the battery not removable. As soon as he said it I cringed. I knew it was going to ruffle more than a few feathers. It is now an 8 hour battery- in reality that means it is probably 6 hours but still that's pretty good. I don't think I mind it being integrated. I have a spare battery that I carry around with me every day and I have never touched it. So be my guest Apple and stick it inside. Longer life, more recharge cycles same great taste and less filling.

And there's one more thing.... The infamous line that he delivered with all the enthusiasm of a flea. iTunes updates. All their music is going to a DRM free format. New pricing structures so music companies can decide if you pay .69, .99 or $1.29 per song. Was there more to the iTunes announcement? I guess the enthusiasm level fit the announcement.

So with this being the last Apple MacWorld they really didn't leave with a bang. Mostly left us hanging and will prove that they can announce cool stuff at small press conferences throughout the year and have it be just as exciting.

I'll be heading out to the show floor in a bit hopefully I will have some more fun stuff to share.