MacWorld SuperBlog

News overload. That's how I felt after I returned from our recent trip which is why this review took so long. I still have lots to catch up on but hopefully you will enjoy my initial impressions of MacWorld 2007 at San Francisco this past week.

Rob did all the planning and got us a hotel room at the Villa Florence in downtown San Francisco. It was a nice location full of corporate executive types in 2 piece suits. I felt a bit out of place with my blue jeans and black shirt but if it's good enough for Steve...

Based on Rob's online recommendation we left the hotel about 3:45 AM in order to make it in the line at about 4:00 AM. Much to my surprise there was already a line starting from the doors of the Moscone West building to the end of the street. We knew it was a big hall so we weren't worried about getting a seat. We plopped down and busted out with our iPod's. We talked with a few of our fellow brethren to kill some time. One man in front of came from Chicago and another couple of guys came from Berkeley and Seattle. Most were first time keynote attendees like us. One thing about downtown San Francisco is that there is literally a coffee house on every corner but the one next to us didn't open until 5:00 AM. Eventually some MacWorld employees came around with free coffee and donuts around 6:00 AM but by then I already picked up some Cafe Mocha's at Starbucks down the street (one next to Moscone had a Wii sized line already).

At around 8:00 AM they let us in the building and directed us to the staging area in a very long line about 6 people wide. We waited there and noticed a separate line across from us form. It turns out this was the line for all the MacWorld Platinum Pass and SuperPass ticket holders that got priority seating for the keynote. With a Early Registration price of $1,495 and $1,395 respectively I had no problem coming in early for a seat since we only spent $215 for our tickets.

The MacWorld Keynote was everything I expected it to be and so much more. After we were allowed in, people were frantically trying to find a seat since the rows were filling up fast. Rob and I sat down right away and within a few minutes all the seats were taken followed by waves of people combing the aisles looking for that last available one. Most of them ended up standing in the back and sides of the auditorium. Based on the size of the line behind us, I figure that a good percentage of people couldn't get in and had to watch the keynote from another room with a TV feed. Hey you snooze you lose.

Jobs presentation and speech skills are legendary and it was a real treat to see him in person. Since we sat kind of back it was actually easier to view him via the big monitor on display. His keynote speech is available for viewing on Apple's website so I won't rehash what was discussed but I would like to give my first person view on the experience.

The Apple TV presentation looked good, up until Steve announced that the maximum supported video resolution is 720p. Apple really should have made it work with at least 1080i if not 1080p. Not that I even have a HDTV but when I buy one it's sure going to have 1080 resolution. What's really weird is that Apple currently doesn't sell any HD content (movies/TV shows) to watch on your TV other than the standard free movie trailers from the QuickTime site. Add a rather smallish 40GB drive coupled with a $300 price tag and you have something that needs a rev B before I will consider it. Apple had a wall of demo units that connected to 40" Sony Bravia LCD's that we were welcome to test out. I noticed that navigating to the photos had a small lag before they were displayed but other than that the product looked good. What the demo didn't reveal but what I eventually found out on the Apple website is that a widescreen TV is mandatory so even if I wanted it, I couldn't use this with my current SDTV.

The iPhone demo was nothing short of amazing. Everything that is wrong with current cell phone design has been solved with the iPhone, from the difficulty of entering (and syncing) contacts to answering voicemails in any order. In addition there are plenty of Apple touches like the gorgeous bitmapped display to the smart touchscreen that can detect which key you meant to press based on the adjacent keys and what word you are trying to spell. People complained about the relatively high price ($499 and $599) and the exclusive Cingular contract but I firmly believe this phone will sell like hotcakes. Remember when the iPod was first introduced it was also deemed too expensive compared to other MP3 players but people snapped them up anyways. Apple later introduced less expensive models and I'm sure they will do the same for the iPhone. Since I already have a phone provided by my job and Annel just got a brand new LG Chocolate Cherry phone I can't justify getting one in June, but once her 2 year contract expires you can bet I will be looking to see what new models Apple has to offer. Another complaint I overheard was the 5 hour battery life, but this is no worse (and even better) then other "smart" phones. RIM's top of the line BlackBerry Pearl only gets 3.5 hours of talk time while Palm's high end Treo 750 only gets 4 hours and none of these phones are half as cool as the iPhone! The only real negative I can think of is that corporate customers won't quickly ditch their Treo's and BlackBerry's since they need secure access to their Exchange or Lotus Notes mailboxes via the MAPI protocol and not IMAP like Jobs said would be available. I'm sure by June we'll see something to address this.

The Cingular CEO, Stan Sigman was a complete bore. He read from cue cards (amateur!) which never seemed to disappear as he kept flipping them over. I really don't know what point he was trying to make, all I remember was something about AT&T merger with Cingular and very little was spoken about Apple or the iPhone. The crowd seemed to agree and was losing interest fast so they collectively started clapping at the end before he finished. He looked up sort of irate and then quickly finished his speech. If only they had that 'hurry up' music they play for long winded winners at the Oscars!

What was missing from the Keynote was the obligatory Microsoft supports Apple speech from Roz Ho. I was so looking forward to seeing her on stage. It turns out that Rob saw her hanging out at the Microsoft booth where they were showing off previews of Office 2008. I walked right by her when Rob tugged at my arm to point out where she was standing. I thought it would be a hoot to get my picture taken with her but Rob advised against it, thinking it would be in poor taste.

Since Rob and I both registered for the Users Conference we ended up attending most of the same sessions together. Because of our schedule, we only got to see a few but they were informative and offered a nice place to sit down and relax after walking around all day. One night we went to the local Apple Store and saw a demo of Luxology's modo 202 product which is where this picture came from.

The Expo itself was smaller than what I was used to from attending previous tradeshows like E3 and Comdex but it turned out to be a good thing. There was plenty of room to walk around without bumping into people and you got to talk to vendors without waiting in line. Apparently the Woz was there as well as Robin Williams (who is a San Fran resident) but I didn't see either of them. Rob and I attended some cool upcoming product demo's from Adobe, Apple and some rather boring ones from FormZ and Microsoft (Office 2008 looks awful!). I ended up purchasing a few products since most vendors were offering MacWorld discounts and I also want to legitimize my software collection. I bought Roxio's Toast 8 Titanium which was just introduced during the show and Elgato's EyeTV Hybrid, which allows you to play, record and edit live TV on your Mac. I'll blog about these products at a later time.

We attended a MacWorld party on Tuesday night sponsored by Google and Microsoft. It was the typical geekfest I thought it would be but the roast beef sandwiches were excellent. I ate about 6 of them. Cheap Trick was there performing but I have to admit I never heard of them until they played the theme song from That 70's Show.

Since it was on the way to the Moscone Center, we stopped by the Metreon to play a little Resistance of War on the PlayStation 3. It was timed to quit after 15 mins but it gave us enough of a chance to play some co-op. It was a good looking game but not good enough for me to drop $600 bucks (plus $60 for the game) to get a PS3.

One night we walked over to Chinatown and ate at the famous House Of Nanking. It's famous because its a tourist haven and features pictures from some D-list celebrities like Rachel Ray and Kathy Griffin. I thought the food was OK but had better in Camarillo. Reading some online reviews ahead of time would probably have sent us to a better place.

Overall I had a great time at MacWorld. It would be interesting to see where the iPhone ranks in Mac history. Jobs seemed genuinely excited about it as he compared it to the launch of the original Macintosh and the iPod. Perhaps one day I can tell my grandkids that I was there when Jobs first announced it.