Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller left MacWorld with what could be called the most tame keynote in the past 10 years.  Schiller announced the expected updates to the iLife '09 and iWork '09 product lines, unibody 17" MacBook Pro with built-in high-capacity battery, and iTunes Music Store serving DRM-free songs plus an updated pricing scheme.  The only actual surprise was the removal of DRM in the music store, but even then it could be expected due to announcements by the big five recording companies making similar deals with other vendors. 

Those expecting updates to the Mac mini line, new Apple TV's, or even Time Capsules will now have to wait for the next Apple press event.  No more MacWorlds and WWDC's to look forward to with juicy rumors leading up to them and major updates leaving them.  Now all we have is waiting around for whenever Apple has a new product to announce. 

Some of the magic has left.

MacMod goes behind the scenes of Macworld 2009 to show you some of the highlights of the event.

Pictures after the jump.

Looks like MacRumors might have been hijacked during their Macworld keynote coverage.  Starting at 9:27 (at the start of the iMovie segment) lots of non-Macworld messages started appearing, the first was that Steve Jobs died.  From there it just got strange.  SEX ME was the next, and from there the the abuse just took off.  By 12:32 the macrumorslive.com was taken offline and the normal MacRumors.com was back.

Damn, I really liked the coverage MacRumors cave for Macworld.  If you still want to get the coverage check out http://live.gdgt.com/2009/01/06/live-macworld-2009-keynote-coverage/

Screen shot after the jump.

Join Big-O, Josh, Anthony, Brenn, and the other members of MacMod for a discussion on the latest Macworld Expo news.  This is episode 28 live from the Macworld Expo 2009.  You can participate live.  Just use the information below.  Talkcast room opens at 7:15 EST / 4:15 PST.

Join Big-O, Josh, Anthony, Brenn, and the other members of MacMod for a discussion on the latest Macworld Expo news.  This is episode 27 live from the Macworld Expo 2009.  You can participate live.  Just use the information below.

EDIT: We recorded the show as planned. You can use the player below to listen, or visit MacModLive.com to download the file. The instructions farther down will be the same for the rest of the live shows this week as well, starting with tomorrow, Jan 6th, and 4:30pm PST.

Looks like some people are taking the Steve-less keynote rather seriously.  Mac fanatic Lesa Snider King wants all loyal followers of Steve to not cheer or clap at this year's Macworld keynote.  No word on how many people will follow her suggestion, and if she will still be doing it now that Steve's health secret it out.

Personally I hope that people don't follow.  I know that some people are upset about no more Macworlds with Apple, but that doesn't mean that Apple isn't going to do something else.  WWDC is a huge event, and it will probably only get bigger now.  I still have high hopes that Apple doesn't leave its fan base without an annual conference that isn't developer or IT centered.

Lesa's Silent Battle

What do you do when your laptop no longer works like a laptop?  Make it a desktop.  Sir Bibin and Nick Lee of SaladSoft had a PowerBook G4 that the hinges were going bad on.  Rather than sell it on eBay (I would've bought it) they went the other route.  Slapping two speakers on the side and making a stand for it.  I couldn't find much information on this mod, but it looks like the actual laptop part of it is stuck to the back side somehow, not to pretty, but it does do what they want it to do.

There are some pictures of the laptop before the mod, as well as some pix of his other mods on TehBibin's PhotoBucket album.

via Engadget

Apple IIe emulation is now available on the Nintendo Wii through the WiiApple application.  Programmer Yohanes Nugroho only found out that you could program applications for the Wii console on the 30th of December and managed to pump out a working emulator by the 2nd of January.  It's an impressive turnaround, but what's more impressive is the accessibility of this application.  There are more Wii's out there than other consoles, giving WiiApple a wide market.  It's also fairly easy to setup, only requiring the Wii Homebrew Channel and a SD card to load the application from. 

If you've been aching to play Oregon Trail or an annoying BASIC loop on your television, check it out and let us know what you think. 

This mod can be considered mid-tech, using an old satellite dish to extended your WiFi power is really a great use of the old satellite dish you have stashed in the closet.  Get the "dish" and pix after the jump.

Everyone and their cousin has a Macworld prediction, so I figured I'd get in on it as well.  But instead of saying what I think Apple will release or update, I'm going to mix in some of what I WISH Apple would release.  The list, after the jump.