Lots of iPhone users were disappointed earlier this week when there was little or no major iPhone news at Phil Schiller’s Macworld keynote speech.

And maybe we shouldn’t be expecting any more until halfway through the year. In a talk with the New York Times’ David Pogue, Schiller ‘noted that Apple marches to certain annual product cycles’ and named the iPhone product cycle as June.

Otherwise this Macworld’09 keynote was special in many ways. First of which, the keynote was given by Phil Schiller (Senior VP Worldwide Product Marketing) instead of Steve Jobs. Secondly, it is the last keynote at Macworld.

The keynote was largely focused on the Macintosh platform, introducing the iLife’09 and iWork’08 suites, an unibody aluminum 17″ MacBook Pro as well as pricing and DRM changes in the iTunes Store.

iLife’09

iLife’09 features changes in iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband. For iPhoto, new features includes face recognition and detection features, allowing you to tag who’s featured in the photo, much like FaceBook. In fact, if uploaded to Facebook, it allows you to sync the tags back and forth. Moreover, iPhoto automatically recognizes other photos featuring the same person and would apply the tags after confirmation. This is an impressive feature, but we would have to see how well it really performs.

Another feature introducted in iPhoto’09 is support for geotagging, so you can see where your pictures are taken. (naturally this would require a camera/a camera-equipped handphone with a GPS chip, though you can also enter the location manually.) This feature makes use of Google maps backend.

Photo Slideshow themes have also been introduced, and integrated with the Face detection technology in iPhoto, they make beautiful slideshows for showing off your photos. (Makes me wanna get a 30″ Cinema display and a DSLR just for that)

As for iMovie’09, it includes more powerful features that were demanded in iMovie’08. Such features include precision editor, themes (my most-missed feature from iMovie HD), dynamic travel map animations powered by Google Maps (again, for those cameras with GPS chips) etc etc. All in all, a decent addition of features that makes iMovie better.

Garageband features one new addition – lessons for musical instruments in the form of videos. It’s a pretty random addition, but I suppose people wanting to pick up some musical skills will benefit largely from the videos (which are way better than those captured using a handheld camcorder on youtube). You can also vary your speed of learning, so slow learners need not worry. Basic lessons comes free of charge, though lessons featuring actual artists teaching you how to play their songs cost a nominal fee.

iWork’09

Of all the applications in the iWork suite, the only one that I use regularly is Keynote. For the uninitiated, Keynote is a powerful presentation software with a simple user interface that really represents what the Macintosh platform stands for. Offering all the features that made Steve Job’s keynotes ever so fantastic, Keynote outstrips Powerpoint in every sense. Elegance and beauty is central in all Keynote presentations, and Keynote’09 doesn’t disappoint. Adding on to the impressive host of features in Keynote’08, the latest version of Keynote features mind-blowing object and text transitions, chart animations, as well as Magic Move, designed to smoothen out transitions where objects and images move. Moreover, it also supports using iPhone as a presentation remote, complete with speaker notes. (Pretty much like the StageHand app I mentioned a while back), but this is integrated into the application (all you need is to purchase the $0.99 Remote app from the App Store).

Pages and Numbers also features new additions, including full screen editing for Pages (work without distractions). As for the exact details, I wasn’t paying attention, so it might be worth checking out the stream of the actual keynote or getting the podcast version. (links below) The other new addition to the iWork suite is actually iwork.com, which was meant for online collaboration, something like Google Docs. However, it seems as though Apple never gets its cloud services quite right. While the interface is nice, one cannot do on-the-fly editing (only leave comments) online. This makes it largely similar to Dropbox (as least that’s how it seems to me). Of course, it’s still in beta and I have not actually tested it myself.

Unibody 17″ MacBook Pro
I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. However, Apple seems to gone from touting the unibody frame to the integrated battery in the 17″ MacBook Pro. Boasting a 8 hours battery life (on the integrated graphics card, 7 on the dedicated one), it is indeed impressive if it lives up to the claim. (think about powering a 17″ display for 8 hours) Moreover, it also features 1000 recharge cycles, which will probably make the battery last a lot longer. Personally, however, I wouldn’t even consider getting one of these biggies, as the weight is a huge deterrent. Anyway, Axiotron’s new ModBook Pro would seem a much more worthier purchase, even though it doesn’t offer as much processing power or such a long battery life.