Blog: at least Tony Bennett was good

Apple unveiled a raft of new Mac software updates and its latest laptop at Macworld.

The new 17 inch MacBook Pro completes the range that was unveiled last October. The company says it is the thinnest and lightest 17-inch notebook computer available but most attention will focus on the new battery which can run for up to eight hours on a charge and can be recharged up to 1,000 times. But the battery is not designed to be removed and so, in theory, the life of the battery is the life of the computer. Apples estimates 1,000 charges will last up to five years.

The new notebook is expected to ship in late January with a price tag of £1,949 for the base model that will have 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 320 gigabyte hard drive.

Phil Schiller, Apple's head of marketing who gave the keynote presentation instead of Steve Jobs, also announced changes to the iLife suite of applications for the Mac computer. These included an update to the iPhoto application that allows users to sort pictures by Faces using face recognition and the addition of Places mapping software to iPhoto to organize pictures by where they were taken.

The Places feature either picks up the tag from a camera's GPS system or the information can be put in manually. The iPhoto software also supports photos tagging at social networking sites Facebook and Flickr.

New GarageBand software in iLife includes a teaching component for the music editing feature, with lessons available for guitar and piano from such artists as Sting and Norah Jones.

There are also new editing tools in the iMovie component that includes new effects and themes. The iLife revisions will be available with new Macs, with upgrades to existing Macs available for £69.

For iWork, Apple's answer to the Office business software by Microsoft, revisions included features for the Keynote presentation program, the ability to transfer presentations to an iPhone or iPod Touch and the ability to allow use of the Pages word processing software on a full-screen basis.

That program is priced at £54 for new Mac purchasers and £69 for existing Macs.

Apple also announced iWork.com public beta, a new service Apple is developing to share iWork '09 documents online in the cloud.

The 17 inch MacBook Pro battery can be replaced for £139, Apple said.

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