LAUG 2.0 News

Thanks Brian for giving us your review of the show and items. Here is mine.

Best Apple Hardware.

Not the iPhone. Here’s my rant about the iPhone. It’s Apple’s next Newton. What was the Newton. It was Apple’s Palm Pilot…before Palm Pilots were cool. It was way ahead of it’s time. The concept was great…the implementation was lousy. My first concern with the iPhone is price. $499 AND a two year contract. That’s outrageous price. For that price…I’ll carry around a cell phone AND iPod. Really, how hard is it to carry both around? Ok, there are times it’s nice to have both..but in those situations how practical is this.

Take working out, a very common place I see both. So now instead of an iPod on your arm and a nice little cell phone, you carry both. If you want to change songs…you have to take the iPhone out of the case, since it’s all finger recognition. Oh and if you want to make a phone call, you better be darn sure your fingers aren’t wet or you are wearing gloves, because it won’t work without a clear signal from your fingers. Can you imagine dialing in the bitter cold requiring you to use your fingers.

Best of all, think of this scenario. You are at the movies, kid’s recital, etc and you realize the phone is ringing. Instead of reaching into your pocket or purse and pressing that magic button to mute, you pull out the phone, prepare your fingers, and do the “two finger” thing to mute the phone. By the time you do, people are cursing your name and giving you that “tsk, tsk” look.

Speaking of that screen. Arrrgh. You thought the nano’s scratch? We all put our cell phones in the pocket. No big deal. Same with iPods. However, given the iPhone is ALL screen and REQUIRES the screen to use it…that is a disaster waiting to happen. Sure there will be 3rd party screen protectors, but those will obviously interfere with ease of use.

Worst of all is that it’s an Apple cell phone. We expect Apple products to be straightforward and easy to use. ANY cell phone service is lousy. When you can’t make a call Apple will blame Cingular and Cingular will blame Apple. Talk about 1 Infinite Loop

The iPhone, like the Newton, is solving a problem that doesn’t exist. I like the idea of a iPod phone, it’s the interface that scares me. Anyone you know complain, “my phone is difficult to dial.” Usually the complaint is: I can’t get service, I have a lousy contract, and I can’t figure out half the features on my phone. If Steve Jobs asked me (he didn’t), I would have made the following changes

1) Make the iPhone interface like an iPod. Use the “click wheel” idea. We are all familiar with that and can use it to get to contacts, calendars, etc. Nobody says the iPod is hard to use. The iPod interface is what makes it better than the Zune.

2) Use a “flip” feature so we can protect the screen. It would add a *tiny* amount of thickness. On that flip function, give us a keyboard and a keypad. Sure the “touch” feature is cool, but I need a better way of accessing it.

3) Reduce the price. $499 is too much for a phone with a contract. Work out a deal with us. Give us money off if we buy so much at the iTunes music store, or give us a rebate if we buy a Mac.

*My* winner for Apple hardware is the new Airport Extreme. The previous Airports cost way too much in comparison. It offered practically no features that a $50 Linksys router offered. First, it’s 802.11n–more reliable than 802.11g. Most 802.11n routers are betwen $75 and $100, so the gap in the price difference is less. The new extreme allows you to hookup multiple wired computers, something built into most routers. The BEST feature however is the USB port can be use to hook up a network hard drive. Want to easily share files between computers for backup purposes, hook your USB to the Extreme and “bon jour” takes care of all the configuration…even on a PC. Finally, the Extreme has parental controls built in that block the computer from being on the internet for certain times. Or a business to block wireless leechers after hours.

Practical always trumps cool in my book. That’s why it took me 8 years to replace my laptop.

Best Non-Apple Hardware:

Speck cases. Gives a whole new meaning to hardware. Why do I like these? A laptop case isn’t always practical or enough protection. New Macs have finishes that easily collect dust and scratches. Reviewing the many options at Macworld from such companies as Rhinoskin and Radtech. Speck cases are sold at Apple stores, so that gives me confidence. I use my laptop at coffee shops often and the tables are sometimes rather gross. I do NOT want the remains of someone’s biscotti clogging my Macbook. These cases are so logical, I’m not sure why nobody thought of this sooner. This was the first year I’ve actually seen something like this for a laptop and saw about 8 companies offering variations on Specks’s theme.

Best iPod Accessory:

Cordgo: A simple five dollar item that solves a real problem with cords getting tangled and caught. I’ve seen lots of cord winders, but all eventually get lost. This is the first one I see that doesn’t detach itself from the headphones. My previous device of choice, earpod will still protect my higher end headphones, but for working out, Cordgo is the bomb!

Remember, always practical over cool!

Best Apple software:

What software? Nothing was announced. No iWork ‘07, no iLife ‘07. Not even some silly software update just for the heck of it. Leopard is cool…but wasn’t announced at Macworld. We expected a new Finder interface at Macworld but it was lacking. For shame Apple, for shame. I had my bit torrent…I mean CREDIT CARD, ready for buying something. Guess Steve was too busy with the iPhone

Best Non-Apple software

Tie:
Jax: by Prosoft engineering. For those of us who don’t have a iPod phone, we want a way to expand our iPods usefulness. Jax is “widgets” for your iPod. It lets you sychronize movie schedules, RSS feeds, emails, youtube videos, etc. Essentially anything your browser can display can be put on your iPod. Wow. Talk about functional. Sign me up for the NFR! I’d put everything from my newsreader on it, all the local movies.

Another feature of Jax was the music maps. As a busy professional I don’t have time to discover new music. Similar to Amazon, Jax will tell me what artists bands share in common in hope I discover new music. It plays “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” with your music. Forget the NFR…let me buy it. I want it the day it comes out.

This program is cool and practical, so that’s two thumbs up in my book.

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Protogo: Really this was the best for me, but it’s so specialized it can’t be best of show in this category. This program allows you to create “universal” style boot disks. This is the best tool I’ve ever seen for support people. In fact, its designed to make old iPods into easily bootable hard drives. Anyone that supports Mac needs this product!

No doubt Parallels is cool and revolutionary, however nothing major was introduced. It was simply their first Macworld. It’s probably the most innovative and exciting non-Apple program, but people already knew that.

Best Ad Campaign.

Depends on what you mean by ad campaign. Which vendor had something that “drew me in” to their booth. Which booth had the “buzz”. That prize goes to Speck. They had a balloon artist at their booth. Definitely drew me in!

For printed materials, techrestore announced they were giving away “free” Macbooks. The Macbooks were actually printed business cards that looked like a Macbook from the outside. Reminded me of this free Macbook scam

Best Chotzkie:

MacBak

Not only was there a nice T-shirt, but it was presented in a static bag. I also didn’t notice until I got home, their business card had keyboard shortcuts for various programs on the back.

Ok, Brian picked something practical and I picked something cool. I’m allowed to Think Different on occasion!

Best Seminar:

No answer. I didn’t go to any. However, I’ll ordering them on DVD and will report back

Conclusion:

In general, I liked it better than last year. There was about 20% less iPod cases, which is always a good thing. Really, how many different ways can you make a case? I liked the more practical stuff: instead of one or two backup companies, I recorded 10 different vendors selling Mac backup software and serviced. Nice. Macs need to be backed up! I liked seeing all the cases to protect your laptop instead of just the iPod. I didn’t like the noise level. Too much yelling and screaming this year. Felt too much like a circus with the “step right up” people at the booths. Bring me to your booth with a cool product, not your annoying voice. I didn’t like them splitting it up these year in two convention halls. It created more space, but I think attendance was way down at the smaller convention hall. And of course, I didn’t like the draconian and medieval requirements for press passes this year. I’d give the show a solid B+, but Apple in general got a C- for the show.

Until next year.

Hope you enjoyed it

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 11:40 pm and is filed under LAUG 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.