MacWorld: Version 4.1
Why 4.1? This is the first day of my fourth visit to Macworld Expo. Thus Version 4.0., release 1.
Interesting day for sure. It started out with a L O N G line at the Midwest desk to check in. I thought that was strange. Then I noticed they all seemed to be wearing KU stuff. Ok, granted they won last night and there are lots of fans. But so many…all at once. Well, it was all the KU Basketball people. If I were a fan, I would have not only recognized that fact, but they were going to Orlando.
My flight was delayed on the ground for 1/2 an hour because apparently they hit a bunch of birds on decent into KC and the plane needed to be checked and the “roadkill” removed. Do they call it road kill when it hits a plane. Other reason, while the flight was not oversold..it was overweight! They eventually had to give away 4 round trip tickets before they’d leave the flight. I did get my cookies though.
Got in a few episodes of People’s Court I pulled off the Tivo.
Arrived at Moscone about 20 minutes later in the cab. $38, plus a tip. Took him five minute to process my credit card. Isn’t the credit card supposed to make it quicker. He had to write it out by hand using a 1980’s Bartizan thingee that makes the imprint of the card.
I go up to the “Media Pre-Registration” and the pivotal moment, like in a TV show when the music starts and they break for commercial. I give them my name and I get my media badge. No problems. Yeah. Wow, things are going great!
I meet Mike at the Netopia booth to drop off my stuff, and get into the “zone.” Get my shopping bag out, arm myself with a pack of business cards and away I go walking the show.
This year it was split across two exhibit halls. That fit more people, but I suspect many did not go into the second exhibit hall. However, because of that, rent was lower in that hall which allowed for more exhibitors.
My initial impression was the word “functional.” Nothing stood out as gee-whiz (besides the iPhone–more on that later). However, everything was very practical this year. More backup hardware and software. In fact, Maxtor had a series of kiosks showing what people loose on their hard drives. Why no pictures? Remember that list from yesterday? Did you notice there wasn’t a compact flash reader. Yup. Pictures tomorrow. Not as much “cute” stuff, sure there were cute iPod holders (see picture tomorrow), but I was impressed with the amount of functional cases for your laptop and other items to protect your computer. I think the market realizes that a Mac is *not* an iPod accessory, but a legitimate tool in it’s own right. Most of the time I was saying “That’s a good idea.” Not wow, not oh my gosh, but “good.” Last year I’d say about 50% of the booths were iPod related. This time…maybe 25-30%.
Booths were generally smaller. The standard players all had huge booths: Apple, Filemaker, Adobe, Quark. Microsoft had a smaller booth this year. They were showing off Office 2008. The one big player I noticed that was missing this year was Kodak. Nikon had a bigger booth this year and HP was MUCH bigger than years past. Word on the street is Kodak has annoyed the Mac world. They simply don’t want to devote the resources.
I started in the smaller side, as I call the “low rent district”. They aren’t really booths on those sides, but one person kiosks. It’s annoying because you’ve got to wait a while before you can talk to the one person. That side has some very specialized applications. For example they had “NI M Series - Isolated Multifunction DAQ
16-Bit, 250 kS/s, ±20 mA Analog Inputs, 24 V DIO, Isolation“. Not sure what it does,but sound impressive, doesn’t it. Ever year I visit Nisus Writer, which is still the best multi-lingual word processor. Its’ a great product for people that might need to use foreign alphabets, especially ones that go from right to left. The “company” is essentially a Rabbi that couldn’t find a good program to write Hebrew so he had one written.
Software developers come from all over the world. I spoke with a company from Ukraine, quite a few from Germany, the UK, and Australia. Lots of accents.
I made it about 1/3 of the way through the main hall. Each booth that I’d have remote interest in I say “Hi do you have a press pack or a PR rep.” It’s interesting. Sometimes I get people saying “Ummm, what’s a press pack.” That usually means the person working for the booth doesn’t work from the company. There are people in the world that make a living of working trade shows for products and companies they know nothing about. Hired guns. In the 90’s we’d call them “booth babes”. Usually if the people working the booth were rather…um….let’s just say “stereotypically attractive”, you know they don’t know anything about the product and are just there to get lonely computer geeks to go to the booth.
Other times, they hand you an impressive kit, free samples and a demo. You’ll be seeing lots of newsletter postings! What was generally lacking is free giveaways. A distinctive lack of pens, coozies, and mousepads. T-shirts, the Geek currency, were profoundly in short supply.
One thing you’ll hate if you ever go to the show are the annoying people sticking out their arm in front of you to hand out literature. How rude! More than just rude, it interrupts the flow of traffic.
Most impressive thing I’ve seen so far is the Cordgo: an easy way to manage headphone and other cords. Ok, it’s not the iPhone, but I’m Mr. Practical. I look for things that make things easier for me. They are only $5.00 and I’m seriously thinking of giving them away to clients. So far most of the other things I’ve seen are simply new versions of the same programs with slightly new features and Universal code.
Obviously the most unimpressive thing is Apple’s booth. First year I can remember not a SINGLE new thing you can buy at the show. iPhone will be out in June, the Apple TV in February, and the Airport in February as well. My 2-bit analysis: Steve pushed getting the iPhone out so hard that the other products took a backseat. I think he’ll wait until either Vista comes out or if there is bad Apple stock news. They want to keep their names in a positive light for the next few months…so why announce everything all at once? In addition, would anyone listen to anything but an iPhone press release. Apple could have announced they cured cancer, created peace in the Middle East, and bought Microsoft…and all people would be interested in would be the iPhone. Probably a smart move by Apple to wait for announcements of other products.
For Friday, I’ll really try and get some great pictures of the interesting products, and then I’ll give you an overview of the show. I’m very methodical about this: start at one end and work your way to the other. I timed it the past few years and I can generally do the show in about 10-11 hours. I arrived at 1pm on Thursday, which left me five hours for Thursday. Show hours on Friday are 10am to 4pm, so I should be ok timewise. However, I will miss at least one important booth. Always happens. I’ll chat with people who went to the show and they’ll say “Did you see…” and I’ll say “Oh now, how could I have missed that”.