It’s no secret that today’s keynote address by Apple’s Phil Schiller would be lower in excitement than previous years in which Steve Jobs took the spotlight, but that didn’t stop Apple fans around the globe from speculating on what new products and announcements might be unveiled once the presentation was over at 10:30am PT. For the most part, I think Schiller did a great job presenting his agenda and filling in for Jobs, whose health has been questionable as of late. Here are the highlights of today’s keynote (in descending order):

1. iTunes goes (almost) DRM free
2. New 17″ MacBook Pro
3. iLife ‘09 announced
4. iWork ‘09 announced

The most important announcement was definitely about iTunes and how Apple is making everything DRM free by the end of Q1 2009. I have been annoyed for a long time at Apple for not trying harder to get rid of DRM from all iTunes tracks. Sure, iTunes Plus has been around for awhile, but it included only a limited number of songs and they generally cost more than the $0.99 fee for their DRM-enabled counterparts. The new pricing structure (featuring songs at $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29) is also more lucrative. This move will probably bring back some customers who had gone looking elsewhere (like Amazon’s MP3 store) for their music, especially those who use Macs or really like iTunes. I, for one, hate the actual iTunes software product and refuse to use it except when absolutely necessary (which is about 0.01% of the time). It’s clunky interface really just needs a complete refresh and the Windows version needs to feel more like a Windows app. But I’ll save those comments for another day. I could see myself buying songs via the iTunes store (when they’re cheaper) and then converting them to MP3 so I can move them around to other places.

The latest MacBook Pro also deserves a mention. If you want the relative power and big-screen of a desktop but really need the portability options, then the 17″ MBP might be a good buy. Unfortunately, its caveats outweigh most of the benefits. First, you can’t replace the battery or swap it out with a second battery. I guess since they didn’t make this thing to be carried around everywhere, this might not be too bad, but for designers who want to hit the road, this could be a disaster. Sure, it has greater lifetime longevity and a supposedly more run-time (up to 7 hours?), but I think most users would gladly trade this for a removable battery. Plus, once the battery does die, you’ll most likely need to send your machine back to Apple for a costly replacement. Cheers! (Did they not learn their lesson with the iPod fiasco??) Second, Apple still isn’t allowing a matte screen and I really just don’t understand that. Glossy looks nice if you’re a casual user sitting at home, but for anyone who does serious work, they’re going to want the no-glare matte version. Apple’s $50 anti-glare coating option will help, but not alleviate this issue. Finally, it looks like this MBP does not have user-upgradable RAM or Hard Drive options. The 320GB (5400RPMs still…why won’t they go to 7200RPM!?!) drive will be fine for now, but many users would probably want higher capacity (if not higher speed) drives not too far down the road. Also with the growing demand for more and more RAM, upgrading that will be important. I give this machine a rating of 6/10 tops.

iLife ‘09 adds some pretty cool features. Faces and Places are two new and quite useful additions to iPhoto. Just tag a photo with a place and it’ll give you a map of that area. Also, with new facial recognition software, iPhoto can catalog people’s faces so you can search through an album by just typing in someones name. Search by as many people as you want to pull up only those pictures containing the specified individuals. This is pretty cool. GarageBand adds some new lessons/tutorials, but not much else. iWeb and iDVD were not represented at all during the keynote, so any new features won’t be seen till consumers get their hands on the actual software. iMovie 8 received many updates as well in attempt to quell the backlash from version 7–which was pretty much a step backward from version 6. I think Apple may have succeeded here.

Finally, we take a look at iWork ‘09 (all yawn). Basically they implemented better functions, charts, etc into Numbers, added some nice new transitions and effects into Keynote, and added full-screen editing and new dynamic outlines to Pages. Among all of the iWork apps, you get some new collaboration features that allow users to upload documents to iWork.com for viewing and sharing. This really isn’t anything new since Google Docs pretty much started this and Microsoft Office Online began offering this type of feature just a year or two after Google. It’s really nothing new or exciting. Probably the biggest announcement about iWork ‘09 is the new app for iPhone/iTouch. It allows the device to act as a wireless presenter, displaying either the presentation outline or the individual slides based on the device’s orientation. Very useful. Overall though, Apple is still playing catch-up with Microsoft Office, and while a few loyal Mac die-hards are using iWork, anyone trying to get real work done will just buy Office–the de-facto standard. Most of the big Apple players attend the Macworld keynote each year, and when they all but groan at the announcement, you know it really isn’t even worth mentioning. Those who believe Apple is the next great religion, on the other hand, will scoff at my words. Their loss.

Well, that pretty much sums up the Apple keynote at Macworld ‘09. Ultimately, I think Phil is a great speaker and should probably get more time in the spotlight, especially since Jobs won’t be around forever. I’m waiting to see what other goodies Apple will announce later this year, but for now, my sights are set on CES ‘09 starting Friday, where Steve Ballmer will concentrate much of the presentation on Windows 7. That’ll be an exciting event!

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: It appears on Apple’s website that the MacBook Pros (both 15″ and 17″ versions) now have optional 7200RPM drives available for an extra fee.