MACWORLD has ended with some exciting announcements and some meh worthy stuff for lovers of iLife. The two most exciting things, a 17” Mac Book Pro and DRM-free music from the iTunes store.
Top of the list this year for music lovers like me is the DRM-free future of iTunes. Better audio quality, three separate price points and the ability to listen to anything purchased from iTunes on as many computers as you’d like is great news. According to the press release, songs will be bumped up to 256kbps, providing audio quality “virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.” 8 million of the 10 million songs in the iTunes library will get the DRM-free and audio quality treatment and will be directly downloadable to the iPhone. Along with these welcomed improvements, Apple announced three new price points of $.69, $.99 and $1.29 depending on what the label charges Mac. Most albums will still cost the usual $9.99.
All of this will be available near the end of March, when you can update your catalog of songs to the DRM-free format as well as the 256kbps audio quality for $.30 cents per song, should you be into that.
The other big highlight, the 17” Mac Book Pro, continues the trend of Apple moving in the direction of the gamer. The new stretched Mac Book Pro will feature a Nvidia GeForce Graphics Card (choice of one with 512 memory on it), a 2.93 Dual Core and an increased battery life. The new machine is to weight 6.6 pounds making it the lightest 17” laptop available. This is all awesome but, as if often the case with Macs, the price tag of $2799 is not so awesome. Still, Macolics should be pleased indeed.
There was some news on the iPhoto, iMovie and iLife front, but overall nothing terribly groundbreaking. The lack of any iPhone gaming news was certainly a disappointment.
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