Jobs-less Macworld brings new 17-inch MBP, DRM-free iTunes

Nope, no sightings of Steve Jobs—and no iPhone Nanos or Mac Minis, either. That said, Apple VP Phil Schiller had a few key announcements up his sleeves, including a new MacBook Pro with eight hours of battery life, plus word that iTunes is (finally) kicking DRM to the curb.

Of course, one of the big questions about Apple's final Macworld was how Schiller would fare filling in for the absent Jobs. The consensus among observers: As well as could be expected, given the relatively modest announcements. Some attendees Twittered that Schiller sounded "nervous" at first, although from all accounts he sailed through the 90-minute presentation with nary a hitch. Still, most agreed that Schiller—polished though he was—is no Steve Jobs. (Though to be fair, Schiller didn't have a new iPhone to pitch.)

Anyway, on to the announcements…

17-inch MacBook Pro: The largest of the pro-level MacBooks was conspicuously absent when Apple rolled out its revamped laptops last October, but it's here now (or will be in late January, for $2,799)—and yes, it boasts the new unibody design, along with a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo processor, discrete Nvidia graphics, up to 8GB of memory, and a 320GB hard drive or 256GB of flash memory. The most controversial new feature of the 17-inch MacBook Pro, however, is sure to be its new, "adaptive charging" battery, which boasts a whopping (if untested) eight hours of juice on a single charge—nice, but it's also non-removable. Schiller claims the new battery will survive more than 1,000 charges, but still … let the howls of protest begin.

iTunes Store goes DRM free: At long last, it looks like Apple's cut a deal with the major music labels for DRM-free music. Starting today, about 80 percent of the songs on iTunes will be sold without digital copy protection (which means you'll be able to play your purchased iTunes music on any MP3 player, not just an iPod), with all 10 miilion iTunes tracks to go DRM-free by the end of the quarter.

Of course, the big music labels got a major concession from Apple in the bargain: Flexible track pricing, with individual songs going for either 69 cents, 99 cents, or $1.29 starting in April.

So, what about all those DRM-protected songs you previously bought from iTunes? Well, you can convert them to DRM-free versions, but for a price: 30 cents a song, 30 percent of the album price, or 60 cents for a music video. I just checked iTunes myself and found that I have total of 127 tracks and 8 albums encoded with Apple's Fairplay DRM, and it'll cost a cool $59.68 to strip off the DRM. Ugh.

iLife '09 (shipping end of January, $99 for full version of $79 to upgrade): The Mac's suite of lifestyle software apps gets a series up upgrades, some more impressive than others. First up: iPhoto, which now uses face recognition to help you tag all those old snapshots, along with geotagging support for viewing where you took your photos on Google Maps. Also cool: Facebook and Flickr support, plus the ability to sync photos tagged by other Facebook users back to iPhoto—nice.

Meanwhile, Garage Band '09 adds a new feature for budding musicians: "Learn to Play," a series of guitar and piano lessons, including some with celebrity artists (such as Sting, Norah Jones, John Fogerty, and Sarah McLaughlin). The Garage Band app will come with nine lessons each for guitar and piano, and you'll be able to download celebrity lessons from iTunes for $4.99 each.

Finally, iMovie gets some updates, including auto image stabilization, animated 2D and 3D "travel" maps, à la those cool traveling maps in the "Indiana Jones" movies, X-ray and "aged" film effects, and new drag-and-drop editing features. Sorry folks: no online version of iMovie, as some had hopefully predicted.

iWork '09 (shipping now, $79 for single copy, $99 for family pack): I'm sure someone uses Apple's iWork suite—I sure don't—but for those who are interested, new versions of Keynote (new and improved transitions, chart animations, and a 99-cent remote control app for your iPhone/iPod Touch), Pages (a full-screen mode, a new "dynamic" outline mode, and 40 new themes), and numbers (with new table categories … yawn) are on tap.

More interesting, though, is iWork.com, Apple's new online document collaboration site, which goes into beta today. You'll be able to view and share your various iWork documents with a group, download copies, and add comments—no online editing, though. Free for now, but access fees could be coming soon.

What we didn't get: All those iPhone Nano rumors? Well, looks like it ain't happening, at least for now. And no revamped Mac Mini, a development (or lack thereof) that I found pretty surprising, given the steady drumbeat of rumors. No Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" demo. No last-minute cameo by Steve Jobs. And finally, no sign of an Apple media server or an updated Apple TV.

So, your thoughts on the keynote? Fire away.