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 — Macworld 2010 is in full swing. Even without Apple, the show is packed and there’s a great vibe. The best thing is the people. Check out some of the many friendly faces on the show floor.
Above: These two Macnewbies are enjoying Macworld for the very first time. They’re impressed.
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 — It’s hard to miss the FastMac booth at Macworld. Just to the right of the Expo floor’s main entrance, the growing gadget and peripherals company has a prime space on the first aisle that was chock-a-block with visitors clogging the walkway to peer in at product demos and snap up the company’s awesome Apple-oriented t-shirts on the conference’s opening day Thursday.
We received an exclusive demo of a product FastMac is rightfully excited about — an updated version of its iV extended battery and portable charger that could soon mute some of the widespread criticism of the iPhone’s anemic battery life.
Many products in the extended battery class are clumsy and brickish. Despite their utility they often fall into disuse because they fundamentally alter the sleek and sexy feel of the so-called Jesus Phone. The new iV, which will apparently come in two flavors, the iV Light and an as-yet unnamed version, could make many power hungry iPhone users rethink the proposition.
With a new, super light-weight construction and supple rubber-like feel, the next-gen iVs will come with a full enclosure for 100% protection of the phone in a form factor that barely increases the weight and dimensions of the naked phone.
With a built-in LED light that calibrates with the iPhone’s camera, still and video captures in low-light situations should help elevate iPhone photography to new levels of quality and creativity.
The still-unnamed product, which should be available “soon,” according to FastMac principal Michael Lowdermilk, will incorporate a red LED which, in combination with a free remote control app, will turn an iPhone into a universal remote that can be used to change TV channels, stereo settings and a host of other useful and disruptive functions.
With no looking back, Macworld is clearly moving on in the post-Apple era and companies such as FastMac stand to gain increased attention with innovative products such as the iV — this is definitely a company to watch.
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.
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.
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
Oh Groupon, you bring us such wonderful deals with your hyper local bulk buying business strategy. And today, of all days, you tell me I can pick up Macworld tix at incredible discounts? Tell me more.
Check out the San Francisco Groupon site for $10 3-Day General Admission tickets to the Macworld 2010 Expo $25 value). They also have Macworld Users Conference tickets for $50 ($105 value).
Groupon is like a woot! for events and services. Apparently they offer unbeatable deal a day in 30 cities across the U.S. They do group buys so they can offer tickets to events or spa certificates or car washes for a hefty discount. The discount is only good if they get enough people to sign up, which for this deal happened at 9am EST so you’re good to go.
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) organizers have supersized the iPod and iPhone showcase at the January 2010 event. The next iLounge Pavilion will offer over six times the floorspace dedicated to Apple accessories and software sellers, from 4,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet.
In a press release, Jeremy Horwitz, Editor-in-Chief of iLounge.com and co-sponsor of the iLounge Pavilion said the 525% space increase is due to the surge in iPhone and iPod touch popularity from the App store. It also probably has to do with Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld and Macworld’s move to February.
Signed up companies so far include Griffin Technology, Scosche, Incase Designs, iSkin, Incipio Technologies, Jaybird Gear, MusicSkins and AAMP of America.
Via MacWorld
My friend Jeffy picked up this pack of stickers at a Macworld past. Do Mac users have a sense of humor ? Should they be printed up as stickers for MacBooks?
Hailed by event promoter IDG as the “Start of A New Era,” Macworld 2010 will be held in San Francisco at the Moscone Center but about a month later than usual, from February 9-13.
After Apple made 2009 its last MacWorld, rumors abounded about changes, either site or dates. The new date puts it in less competition with the sprawling International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas around the same time.
In a statement, organizers said they thought the dates would make it easier for fans to attend.
“We firmly believe that these new dates will better meet the needs of everyone participating in Macworld, and are pleased to have been able to respond to this request from the community,” he added. “The journey toward a new era for Macworld has begun and we are more excited about this ride than ever before.”
But, in a tech calendar packed with trade shows, it presents a bit of a problem for some.
UK Mac fans (and we suspect most anyone coming from Europe) are grumpy about the new dates — because they can’t make one transatlantic trip to attend both Macworld and CES and the dates are too close to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, scheduled to start two days later on Feb. 15.
How much difference do the new dates make in your plans to attend?
Image courtesy IDG
Image © 2009 Nik Fletcher
This post is really more about Macworld, the trade show and conference, than it is about the device that spawned it. But for 24 of Mac’s 25 years, the two have gone hand-in-hand.
While indications seem clear the Mac and Apple are both healthy and vital at 25, with years of relevance and innovation ahead despite whatever rough patches the economy may present in the near term, the fate of what has been for many years the Apple community’s most anticipated event is very much up in the air.
Of course the entire world is aware by now Apple decided to make 2009 its final appearance at the huge trade show held the first week or so of January at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The smart money immediately proclaimed Apple’s move to quit Macworld spelled doom for the event.
Rumors swirled during this year’s show that Apple itself might be moving next year to the larger, far more ambitious International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas right around the same time as Macworld.
Just this week, iLounge announced plans to fund a high-profile unified pavilion area for iPod and iPhone products at CES in 2010.
Blogger John Gruber penned Friday a misty paean to the City and the Expo, one of the smarter, more comprehensive assessments of the overall picture I’ve yet seen.
Gruber and I agree on a couple of points worth noting: as he wrote,
1) “There is nothing else like Macworld Expo, and if it fades away, there will be nothing to take its place.” With Apple gone, Macworld will be different and if it is to survive, it will have to be different in a way that keeps it vital and active for the diverse mix of large and small exhibitors that make up a healthy event; and
2) The great majority of exhibitors who make up Macworld, 90 percent of whose products are not available at the Apple Store, want the conference and expo to survive, but almost to a one they confirmed to me, as I walked the floor at this year’s conference (and to Gruber as well), – they will wait and see who else is going to stay on board.
This week a quiet campaign began, led by the community of Mac-o-philes who most definitely want to see Macworld survive and prosper. IDG, the event promoter, has agreed to give anyone who pre-registers now for next year’s event, January 4 – 8, 2010, a free Expo pass. Not buy one get one free, just register now and go for free.
IDG has also placed a big SUGGESTION BOX graphic on the front page of the website, a mailto: link the IDG PR representative I spoke with assures me the promoter will pay close attention to for feedback from attendees and exhibitors alike.
It may well be true that Apple no longer has a need for Macworld, that its growing chain of Retail Stores and increasing market awareness make it a bad business decision to spend millions of dollars to be the anchor tenant at the sprawling event.
For the hundreds of other businesses who’ve come to rely on Macworld as an opportunity to get their products in front of and tell their stories to thousands of people over four days in San Francisco, the stakes are very different.
News Monday that CES attendance figures for 2009 are down 22% comes as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the big picture in the past six months..
In the wake of Apple’s decision to abandon Macworld, and despite rumors the Cupertino computer maker will join the big consumer electronics circus in Las Vegas next year, the fact remains the global economy is in a tailspin.
It says here expecting corporations to continue sinking major investment into expensive trade show PR going forward is a bad bet.
Which is not to say that innovation will come to a halt, or that producers of technology and electronic gadgetry are about to vanish from the landscape.
In the spirit of the relative dispersal of brick and mortar distribution outlets for any number of goods among an increasing web of online marketing vehicles, this writer believes it only makes sense that in a contracting economy, chances are the standard-bearers of communication and computing and entertainment will soon focus marketing budgets less on trying to woo live bodies to vast acreages of real-time exhibition space and more on leveraging the enticements of Web 2.0 and unified communications capabilities to rely on drawing eyeballs and attention to virtual marketing platforms.
In the coming year, look for fewer big-time confabs and more small-town events. Fewer shows at the Garden and more online specials.
It’s a brave new marketing world. Think different.
Image © 2009 Nik Fletcher
Despite nearly universal appraisals among the Apple press calling it “underwhelming” and “disappointing” and “lackluster,” Macworld 2009 proved to be a worthwhile and successful venture for many less well-known exhibitors, whose continuing support may determine the expo’s future viability.
I hit the floor for the final day of Macworld 2009 fully expecting to find an arena filled with weary exhibitors staring at empty aisles, counting the hours until they could pack up their booths and say goodbye, perhaps for the final time, to this seminal conference and expo dedicated to all things Mac and more.
Instead, the floors in both halls appeared to me to have as many people walking around, crowding into interesting demos and learning exhibitions as on any other day this week. Such interest is not traditionally shown on the final day at large industry trade shows such as Macworld, and may be even more notable in the case that that other big consumer electronics event got into full swing a day ago, several hundred miles away in Las Vegas.
Official attendance figures were not yet available for this year’s event according to a spokesperson in the Sales office for conference promoter/organizer IDG, but the participation of both attendees and exhibitors has been “in line with expectations” given uncertainties in the larger economy, and factoring in disappointment surrounding Apple’s decision to quit the event after 2009.
Follow me after the jump for the thoughts and impressions of several exhibitors whose enthusiasm may point to a less dire future for Macworld than some seem to expect.
Macworld announced its 10 Best of Show picks for 2009 Wednesday afternoon, reinforcing the uninspired pall Apple’s looming withdrawal has cast over this year’s entire event.
From the hundreds of thousands of feet of floorspace taken up by Conference exhibitors at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, Macworld editors’ only significant hardware find was the Windows Home Media Server from HP.
My purpose here is not to pick apart each official choice, or even to come up with my personal alternative Best of Show picks – though give me another couple of days to walk the Expo floor and I might. I aim only to point out that when your top hardware pick at a trade show dedicated to Apple and Macintosh-oriented computing is a device that requires a Windows-based PC for initial installation, it’s cause for a little existential self-reflection.
Macworld did ferret out one item at the show that looks quite promising in my view – a Bluetooth Web Cam from ecamm network. To be available by spring 2009 at an MSRP of $150, the ecamm BT-1 streams 640×480 H.264 video and 48 kHz AAC stereo audio from up to 30 feet away from a paired Mac.
Your Mac has a built-in web cam you say? Well, with the BT-1 and its mini flexible tripod, you get the freedom to adjust the position, pan, and tilt of your web cam imagery. It’s also mountable on any standard camera tripod to give you further flexibility in filming. You and the editors of Macworld seem to have forgotten that old slogan Apple rode to the success from which it now abandons the Macworld Conference and Expo:
Think Different.
Evidence, if it were needed, that even writers of the Best Mac E-zine Of All Time need to stop for a sit down every now and again.
Here, thanks to the CC-licensed photostream of TidBITS writer Glenn Fleishman, we can see the TidBITters relaxing between frantic article-writing. It’s funny that even the awesome TidBITS team ends up crouching on the floor, huddled up by the power sockets just like the rest of us.
But wait, who’s this walking past – possibly also on the hunt for an empty power outlet? Why, it’s none other than equally great Mac writers David Pogue and Jason Snell. Pogue, Engst and Snell all together in one image: congrats! You’ve collected the full set!
(Thanks to Glenn Fleishman for the CC photos.)
Today’s was the first MacWorld keynote I’ve missed in three years, and I have to say, I really didn’t miss anything. But then again, it was quite clear Apple was making a half-hearted showing as it was, revealing none of the products people are most excited about <cough>Mac mini</cough> and announcing several products that are either predictable, uninspiring, or just plain obnoxious toward consumers. Is anyone excited about variable iTunes song pricing who doesn’t work for a record label? Anyone? Or how about the “Indiana Jones” effect for iMovie 09 so you can have a fake plane fly over a fake globe to represent travel? This was worth gathering the world’s technology media?
It’s probably for the best that Steve Jobs didn’t show.
But all of the above was apparent to anyone watching. What was left implicit, though it was communicated loud and clear, is the fact that Apple now has to put its money where its mouth is, having dismissed MacWorld’s trade show atmosphere, and put together some truly special product launch events very quickly. The biggest advantage to not making the first Tuesday of January the holy grail of Apple announcements is that Apple can announce products when they’re ready and as it suits them, instead of forcing stuff to be ready ahead of time for MacWorld (and to beat out the CES news cycle). In other words, Apple should let the rest of the month pass, and then make a major hardware introduction on every Tuesday in February, culminating in a press event on the last Tuesday of the month to unveil the much-anticipated new Mac mini (and with the 32-gig iPhone coming somewhere beforehand).
At the end of the day, Apple is probably logically right that MacWorld doesn’t make sense for them anymore. I think it’s ungrateful, given how much the enthusiast community saved Apple during the mid-’90s, but it probably is the right thing from a business standpoint. But it also feels like they deliberately left a lot out of today’s announcements, as if to emphasize their rejection of the trade show model. It just felt cheap, you know?
