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Apple Intros 17" Unibody MBP, DRM-Free iTunes

Posted by kdawson on from the life-after-jobs dept.

Phil Schiller delivered the keynote at MacWorld, the first after the Steve Jobs era of keynotes. Here is Engadget's live blog. The big news, predicted by many rumor sites, was the introduction of the unibody 17" MacBook Pro. As rumored, the battery is not removable, but it's claimed to provide 8 hours of battery life (7 hours with the discrete graphics): "3x the charges and lifespan of the industry standard." $2,799, 2.66 GHz and 4 GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, shipping at the end of January. There is a battery exchange program, and there is an option for a matte display. The other big news is that iTunes is going DRM-free: 8M songs today, all 10+M by the end of March. Song pricing will be flexible, as the studios have been demanding; the lowest song price is $0.69. Apple also introduced the beta of a Google Docs-like service, iWork.com.

5 of 1,079 comments (clear)

  1. No more DRM on music, but... by thesolo · · Score: 5, Funny
    Great news about the music going DRM-free, but what about the rest of the iTunes store? It seems from this announcement that DRM will still be applicable on audiobooks, films, and TV shows, which is lousy.

    Still, it's a step in the right direction, and I applaud the people over at Amazon (and everyone else selling music without DRM) for doing it first. Without that step, I'm willing to bet that Apple would have stayed with DRM on their music catalog. It looks like part of Defective By Design's Anti-DRM wishlist came true.

    That said, Apple is also now charging if you want to get rid of your DRM (which means upgrading to 256 kbps tracks). From Apple.com:

    You don't have to buy the song or album again. Just pay the 30 cents per song upgrade price. (Music video upgrades are 60 cents and entire albums can be upgraded for 30 percent of the album price.)

    Yes, just $0.30 per song to get rid of the crap that we forced on you in the first place. Awful.

    In other news, I was getting my updates from MacRumorsLive.com, when their feed was cracked by 4Chan. The site crashed half-way through the keynote. Here are some screen caps for anyone interested:
    http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned.jpg
    http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned2.jpg
    http://www.realfx.com/images/macrumorslive_pwned3.jpg

  2. Re:Darn... no iPhone update by bennomatic · · Score: 5, Funny

    32G? Isn't last year's 3G-compatible iPhone good enough?

    --
    The CB App. What's your 20?
  3. Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, but does iTunes run on Linux yet?

    *ducking*

    --
    My blog
  4. Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update by aliquis · · Score: 5, Funny

    All my music is DRM-free, that's how I was able to get it :D

  5. Re:Darn... no Mac Mini update by yelvington · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can just hear artifcats in 128 MP3, but not in 192kb MP3.

    Couple more weeks with those earbuds and we'll fix that for you.

    I said, COUPLE MORE WEEKS ....