So, what’s in the goodie bag for one last extravaganza?

iWork ’09, for $79, including:

iPhoto ’09: “Faces” uses facial feature recognition technology to sort your photos by the people in them. Also, “Places” uses GPS geotagging to sort your photos by where they were taken. Good for my iPhone, but not for my Canon Digital Rebel (unless there’s an accessory I don’t know about). Still, you can manually add English-language geotags and iPhoto will sort them right along with the GPS tags that it converts to place names. Not bad. Slideshows have themes and can center on faces automatically. These can be saved to iTunes as a movie file and be played back on an iPod or iPhone. Also, photo books have been updated (Sachi and I plan to make a wedding album using the service; a nicer setup just in time for one of the only times we’d use it. But do we need to buy iLife ’09 for that?)

iMovie ’09: The big question: will it suck less? They dumbed down iMovie ’08, one can suppose so as to get people to pay for Final Cut Express. In iMovie ’09, they seemed to listen to these complaints, making the editing easier and adding so many of the special effects that were cut from the last version. The proof will come from using the product. I still don’t like the interface in general–but we’ll see. Two-track video editing, laying one track over another. Easier application of effects. Drag-and-drop audio (presumably replacing lengthy “extract audio” processes) for voice-overs. Indy Jones-style maps showing where you went. Interesting, but I want more details…

GarageBand ’09: “Learn to Play” teaches you guitar or keyboard. That could be interesting–if it’s effective. The catch: 9 lessons are bundled, but extra lessons cost five bucks a pop.

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Next up: iWork ’09, also for $79, with:

Keynote ’09: Something called “Magic Move,” which apparently must be seen to be understood. New transitions for objects and text. New themes. And new chart animations. Plus: built-in support for using your iPhone to control the presentation. The iPhone will either show two slides at a time so you can preview the next slide and intro it properly, or it will display notes beneath a single slide.

Pages ’09: 40 new templates. Full-screen view. Dynamic outline mode to help you organize your ideas before writing. Mail merge with Numbers. Connectivity with MathType and EndNote.

Numbers ’09: Copy & Paste charts into Pages and maintain links. More table categories and functions. Advanced chart options, etc….

The main idea here seems to be to beef up Pages and Numbers so they have more of the features that MS Word and Excel have. WHich might sound pathetic, except for one thing: Pages and Numbers are much more nicely designed, and their main drawback has been limited functionality. Adding that functionality could be enough to make people leave Office behind. A key point will be whether Apple did a better job improving Office cross-compatibilty, which could be a critical point.

New twist: iLife and iWork will ship bundled for $169–you save ten dollars. Would be less impressive if it weren’t for the fact that the software was already so cheap.

Next up: iWork.com. This was widely rumored, but the rumors seem to have been off. Less than a full-blown web app, this service seems more oriented toward collaboration and saving docs on the web. You edit docs offline and share them online. Initially it’ll be a free beta, but then you pay for it. Yawn. Comes across like the Apple TV–could have been better, but certainly not yet.

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Finally: A new, slimmer, 17-inch Macbook Pro. Essentially they brought the 17“ in line with the 15” MacBook Pro, with a few new bells and whistles. Matte screen option, full hi-def resolution, better color handling, etc.–lots of small stuff. The one big thing, as predicted by rumors: new battery, not removable except by Apple, but should last for 5 years and support much longer battery life.

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And then, One More Thing: iTunes.

Pricing: Apple finally caved to the music labels and accepted three-tier pricing: $0.69, $0.99, $1.29. Or, at least I think the $0.99 pricing tier will be continued; some reports suggest not.

DRM: It’s going away. 80% now, the last 20% in a few months.

iTunes Store over 3G on iPhone. Um, OK.

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And… that appears to be it. Surprise: no iPhone Nano, no new Mac Mini, despite copious rumors, leaks, and confirmed sources. Will they be announced later, separately? Doubt it.

More details tomorrow (it’s almost 4 am here), after Apple has posted more on its site. Summary: iLife looks much improved, iWork solidified, 17“ MacBook still for the indulgent, iTunes Store slightly upgraded/changed.

An interesting side note: somebody hacked into MacRumors’ live feed and kept inserting obnoxious comments (e.g., ”STEVE JOBS JUST DIED“), completely disrupting what was one of the best and most-watched live blogs on the Expo. The intrusions got more and more numerous and obnoxious until the site simply went off the air. Some people are such complete losers.