* IntelliScanner mini 200 portable barcode scanner
* USB cable, neck lanyard, and metal cube package
* Assets 1.5 software – organize everything at home
* Media 3.0 software – organize media
* Wine 3.0 software, Kitchen software, Comics software

Man. I got scared there for a minute. I was about to give up the toner.

I just got back from MacWorld and stopped by the Fastmac booth on the way out to see what was shakin and came across this unannounced external Blu-ray drive. Sure, it looks super ugly and not really geared towards Mac owners, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a $99 external Blu-ray drive.

I’m told that they are working on an external Blu-ray drive that will burn BD-R discs but it won’t be coming for a while. This one only burns CDs and DVDs. But, again, it’s $99. It needs an external power source, but it does come with a dual head USB cable so you can just run it off your laptop, which is what most of us would do. I want one now.

Sadly, it’s not available on the site (yet) and if you’re in SF then stop by MacWorld to pick one up.

Fastmac

[PSGallery=1jaoqys0ex]

What a day! While Apple was busy announcing, relatively speaking, nothing at MacWorld, 4Chan, the bad boys of the Internet, went ahead and hacked MacRumors’ live coverage of the show; Twitter freaked out, which is to be expected. Hardly confusing wrechedness.

It is, however, another high profile “hack,” following Facebook’s and Twitter’s own problems with phishing in recent days. (How people still fall for phishing, I don’t know.) That said, I can’t help but think that many of my fellow Apple watchers went overboard with their reaction to the hack.

Shortly after the keynote began, vandalism started to appear in MacRumors’ commentary. It was mainly childish nonsense—I can understand how people might think the Steve Jobs lines were insensitive, though—that, while annoying, isn’t worth losing any sleep over. (This comment on MacRumor’s message board made me laugh: “The folks who hacked in are straight up losers who have nothing better to do with their pathetic lives.” Casting stones, I see! What is so noble, then, about reading a live stream of a series of product announcements?)

The only people that should be upset is the MacRumors crew, primarily because MacWorld, one would think, is their biggest day of the year; Lord knows their advertisers won’t be too thrilled to learn that the site was so terribly insecure, and have subsequently been associated with this tomfoolery. But for everyone else, the people who reacted as if the sun suddenly ran out of helium hydrogen, chill out. (Edit: I should be tarred and feathered; maybe we’ll make a contest out of it.) You were briefly, marginally inconvenienced; you had to wait a few more minutes, or visit another site, to learn that iWork now lets you share documents, for a fee.

In summary: calm down, friends.

iTunes Plus is now standard and free for most music.

As you see here, right clicking on an old iTunes song gives you a warning. Clicking on this song simply converts it and plays a sound – no rigmarole. My only hope is that there will be a conversion or DRM stripping system for older music.

This is decidedly a breath of fresh air and will actually put Apple in a position to compete with the burgeoning Amazon MP3 store. It looked like most of the newer music was already iTunes Plus compatible and I wonder when they’ll drop the Plus nomenclature and just call it iTunes.

Whoever predicted that Apple would introduce iWork ’09 today gets a gold star. Keynote, Pages and Numbers all received what I would consider minor updates; no need to run around all willy nilly for these, methinks.

First shown was Keynote, which Phil Schiller, ever the showman, noted was used to make the very presentation so many of us were looking for to. Nothing crazy, really: a few new transitions, some slide-object-rearranger thing, etc. There is a new application for the iPhone (and iPod touch) that lets you control Keynote. Imagine, being able to hit “next” on your slide for only 99 cents. Eh, sorta neat. Should be free.

Next was Pages, the application that doesn’t know if it’s a word processor or a page layout toolset. Not a whole lot here, either: a new full-screen view mode, dynamic page outlines that automatically appear (to give you a better sense of when the page ends, I guess), and some feature that merges data from Numbers with Pages. Seems like that should have been there from Day One.

Lastly, Numbers, Apple’s impression of Excel, has all new stuff that will not appeal to any of you unless you work for H&R Block. New mathematical functions, charts, etc. White shirt, pencil-thin tie sort of stuff.

Apple has also added the ability to share documents over the Internet at iWork.com, which surely must give Google Docs a run for its money. Oh, wait, Google Docs is free and Apple wants money for this ground-breaking feature.

Needless to say, short of actually using iWork for some time, it looks like a rather benign update. Apple wants $99 for a family license. Or, becuase the new iWork requires Leopard, you can grab the Leopard+iWork combo starting at the end of the month for $169.

Proper photos & the like when Apple decides to upload ‘em.

At the unibody MacBook event back in October, Apple remained mum on the unibody 17″ MacBook Pro, though hinting that one was in the works.

During today’s Keynote, Schiller made it official.

Here’s what we know so far:

• “Longest lasting battery ever” – up to 8 hours on a single charge, 1000 recharges. The downside? It’s built in.
• Unibody design
• 0.96 inches thin
• 1900×1200 resolution, 700:1 contrast ratio, with a color gamut 60% greater than previous models
• 6.6 pounds
• Anti-glare Matte option available for $50.
• 2.9ghz processor
• Up to 8GB ram
• Geforce 9400m (Up to 8 hours on battery)/Geforce 9600m GT (Up to 7 hours on battery)
• 360GB hard drive, or up to 256GB with solid state drives.
• $2799 gets you a 17-inch LED display, 2.66GHz proc, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB HDD.
• Shipping “later this month” (January)

Facebook and Flickr compatibility an interesting addition to iPhoto which begs the question regarding Me.com popularity: folks don’t want to pay for online sharing when it comes for free. New new version will also have updated slideshow templates.

iMovie is also getting a makeover. The new version allows you to make automated travel maps – import a set of geotagged photos and create a travelogue of your adventures. Auto image stabilization will reduce shaky-cam while offering high-precision editing of content. Video speed changes are finally back with slow-motion and fast-motion options part of the package.

The new GarageBand includes artist lessons, nine lessons from musical greats on guitar and piano. The lessons will cost $4.99. The new iLife will be available later this month.

 
10:32 – Tony Bennett is on stage. And we’re done.
10:31 – 15 Grammy Award winning artist is about to come on.
10:30 – Sync music across iPhone and Mac/PC whether you buy it on your iPhone or desktop. Starts today.

10:29 – iTunes music store on the iPhone now works over 3G!
10:28 – Next thing has to do with the iPhone.

10:27 – Plus: DRM free, 256 Kbps AAC encoding. major music companies are on board. 8 million songs are DRM free. By the end of the quarter all 10 million songs will be DRM-free. ALL SONGS!
10:25 – Price: 3 pricing tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. Coming in April.
10:25 – Six billion songs sold. Over 10 million songs. Over 75 million accounts with linked credit cards.
10:24 – One last thing. iTunes!
10:24 – We’re done. I think.

10:22 – One configuration. $2799. 17-inch LED display, 2.66GHz proc, 4GB of RAM, 320GB HDD. Ships later this month.
10:21 – 9600GT lasts seven hours. The 9400M will hold up to eight.
10:20 – Lasts up to five years so it’s a GREEN laptop.

 
10:18 – Adaptive charging reduces the wear and tear or recharging.
10:17 – Rather than cylindrical shape batteries they have these flat panel cells. Lithium Polymer battery.
10:17 – 40 percent larger battery but doesn’t weigh anymore than other batteries.
10:16 – Up to 8 hours. 1000 recharges.

10:15 – Longest lasting battery is in the 17-inch model. Video with engineers showing now.
10:15 – 2.93GHz proc, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, geforce 9400m 9600m gt, 320 gb hdd, up to 256 gb ssd
10:13 – 17-inch anti-glare option with metal bezel. No glass screen.
10:12 – 0.98 inches thin. 6.6 pounds. 1900×1200 resolution. 700:1 contrast ratio. 60 percent greater color gamut.
10:11 – For the last 8 months the MacBook has been the number one selling laptop.
10:11 – Unibody 17-inch model.
10:10 – Launches today. One more thing! New 17-inch MacBook Pro!

10:10 – Free Beta for now. Paid service later.
10:07 – Multiple people can view and edit documents. Everyone can leave notes for everyone else to see. Microsoft Office users can view docs no problemo.
10:04 – Easily upload and notify, view docs online, share, edit and download. Demo is up now.
10:03 – iWork.com allows you to share your documents and is coming soon as a Beta.

10:02 – Mac Box Set is $169 and has Leopard, iWork and iLife in one package. Ships later this month.
10:02 – $79 upgrade or $99 for the family. iWork ’09 is $50 when buying a new Mac. Ships starting today.

10:00 – Charts with multiple axis. Charts updated in your Pages documents. "Linked Charts"
9:59 – More powerful functions and formulas. List of all functions available like Excel.
9:59 – Categorize by specific columns now.
9:58 – Numbers ’09 is getting an update. Listened to customers. There are now Table categories.

9:55 – Pages ’09 – full screen mode. Dynamic Outline (outline view). Mail merge with Numbers. Mathtype and EndNote integrated. 40 new templates.
9:55 – Portrait mode shows slide and notes. Landscope mode shows the slide that’s upcoming as well as the slide you’re on. Swipe to move forward.

9:54 – 95 cents.
9:54 – Keynote remote app for the iPhone and/or iPod Touch over Wi-Fi.
9:53 – "Chart animations" and "New themes"
9:52 – There are swing tansitions (Obama!), anagram transitions encompass "Text Transitions"
9:51 – "Object transition" iPod Nanos are displayed in a row. They slowly drop off the screen and then album covers slowly replace them.
Just a fancy transition.
9:50 – Keynote now has "Magic Move"
This is the second thing for today.

9:49 – iWork ’09 is being updated.
9:48 – iWeb and iDVD are also being updated. Upgrade is $79. Family pack upgrade is $99 up to five comps. Shipping later this month.


9:47 – Artists give a background on the song they’re going to teach you. John Fogerty’s demo is now playing.
9:46 – $4.99/lesson.
9:45 – Sarah Maclachlan. Ryan Tedder. Norah Jones. All on the piano teaching you how to play their tracks.
9:45 – Artists lessons. John Fogerty, Colbie Caillat. Patrick Stump. Sting.
9:44 – 9 basic lessons for guitar and piano.
9:43 – A guitar demo shows a video of a dude teaching you to play the guitar with the fretboard displaying as well. I think the tutor’s name is Tim.
9:42 – Garage Band ’09 now has instrument lessons.

9:40 – iMovie is super polished and looks professional.
9:39 – Video transitions are neat.

9:38 – Those effects include an "aging" effect that makes your video look super old school.
9:37 – You can video effects and slow down a segment of video like a fast moving animal or person and slow it down within the main video you’re editing.
9:36 – Whoa crazy. The video jittering fix (stabilization) actually works really well.
For example: If you have two videos of the same scene but with differing angles you can stitch them together for a smooth transition like in Hollywood!
9:33 – Precision Editor allows you to transition separate videos together in an extremely precise manner.
Oh sweet. When you skim a video you can grab a segment of it and drop it on top of another video and just select the audio to overlay.

9:31 – The new drop down menu in iMovie looks surprisingly like the new BlackBerry OS.
Randy Ubillos, Chief Architect of Video Apps is on stage to give a demo of iMovie.
9:30 – iMovie smooths out s
ome video jitter.
"Precision Editor" for more precise editing along the timeline.

9:29 – "So much depth and so much power. This is going to be the video editing software that people want."

9:28 – iMovie is being updated.
9:27 – iPhoto ’09 demo is over. I think I’ll start using iPhoto once the update gets pushed out. I think they’re going to talk about apps more than anything.

9:26 – In iPhoto all your images have pins that show up on a map within iPhoto to show you where everything was taken.
9:25 – If your older images don’t have geotagging info you can input a bit of data and iPhoto tags the rest of the photos with that location on the map within iPhoto.


9:23 – iPhoto uses face detection to auto-detect people you pick going forward. It works quite well. Wonder how it does with multiple faces. You can create a "smart album" that picks people based on your preference and shows images of them together.

Schiller is now giving a demo. When you upload an image you can tag people’s faces so iPhoto knows who is who and automatically detects certain people going forward.


There’s a travel book photo album theme that includes maps of where your images are taken based on getoagging info.
9:19 –

Sync with your iPhone and iPod Touch.
Whoa. Crazy themes do 3D twisting transitions. Pretty cool stuff.
Setup slideshows. Pick music or themes to go along with your images from within iPhoto.

Flickr uploader has built-in geotagging.
iPhoto has integrated Facebook and Flickr uploading.

Places also integrates satellite imagery into iPhoto.

Getting maps from Google Map service. Long and lat pinpoint specific locations.
9:13 – Gives the longitude and latitude. Duh.
Places uses GPS geotagging.
Next up is Places.
Sort through tons of images that iLife thinks is you or your gf/bf, etc.
Face recognition – Finds images of people iLife thinks is the person you’re categorizing.
Adding two new Events: Faces is one. Cork-board with thumbnails of people. Face detection is used.
What’s new with iLife ’09? Brand new verison of iPhoto.
9:07 – Entire new version of iLife ’09. Two more things to talk about.
9:07 – Macs grew twice as fast as the PC market.
9:06 – Mac will be the focus. 9.7 million Macs were sold in FY 2008.
9:06 – I Love Apple! "People love the Apple store. They love touching our junk’ or something like that.
9:05 – This keynote is going to blow. I guarantee it!
9:05 – There is so much going on at Apple. All these incredible stores. Look at the Beijing store. *snore*
9:04 – Schiller is on stage. "I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you all showing up."
9:03 – The woman sitting next to me is using an actual cassette tape recorder. She has no business being here.
9:03 – MobileCrunch intern Jeremy is handling images for us this keynote.
9:02 – I really hate Coldplay.
9:00 – We’re about to start. They’re telling us to turn our phones off. They’re playing that damn Coldplay song from the MacBook video.

8:54 – We’re in.
8:14 – FYI. Schiller is Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. From CrunchBase:

Philip Schiller is Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing and reports to Apple’s CEO. Schiller is a member of Apple’s Executive Team and is responsible for the company’s Product Marketing, Developer Relations, and Business Marketing programs. Since rejoining Apple in April 1997, Schiller has helped the company return to its role as a technology innovator, delivering breakthrough products such as the iMac, MacBook, Airport, Xserve, Mac OS X, Safari, AppleTV, iPod and iPhone.

Schiller has over twenty four years of marketing and management experience including seventeen years at Apple in various marketing management positions. Prior to Apple, Schiller served as Vice President of Product Marketing at Macromedia, Inc. of San Francisco, CA; as Director of Product Marketing at FirePower Systems, Inc. of Menlo Park, CA; as an Information Technology Manager at Nolan, Norton & Company of Lexington, MA; and as a Programmer and Systems Analyst at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA.

8:07 – Peter Ha sends this first image. A huge MacBook bigger than the Earth?

Nowhereelse has photos of what is purported to be a (PRODUCT)Red iPhone but the lack of (RED) branding on the back definitely puts this in the fake category. As we see below, the (PRODUCT)Red branding always appears above the iPod branding.

MacWorld is going to be amazing this year because, get this, there will be a new MBP announced. 9to5Mac reports that the 17-inch MacBook Pro will come in the unibody aluminium design and include a long-life battery pack that is not removable. D’oh!

The 13-inch MacBook should leave the line-up and the MacBook may move to below $1000, a definitely more interesting happenstance in my book. This lines up with the expectations for a new Mac Mini for entry level Apple users.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say there won’t be an iPod refresh this time out.

Time to throw away your old Mac Minis, friends, because new ones are coming next week. TUAW has on good authority (read “some guy told them”) that the new minis will have SATA optical drives that can be replaced with hard drives and that they will look more like the MacBooks with sexier styling.

I’d give this a 90% probability of happening. The fact that the Mini hasn’t been update nor has it been phased out makes me optimistic that my first and favorite Mac desktop could be getting an update.

The SATA drive rumor makes it clear that someone is also thinking of these as server cells similar to the current colocation services available for Minis.