I was excited for Macworld 2009. Even though Apple announced this will be the last year it participates, and even though Phil Schiller was to deliver the Keynote instead of the be-turtlenecked Steve Jobs, I though for sure there would be cool booths and awesome schwag.
There were three highlights which I'll get to in a hot minute. First I want to whine about the disappointments.
Apple's Big Announcements
iLife '09 holds promise with added features like GarageBand's lessons with musicians and... oh wait. That's all. I don't even really care about GarageBand or iMovie. Come to think of it, I'm not that interested in iPhoto '09 either. I can organize just fine with my version of iPhoto and I like to upload photos to Facebook the good old-fashioned way. And iWeb? I never use WYSIWYGs to build sites and pages. Okay, so let me revise: GarageBand '09 is the big highlight for people like my nephew, who just got his first guitar and is excited to learn.
Next up: iWork '09. Okay, I have iWork '08 and the only program I use is Keynote. And I've only used it twice. It is admittedly way better than PowerPoint. But really, nothing new here and besides, who can get excited about productivity tools?
Lastly, the 17" MacBook Pro. Huh. That's weird. I could swear there was already a 17" MacBook Pro. Oh, okay, it's all new. Fine. *yawn*
iPod/iPhoneworld
I have a 1st gen iPod Touch, an awesome and highly anticipated replacement for my work-horse 3rd gen iPod (40GB). I do enjoy the Touch quite a bit, and I got years of use out of the 3rd gen. I understand the excitement over the iPhone 3G (though I do rather enjoy my T-Mobile G1 with Google's Android OS). But holy hell, every booth at Macworld was either selling skins or cases for iPod or iPhone.
And even with iPodworld, my favorite headphone vendor, Skullcandy, wasn't even there. They had the best schwag last year and I got a screaming deal on my furry pink headphones. This year, no dice.
Tchotchkes, or lack thereof
Macworld is the place to the best tchotchkes, hands down. Last year, I got wristbands and a gold-plated necklace with the Skullcandy logo; an LED-lit Belkin logo necklace; a nylon bookbag; a bottle pourer; and all the Retrospex I could carry.
This year, I got some post-modern Google stickers and an Iomega pin that says "Share Me".
Which brings me to the cool stuff.
The Google spread was massive and included a YouTube upload booth designed to look like a London phone booth. The upload booth had a MacBook Pro set up inside.
You could record yourself with the MacBook Pro and then instantly upload your video to YouTube. They did limit video to 6 seconds and it was really fricking hot in the box, but my niece and I had fun.
The coolest thing that happened by far was running into Chris Hardwick at the Apple booth while he was filming for G4. He was supersweet and talked with me for a few minutes despite my proclamation that I am "one of his many internet stalkers", and my niece's "That's what she said" interjection.
Rounding out the cool stuff was TechRestore's booth. I heard rumors, and went in search, and lo and behold: the Back to the Future DeLorean!
Though not the actual DeLorean, it's a pretty great replica, yeah?
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Posted by: exSarah | 13 January 2010 at 02:36