MWSF '09: Keynote ranking

I'm getting tired of reading all of these crap articles and commentary claiming that Apple's keynote presentation at Macworld 2009 was the "worst ever". I streamed the entire thing (in HD, which looked pretty good on my 24" iMac), and I thought that as Apple keynotes go, this one was actually pretty decent. The new version of iLife actually looks pretty exciting, and the removal of DRM on music from the iTunes store is going to have reverberations in the industry for years to come.

But, in an attempt to try to refute some of this nonsense, let's take a look back, at Macworld San Francisco 2004. This would have been the first Macworld that I attended, but I didn't really have the blogging thing flowing then, so I didn't cover it. However, through the power of Google, I was able to find what Apple announced that year:

• iLife 4 - which converted the previously free iMovie and iPhoto into pay-for applications
• GarageBand - the first version of GarageBand was rolled out, and sold as part of iLife
• Updates to the G5 Xserve and Xserve RAID
• The iPod mini was introduced, at $249 for 4Gb of storage

Now, having seen both keynotes, I would definitely rate the one from 2004 below that of 2009. Yet, that's not how it's being talked about in the blogs and the press. Frustrating, to be sure.

-Andy.