The best thing about attending Macworld Conference and Expo aside from mashed potatoes in martini glasses is discovering something on the show floor that you weren’t expecting. Being members of the media, we get a lot of invites to a lot of booths. But setting aside a day for exploration, you can find some really cool stuff you had no idea existed. Well…most of the time.

It’s been a while now since Macworld Expo ended, and we’ve since seen a MacBook update that probably should’ve been in the keynote, and heard more news on the health of Steve Jobs. Thinking past this back to the show, and having finally dug through all the product materials we collected, the Appletell writers who were at Moscone have finally been able to select their favorite products of the 2009 expo.

Did Apple pull the major announcement (the “one more thing”) from this year’s Macworld Expo keynote in anticipation of Steve Jobs’ health announcement? My reasoning goes like this: First, Apple had something really cool to announce at Macworld Expo 2009. Something that would have taken up the big empty space at their booth. We heard rumors that after the Expo, Apple was going to announce a new Mac mini as well as something so big that the rest of the news would pale beside it. A Mac netbook? Opening the iPhone to other carriers? We couldn’t find out.

Shortly after the update of the 17″ MacBook Pro at this year’s Macworld and news that it will contain a longer life, non user replaceable battery, Apple has published a support article that can help users when the time to replace their battery comes. According to details from this article, the replacement price will be $179 if the battery is out of its one year warranty period. When it comes time to actually replace the battery, it can surprisingly be done in one day at an Apple store if you schedule an appointment. If you choose to send it in, it will take 3-4 business days after your shipment.

The last Macworld Expo I attended was in 2004. It was my first in San Francisco, as New York had previously been my beat. But even on the other side of the continent, it still felt familiar to me. It still felt like a Macworld Expo. The iPod was still fairly new, there was no iPhone, and people were there to hear about the Macintosh. Macworld Conference and Expo is now a different beast, and by beast, I mean that little duck from Wonder Pets with the annoying voice.

Last year, Feral Interactive announced their Feral Legends series of games, which they’re using to bring older PC games to the Mac. The first release in this series was Sid Meier’s Pirates. Now Feral has officially announced the second Feral Legends game, Rome: Total War Gold Edition. This top-rated strategy game from SEGA will be released in March. Attendees at Macworld Expo 2009 in San Francisco, Calif. can experience the game for themselves at the Feral’s booth #2530 in the South Hall of the Moscone Center.

Face recognition. Wow. We have the same—if not better—technology as the local police station. How freakin’ cool is that? iPhoto is groundbreaking in the fact that you can train it to recognize someone’s face and know where you took the picture. Let me introduce you to Faces and Places.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. The dental pick part is, but not the destruction of Macworld. Apple took care of that by its own self, thank you very much. Rather, while watching a demo of how DriveSavers rescues data from damaged hard drives, Jake was selected to be the one to cause the damage. Check out the video to see just how bad your drive actually looks when you hear that dreaded clicking sound and find yourself face to screen with a lonely question mark.

By now, it’s old news that Apple will no longer be participating in Macworld, one of the biggest Mac focused conference events around. The concrete reason from Apple for this unexpected dropout is nonexistent, making it hard for many of us loyal Mac users to know why they have decided to stop. However, when Apple leaves something open to interpretation from their customers, that is exactly what is going to happen. The following reasons are a couple potential causes for Apple’s “abandonment” of Macworld.

iWeb, iMovie, Garageband and iPhoto have all been upgraded. These are the applications that comprise the iLife suite. If you own a Mac, chances are you use one or more of these applications just about every day. Apple seems to be updating the software with new features about once a year, and this year everything gets a major improvement or two. Some of these new features are very powerful tools that are actually used by law enforcement (Faces). Kinda cool that we can use face recognition at home now. So, lets get to it.