One of the two annual sacred rites for Apple users and developers, MacWorld, has started in San Francisco. Here's a basic rundown of the main announcements from the Mother Ship.

First, there's a new 17 inch MacBook Pro, with a new, longer lasting battery. The battery is good for seven to eight hours on a single charge, and can be recharged up to 1000 times, rather than the more usual 200 or 300 times. The downside: it's not a removable, user-replaceable part. There's an optional anti-glare screen, but the gloss one, right out of the box on the thin carved-out-of-a-single-chunk of aluminum laptop is mighty fine. The display is completely enclosed in specially manufactured mercury-free glass (this is the greenest computer—and the fastest laptop—Apple has ever made). Because of the aluminum, the laptop is both durable and lightweight at 6.6 pounds and a mere 0.98 of an inch thick. The new 17 inch MacBook Pro clocks in at 2.66GHz, with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed; or, an optional 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB shared L2 cache, 1066MHz frontside bus, and 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 8GB (technical specs are here). It's also got the new multi-touch, glass-enclosed trackpad, where the entire trackpad acts as a mouse button(s), using gestures. The inclusion of FireWire 800 means this is the perfect laptop for digital video.

The new version of iLife 09, Apple's creative suite (iPhoto, GarageBand, iWeb) will be available at the end of January, and requires OS X 10.5/Leopard. The new iPhoto 09 in the iLife suite includes smart "facial recognition" technology for organizing digital images, as well as options for geo tagging. Support for Facebook and Flickr are both built-in now. There are also new options for theme-based slideshows, mapping images, and the editing options have a better user interface and a few more options. iMovie 09 includes even more drag-and-drop editing options, a new precision editor, that even allows separate editing of audio and video tracks, video stabilization to correct shaky camera work, new themes, animated maps, new titles, transitions and effects, and a host of interface improvements. GarageBand 09 includes nine basic piano and guitar lessons as part of its "Learn to Play" feature. The lessons are interactive, and designed for individuals to work at their own pace. And when you're ready for more advanced tutorials, you can buy interactive video based lessons from people like Sting, Ben Folds, and John Fogerty, for $4.99 each.

iWork 09 was also unveiled; the suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) includes lots of minor improvements. Pages 09, now includes over 180 professionally designed document templates. The most interesting new feature in Pages 09 is a full-screen work mode, making it easier to concentrate on just writing. And there's a new dynamic outliner integrated into the program, with complete drag-and-drop. iWork 09 has enhanced support in terms of sharing documents, too; you can open Microsoft Word files in Pages 09, and save Pages files as Word files, and of course, there's built in support to save files as .pdf documents. Now, there's built in support for Mail.app, too. Apple has also launched a public beta of iWork.com, a way for iWork 09 users to share files, online, easily. Finally, Pages 09 includes support for EndNote X2, for those of us who need to integrate footnotes and bibliographies. Numbers has lots more formulas and functions, enhanced chart and table functions, and better integration for mail merge with other applications, and better integration with Keynote 09. The coolest thing about the new version of Keynote is the support for iPhone and iPod Touch as a Keynote remote, though there are a bunch of nifty new transitions, animations (very cool animations are drag-and-drop easy) and themes. iWork 09 is shipping today, with a $79.00 upgrade ($99.00 for a family pack) or $49.00 with the purchase of a new computer.

The iTunes Store now offers most songs in iTunes Plus, the higher-quality 256-Kbps AAC encoding, DRM-free. The four major labels, and a slew of independents have signed on. iTunes Plus songs play on pretty much anything. You can upgrade your library of purchased songs for 30 cents a song, or 30% of the album price. Apple says all 10 million tracks will be iTunes Plus/DRM free by the end of the first quarter of 2009. You can also now purchases and download songs directly to iPhone and iPod Touch using 3G, and sync purchases between computers and devices. The bad news: in April prices will be set by the label; there will be three tiers: $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29.

For those who haven't yet upgraded to Leopard, Apple is offering a bundle of iLife '09, iWork '09 and Leopard together for $169, as the "Mac Box Set."

I'll be posting more as I try each of the new apps, but I suspect the 'net will be rife with commentary on the iTunes pricing changes, at the very least. I also suspect that the iMovie 08 changes, after the fiasco of iMovie 08, will be met with cries of "too little, too late," but the precision editor does look promising.