An Apple spokesperson responded today to an inquiry from the folks at Gizmodo about the procedure and cost for replacing the internal battery in the new 17” MacBook Pro.

Courtesy of Apple

In case you haven’t heard about it yet, the new 17” MacBook Pro, which was announced yesterday at Macworld, will have an internal battery that is not user accessible or replaceable. The new battery design has outstanding usage specifications: eight hours on a charge when using the NVIDIA 9400 graphics card, and seven hours when using the NVIDIA 9600 graphics card. Apple has said that the expected lifetime of the battery is five years, based on 1000 battery recharge cycles. (Apple expects a user to recharge the MacBook Pro every 1.825 days; 1.825 x 1000 = 1,825 days of battery life, or five years.)

Any Apple Store or authorized Apple reseller may replace the battery. The replacement cost is $179, including the labor to perform the battery swap and the cost of disposing of the old battery in an environmentally friendly manner.

During a keynote address that Apple says will be its last from a Macworld Conference and Expo, Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, handled himself with grace, delivering an excellent performance in a robust voice.

Courtesy of IDG World Expo Event

Unfortunately, the script Phil had to work with was anything but memorable. The crowd waited patiently for the (pre-2009) dependably gee-whiz product announcements. Phil started with marketing department reports about Apple’s market share, growth, and other typical items designed to whet the appetites of the Mac faithful. Then came the first product announcement: iLife ’09. Not exactly a heart-stopper, but Apple always saves the best for last, and the crowd is usually content to go along for the ride. The crowd expressed its appreciation for the elegance of iLife ’09’s new features, with a few ooohs and ahhhs for iPhoto’s new features.

Next came iWork ’09, with its satisfying, if not earthshaking, new features. The new web-based document sharing system was an obvious crowd pleaser.

The crowd was still waiting patiently when Phil started describing the first new hardware item: the new 17” MacBook Pro. The crowd appreciated the design of the new MacBook Pro, with its unibody construction and choice of a glossy or matte screen. (The crowd leaned heavily toward the matte option.)

Then suddenly, the hardware portion of the show was already over. Phil moved on to iTunes and its new pricing structure and DRM-free library of music. DRM-free is certainly a crowd pleaser, and the new pricing structure went over well as well.

And then the keynote was over. There was no ‘just one more thing.’ No stunning revelations. No new Mac Mini. No bump in the iMac’s performance. No iPhone nano. (If you’re keeping track, that means I went 0 for 3 in my top three picks, the things I most expected to see.) There wasn’t even a sneak peek at Snow Leopard, the next version of OS X.

In the end, I believe Steve stayed away not because of poor health, but because he knew this lackluster keynote would make him ill.

You can read about each of the product announcements here:

• iLife ‘09
• iWork ‘09
• 17” MacBook Pro
• iTunes

After working with various music studios, Apple took advantage of Macworld to announce that it has reached agreement with the four major music labels to offer DRM-free songs on iTunes. This will greatly expand the offering currently known as iTunes Plus. Starting today, eight million songs will be DRM-free; by the end of the quarter, Apple expects an additional two million songs to be DRM-free.

A new pricing structure accompanies the new DRM-free catalog. Starting today, the iTunes Store will offer tiered pricing for music. Songs will be available at three different prices: .69, .99, and $1.29. Most likely, the top price will be reserved for the most popular new releases. The majority of songs will probably occupy the .99 price point, with the .69 price point a comfortable niche for older music that has long since earned its keep for the studios.

Apple will also offer to upgrade your current library, or individual songs, to DRM-free status. Upgrade prices are .30 per song, .60 per music video, and 30% of the original iTunes price for albums.

Apple also announced that the iTunes Store is now available over cellular networks as well as WiFi, which will allow iPhone users to purchase music no matter where or how they connect to the Internet. Carrier fees may apply when downloading via a cellular network.

Apple used Macworld to announce the arrival of the 17” MacBook Pro, although the product itself isn’t a surprise. Sporting the same unibody construction as the 15” MacBook Pro, the new 17” model weighs in at 6.6 pounds and is, as Apple points out, currently the thinnest 17” notebook available.

Courtesy of Apple

The 17” MacBook Pro incorporates a new battery technology that allowed Apple to custom design a lithium-polymer battery that lasts up to eight hours on a single charge, and can be recharged more than 1,000 times. The downside is that the battery is built into the MacBook Pro, so it’s not a user-replaceable part. If Apple’s 1000-charge lifetime specification is accurate, the average user should enjoy nearly five years of battery life before it will need to be replaced.

To be perfectly frank, I’m somewhat skeptical about the battery technology currently used in notebooks, and would have preferred a user-replaceable battery. I hope that Apple realizes how controversial a non-user-replaceable battery is, and made provisions within the warranty for extended coverage of the battery. At the time of this writing, Apple had not yet released warranty information on the new 17” MacBook Pro.

17” MacBook Pro specifications:

• 2.66 GHz or 2.93 GHz Intel Core Duo
• 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM
• 320 GB Drive, either 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM; user’s choice, same cost for either option
• Optional 128 GB or 256 GB Solid State Drive
• 17” (1920x1200) display, available in glossy or matte finish ($50 extra for matte)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT graphics
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 802.11n Wireless
• FireWire 800
• 3 USB 2.0 ports
• Mini DisplayPort
• Audio in/out
• ExpressCard/34
• Base price: $2,799.00