Macworld 2009 Post Mortem

Okay, I'm sitting in my hotel room and the Macworld Expo is officially over - it ended at 4:00 (it's 6:33 as I type this). I have an early flight and I decided to be responsible and not go out yet again, though there were a few opportunities that tempted me, including the meetup at the W.

I had a great time this week. My previous trips to Macworld were nowhere near as busy nor anywhere near as fun. I got to talk to and hang out with a huge number of very cool people, got some leads and possible work, and just had an absolutely great time being around other Mac geeks.

But the week has taken its toll on me: I am absolutely exhausted and I got very little work done.

I didn't take very many pictures this week, but one I took that some people might be interested in is this picture of the glossy and non-glare screens on the 17" MacBook Pro side-by-side. It's not a great picture, I only brought my point and shoot and the lighting wasn't very good, but it does show the difference in the screens and the fact that the bezels are different colors (silver vs. black). I definitely like the non-glare better, I'm just not sure I like it $50 better. The glossy screen doesn't bother me as much as it used to.



A huge thanks to all the cool people who made time for me this week, and to anyone I missed, I'm going back into hermit mode, but I'll be back out for WWDC and would love to meet even more Mac and iPhone programmers.

I'll be traveling most of tomorrow, then Sunday is going to be an offline day spent with the family. Monday, I'll be back at my desk, business as usual.

Macworld 2009

Okay, folks: it's now less than a day until I leave for Macworld. I hope to finish up the Particle Engine code and blog post on the flight out to California and hope to post it by Monday. I've got everything working except for mapping textures to the particles, which is what allows really cool effects.

If you're going to be at Macworld and see me, please say "hi!". I'm quite friendly and rarely bite. I'll be around the show floor or seated at the tables outside the show floor in Moscone South a good bulk of the day on most days - I have very little in the way of scheduled activities during the day this year, and will spend most of that time either writing, coding, or looking for people I want to meet or see again.

In the past, I've gotten to Moscone North pretty early on Tuesday in hopes of getting into the big room. The RDF works much better in the big room and its effects are more fun. I'll probably sleep in a little this year - I'm not sure being in the big room for a Philnote is worth losing sleep over, though I'll definitely go sit in the overflow room and see how he does. I don't envy him - Jobs is a tough act to follow and it's going to be tough to keep people from being at least a little disappointed.

On Monday night, I'm going to the informal meetup at Tommy's Mexican at 7:00 pm organized by Tequila connoisseur and programmer extraordinaire, B.Bum. On Tuesday night, I'm going to stop by the CocoaHeads meeting at the Apple Store to watch Mike Lee give his new and improved "Pimp My App" presentation. I've heard the original presentation was excellent, so it should be a real treat. If you go, get there early. The CocoaHeads at WWDC was literally standing room only. I was standing in the printer section myself. I'd like to actually be able to hear the presentation this time, so I'll be there early. I'm sure there will be other events in the evenings that I will attend, but that's all that's on my calender so far.

I will be using Twitter to let people know where I am all week, so if you're interested in saying "hi", you might want to follow me. I'll probably have a few copies of the iPhone book to give away. No promises, but I've got quite a few copies taking up space that I need for words written by other people.

Andy Ihnatko on Apple & the Macworld Expo

Andy Ihnatko penned a long article on Apple's recent announcement. Although peppered here and there with Andy's famous wit, this article is one of the more serious and insightful articles I've seen from Andy (or anyone else, for that matter). It's a good read, and if you're a Mac-head of any flavor, you should read it.

Personally, I'm still grumpy about the fact that when MacUser and MacWorld magazines (back when they were both dead-tree publications) merged, they gave the back cover article to John C. Dvorak. Andy always penned the back page of MacUser, and Dvorack had MacWorld's back page (IIRC, it was a long time ago). MacWorld was probably the better magazine. Certainly it was the bigger magazine, but I always looked forward to MacUser more because of the often gut-wrenchingly funny back page articles Andy wrote.

My one quibble with the article, though, is Andy's assurances that the MacWorld Expo and Conference is "in terrific hands and I don't think it's ever been more valuable". These assurances rings a little hollow, and I think it would be an understatement to say that Macworld will have trouble staying relevant without Apple's participation. To me, it sounds lik somebody telling a friend who's on their death bed that they are going to be just fine. It's not true and Andy knows it's not true, but he's had a long relationship with the conference and its organizers, so I can understand his hesitation with writing them off, but I'm not going in 2010, and I'm betting I'm not the only person for whom 2009 will be their last Macworld.

Apple better keep doing WWDC, though. That's the more valuable conference to people like me, and the show I really look forward to.

MacWorld 2009

Today, Apple announced a double whammy: 2009 would be the last MacWorld they will attend, and Steve's not giving the keynote this year.

Not sure what to make of it, but I'm pretty sure Apple just rang the death knell for the Macworld Conference & Expo. I do not expect that to be a Macworld 2010, and even if there is, I doubt many people will go. But, that's next year, and for this year, I will be there this year, even without the chance of seeing another Stevenote, so if you see me, say Hi. I'll periodically be tweeting where I am in hopes of meeting some people in meatspace who I currently only know online.