Leander Kahney - page 47

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — The guys at Topaz Labs thought business would be slow at the first Macworld without Apple, so they packed only 250 CDs of their software.

They sold out in the first few hours of the first day.

Worried it was just an opening-day rush, and that day two would be dead, they had just 250 more overnighted to their hotel. But those too quickly sold.

“It’s been awesome. I’m exhausted,” laughed Ivan Randall of Topaz Labs. “It’s been a great show.”

Almost all the vendors we talked to told the same story: Macworld 2010 has definitely been worth the money. Many had low expectations, but turnout has been great and business is brisk.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — The second day of Macworld 2010 was another big day with throngs of showgoers crowding the show floor.

Some vendors had worried that the big crowds on day one would thin significantly on the second day. But there was steady stream of attendees and brisk business for vendors.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — You’ve probably seen the late pitchman Billy Mays on late-night TV smashing his hand with hammer while it’s wrapped in Impact Gel — a super cushioning material used for insoles.

In fact, Impact Gel was featured in the first episode of PitchMen, the Discovery Channel show featuring Mays and his partner Anthony Sullivan.

Now, Impact Gel is being used to make a laptop sleeve that can be hit with a hammer and dropped without damaging the contents.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — One of the most welcome aspects of the post-Apple Macworld is the absence of the giant booths devoted to iPhone accessories.

In recent years, Macworld was in danger of becoming the iPhone case show. Many of the biggest and most prominent booths on the show floor were devoted to cases and screen covers.

This year, they’re mostly absent. While there were about 100 case and accessory makers at CES in January (in the iLounge pavilion), the 150 iPhone developers at Macworld are mostly software publishers. It’s a welcome change.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Veteran Mac programmer Bill Atkinson took the stage at Macworld for the first time in 23 years to show off PhotoCard — an app for sending fine-art postcards through the mail.

Written by Atkinson himself (he’s the genius behind early and great Mac software such as QuickDraw, MacPaint and HyperCard), PhotoCard allows you to write a postcard on your iPhone. When you hit send, a beautifully-printed postcard is sent through the mail.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Programmer Bill Atkinson, one of the lead authors of the original Mac system, says the iPad will be a big success — and that you have to play with it to understand the magic of the multitouch interface.

“This guy is going to be a real winner,” he said, holding up a model he’d made for himself to visualize how his PhotoCard app would look on the device. Atkinson took part in Guy Kawasaki’s Friday morning keynote presentation.

“Once you get it in your hands and play with it you don’t want to set it down,” he continued. “I think Apple’s got a hit on their hands here.”

Atkinson said he’d played with an iPad for a couple of hours. It’s not a laptop and its not an iPhone, he said, but an entirely new, third device. The magic is in using your fingers to directly manipulate elements onscreen.

Returning to using a mouse is like using a remote control, he said — clumsy and awkward.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Graham Clarke, prepress manager at TravelSmith, a travel clothing website, is wandering Macworld in search of software to help him bring offshore jobs back onshore.

Clarke is looking for easy-to-use masking software, which will allow his company to bring a lot of image processing work — currently performed in China at rock-bottom rates — back to the U.S.

Travelsmith processes about 6,000 product images a year. Each has 10 or 15 masks, which are currently processed in China for $10 per image. “It’s very long, boring and labor intensive,” explains Clarke.

Clarke is taking a closer look at packages like Graphic Authority’s Photoshop Suite and Topaz Remask, which make masking easy.

“Now it’s like painting,” Clarke says. “It’s so quick and easy, why pay for the labor? If we’re paying someone $10 to do something that takes 10 minutes then it’s time to bring it back in-house. It’s ironic. What work went offshore is now coming back because it’s so easy to do.”

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Years ago at Palm conferences everyone used to get out their Palm Pilots and beam contact information at each other via infrared.

The tradition is alive and well at Macworld, except people are using the popular Bump iPhone app. The free app transfers contact info wirelessly via Wi-Fi or 3G when two iPhones are bumped together.

Wandering the show floor, you can see people bumping their iPhones together. I saw one group of about six people standing in a circle bumping each other.

“I made them all do it,” explained Liana Lehua of the Fittorrent website, nodding at the rest of the group. “I don’t carry business cards, so everyone downloaded the app.”

Woah, Macworld is Packed!

Much to my surprise and delight, the crowds are showing up in droves for Macworld. Though the gates opened just 30 minutes ago, the show floor is already crowded with attendees.

“It’s a zoo up there,” said one paserby who queued up to get an entrance badge.

True, the show is restricted to the Moscone Center’s smaller North Hall (instead of both South and North halls), and it’s not as jammed as some previous opening days, but it’s still a very healthy crowd.

To be honest, I’ve always hated the Macworld show floor. The throngs get old really quick, with people shuffling along in a Magadon dream, bumping you with rucksacks full of crap, or interrupting a briefing with dumb questions.

But still, I’d be sorry to see it go. So best of luck to Paul Kent and co. Long live Macworld!

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — Helped perhaps by low expectations, David Pogue’s opening keynote here was a surprising success, playing to a packed, standing-room-only audience and bringing in a steady stream of laughs at Apple’s expense.

Pogue’s keynote was a variety show, with interviews, skits, singing and dancing — and a one-act play starring LeVar Burton as Steve Jobs.

Pogue also showcased the work of The Gregory Brothers, a quartet of Brooklynites behind Autotune the News.

Overall, the show was charming and funny light entertainment. A traditional Steve Jobs keynote it was not.

One of the characters in Pogue’s play managed to call Steve Jobs a “creepy vegan megalomaniac.”

That kind of thing would never fly if Apple were here at the show. And perhaps it shows what future Macworlds might be like without the anchor tenant.

The absence of Apple allows the show to be about the bigger topic — the Apple ecosystem — rather than being just Apple, and Apple alone.

“It’s liberating,” said one attendee coming out of the keynote. “I feel good about it. It’s not just about Apple any more.”

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2010 — New York Times tech columnist David Pogue just kicked off Macworld Expo with an impression of Steve — Steve Ballmer, that is, not Jobs.

Pogue stormed the stage grunting and whooping in an exuberant impersonation of the Microsoft CEO, who is famous for his Monkey Boy stage appearances.

“Steve Jobs would have been too obvious,” Pogue said.

It wasn’t a bad start to the Expo. Except for the obligatory song, Pogue is bringing the house down with a string of good jokes at the expense of Apple, AT&T and Twitter.

SAN FRANCISCO — Three years ago Steve Jobs took the stage to introduce the iPhone here at Macworld. The presentation was one of the best in Jobs’ career, generating enormous buzz and expectation for the device.

Also important, fans could check out the device in person on the Macworld show floor (Well, kinda — there was a prototype in a glass case). It was obvious the iPhone was a big deal, and by the time it went on sale in June, there were lines around the block. Looking back, I think the success of the iPhone’s debut had a lot to do with the venue, and the audience it was introduced to.

The best thing about Macworld was always the parties. MacWeek’s annual Mac The Knife Party was a drunken bacchanal for the ages; Peachpit and O’Reily put on nice literary soirees with cash bars; and Microsoft’s events always had fancy hors d’oeuvres.

Even Apple, a stranger to shows of public hospitality, once threw parties with generous helpings of food and booze. I got so ploughed at one event, I forgot my heavy laptop bag — computer, camera and all. Apple designer Jonny Ive kindly picked it up and lugged it about all evening until we ran into each other later at a nightclub, and he handed it back.

Macworld 2010 opens today. It is the 25th annual gathering of Mac users. That’s right, 25 years!

But thanks to the absence of Apple this year, this “Mecca for Mac Heads” may be the last. So check it out while you can.

• The show runs for 5 days. The Expo showfloor opens on Thursday at noon.
• For the first time since the eighties, it now includes a Saturday. Expect big crowds, lots of kids.
• There’s 250 exhibitors, down from 400 last year. Here’s the Exhibitor List.
• Attendance is expected at about 30,000 visitors. (But most Expo visitors this year got free passes instead of paying the usual $25 fee).
• People are hoping this isn’t the last Macworld but consider the history. As Jim Dalrymple notes: “Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo Boston/New York — it failed; Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo Tokyo — it failed; Apple pulled out of Apple Expo Paris — it failed.”
• Macworld Expo Floor Hours: Thu 2/11 12pm-6pm; Fri 2/12; 10am-6pm Sat 2/13; 10am-6pm
• Twitter hashtag is #macworld2010

And here, in chronological order, is the top 5 things to do at the show:

Someone is looking for a Steve Jobs look-alike for an “impersonator event” on Friday and Saturday in San Francisco’s SOMA — the area around Macworld.

The actual job isn’t specified, but looking like Steve is important, of course, but so is “punctuality.”

“If necessary, we can provide a black turtleneck and glasses,” the Craigslist ad says.

Pay is $100 a day. Wanna bet it’s handing out Gold Club flyers?

Full text of the Craigslist ad after the jump and check out our Gallery of Uncanny Steve Jobs Look-Alikes

A lot of people are nonplussed by the iPad because it doesn’t seem so new, or even very useful. It’s just a big iPod touch. So what?

But one of the most interesting things Apple said has about the iPad is how it improves the “experience” of doing everyday computing tasks — email, web browsing, making photo slideshows.

Again, people say so what? We’ve already got laptops for email and watching movies. But improving experiences is exactly what Apple is great at. The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, but the first anybody could enjoy using. The same thing is going to propel the iPad into the mainstream. Everyday tasks like sending email and reading newspapers are going to be so much nicer on the iPad than any other device. (see for example the New York Times screenshot after the jump.)

Software developer Fraser Spiers has been digging through Apple’s iPad videos, pulling screenshots to take a closer look at the details of the iPad’s UI. His conclusion? It’s going to provide a very good experience not just for media consumption, but also media creation.

Look at what’s in here: a full stylesheet engine, multi-column page layout, a complete library of cell formulae and a full set of builds and transitions. You can create a Magic Move transition on the iPad. That’s probably the most advanced technique you can do in Keynote, and it’s there on the iPad.

The New York Times has a fascinating piece by ex-Microsoftie Dick Brass on how interdepartmental fighting is causing the company to fail. Microsoft has turned into an anti-innovation company, he says.

Internecine warfare among Microsoft’s divisions has created a “dysfunctional” corporate culture that thwarts creativity instead of nurturing it. “The company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers,” he writes.

Of course Wired is prepared for Apple’s iPad, says Chris Anderson, the magazine’s editor in chief.

Responding to Tuesday’s piece that Wired‘s digital version won’t work on the iPad, Anderson says the magazine knew all along about Apple’s aversion to Flash and Air, and has a solution.

“Obviously we knew about Apple and Flash from the beginning and there were no surprises there,” he says in an email. “We have a solution and will launch on the iPad according to plan and on schedule, along with Android and Windows — it’s a full cross-platform strategy, which was the idea all along.”

Anderson wouldn’t say what the solution is, but it’s a good one, he claims.

UPDATE: Just got word that Gruber is NOT cool with the site, and is demanding it be taken down. This about 20 mins after this post was published. Guess the “reasonably parodic period” is up. That was quick.

I’ve just been IM-ing with John Casasanta, the brains behind DaringFireballWithComments.net – a website that mirrors Apple pundit John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog — with the addition of reader comments on posts.

Casasanta says he’s received a short note from Gruber, who says he’s cool with the site. Gruber even gave Casasanta permission to keep the site up for a “reasonably parodic period” of time.

“This absolves me of any lawsuit,” says Casasanta, who runs the super-popular MacHeist software marketing operation.

As reported yesterday, DaringFireballWithComments.net mirrors everything on Daring Fireball — posts, ads and all — but allows anonymous commenting on posts. Gruber’s blog is famous for not having comments, an ethos at odds with most other web publishers (except Engadget, which has temporarily shut down its “out-of-control” comments system). Casasanta is mirroring Gruber’s site as a “social experiment.”

Meanwhile, most of the comments on DaringFireballWithComments.net so far have been exceptionally moronic, partly proving Gruber’s point that comments are a distraction.

Casasanta says he is unconcerned by the stupidity (which appears to be mostly purposeful. People are being deliberately dumb) and is willing to give it time. “It’s kinda what I would’ve expected so far,” he says.

One option is moderating the comments, but Cassanta says it hasn’t been discussed yet.

Gruber hasn’t responded to a couple of notes I sent him asking for comment, and hasn’t yet mentioned the mirror on his site or Twitter stream. As some have noted, with about 40,00 followers, Gruber’s Twitter stream acts as Daring Fireball’s behind-the-scenes comments system.

Adobe’s chief technology officer has finally weighed in on the great Flash debate, and is taking potshots at Apple for not supporting Flash on the iPad. Adobe’s head software honcho Kevin Lynch says Flash on the iPad is essential to the “open” internet. Except Flash isn’t open.

My old friends at Wired tell me that the magazine’s designers scrambled to finished their gorgeous digital version of the publication just in time for Apple’s big iPad launch last week.

Trouble is, the interactive prototype was built using Adobe’s Air — which means it won’t work on the very device it was built for. Like Flash, Apple isn’t supporting Air on the iPad.

“The magazine industry was hoping to finally get over the pay wall with a fancy, shmancy iPad version of their precious slick glossy (but) gets caught with their pants down and their wee wees out,” said one insider.

We were a pain, I know, bugging you guys to vote for us in 2010 Golden Retrevo Awards.

But it paid off — we won a 2010 Golden Retrevo Award for outstanding achievements in the “All Things Apple” space. The awards honor the “best and brightest independent gadget blogs on the web.”

Many thanks for your support!

Our friends 9to5Mac also won in the same category, along with iPhoneography, MacYourself and The iPhone Guru.

Retrevo is an up-and-coming electronics shopping/review site, which claims more than 5 million visitors a month. Here’s the full list of Golden Retrevo Award winners.

The formidable Economist magazine has blessed Steve Jobs with a rare cover story examining the potential impact of the Jesus tablet.

Even rarer, the iPad story is mostly positive, even if the religious imagery is over the top.

The Economist fancies Jobs’ chances of shaking up not just one industry, but three — especially media:

Jobs’s record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three—computing, telecoms and media.

Companies in the first two businesses view the iPad’s arrival with trepidation, for Apple’s history makes it a fearsome competitor. The media industry, by contrast, welcomes it wholeheartedly. Piracy, free content and the dispersal of advertising around the web have made the internet a difficult environment for media companies. They are not much keener on the Kindle, an e-reader made by Amazon, which has driven down book prices and cannot carry advertising. They hope this new device will give them a new lease of life, by encouraging people to read digital versions of books, newspapers and magazines while on the move. True, there are worries that Apple could end up wielding a lot of power in these new markets, as it already does in digital music. But a new market opened up and dominated by Apple is better than a shrinking market, or no market at all.

Read more: Tablet computing — The book of Jobs.

Via 9to5Mac. Thanks Seth.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball is the most influential Apple pundit on the web, but readers often complain about the lack of comments on his website.

In fact, Gruber’s site is famous for not having comments. In an age when every website falls over itself to accommodate reader interactivity, Gruber stands alone. He has stubbornly resisted adding comments to his site for years.

Gruber has explained that he dislikes comments because they distract from his all-important voice. This is exactly the kind of egotistical statement that makes him unpopular with many people, especially other writers, but a must-read pundit.

But Gruber is about to get comments, whether he likes it or not.

The team behind MacHeist has just launched DaringFireballWithComments.net— a website that mirrors Gruber’s site with, you guessed it, comments.

“It’s good timing since he was gloating over his lack of comments today,” said John Casasanta, the brains behind the project, “and we’re gonna allow anonymous comments. It should be a shitstorm.”

Sharp-eyed observers have noticed what looks to be an iSight camera in the iPad Steve Jobs used in last week’s keynote.

Even though Jobs didn’t talk about a camera, and it’s not mentioned in Apple’s official tech specs, something that looks like an iSight camera can be seen when Jobs first holds the iPad up for everyone to see.

As he holds it up, the light catches the iPad’s surface, illuminating something underneath. That something looks like an iSight camera, similar to the ones built into MacBooks, under the screens.

In the official iPad podcast, it can be seen around the 1:23:40 mark.

It’s not conclusive, of course, but corroborates the prototype images published by Engadget in the run up to the event, which clearly show an iSight camera in the same position. And references to a camera have been found in both the iPad’s Address Book software and the iPad firmware.

The absence of a camera on the iPad has been one of the device’s most puzzling omissions. Although, as our own John Brownlee first noted, a camera in a tablet that’s sitting in your lap, staring up at you, doesn’t produce the most flattering camera angles.

UPDATE: A repair company called Mission Repair says the iPad’s frame clearly shows an empty spot for an iSight camera, and it is exactly the same size and shape as the iSight slot in a MacBook’s screen frame. (Mission Repair received a shipment of iPad parts on Monday, the company blog says).

Thanks NyxoLyno.