Notes On MacWorld 2009: Probably, My Last One Ever

January 10th, 2009

This past Wednesday I attended MacWorld in San Francisco, as has been my modus operandi for the past decade or so ever since I moved to the Bay Area. It’s always been a fun annual tradition, and I’ve gone with a variety of folks (even coerced my wife into attending a few times). These past two years I met up with fellow Mac geek JC, who writes a blog called Common Sense Courtesy which is well worth checking out.

Anyhow, this year was tinged with a bit of sadness, as this may be the last MacWorld I make an effort to attend. This is purely because Apple won’t exhibit at future MacWorlds, and without their keynote or the always ginormous central Apple booth, one large draw has been removed.

So after leaving Moscone center this time around, I found myself reminiscing past MacWorlds. I think the nuttiest years in terms of sheer magnitude were back at the tail end of the .com boom. There was so much schwag you really did need a plastic bag, and companies were in competition to outdo the other — I recall some totally unnecessary “Iomega dancers” as the apex of booth-competition. Yes, dancing about external storage solutions, made so much sense back then — I am still haunted by memories of the “click of death.”

Another very nutty year saw the introduction of the iPhone. It wasn’t even available for people to play with. Instead, the crowds gawked at the silvery-lust-object in a revolving case.

Also interesting to observe was the shift as Apple released different products which in turn, inspired others. After the colored iMac, fruit-colored plastic was incorporated into every peripheral. A plastic adapter to turn the craptastic iMac “puck” mouse into something usable is the type of product that shows up in entertaining excess at MacWorld. After the birth of the venerable MP3 player, Moscone North and South were overrun with iPod accessories: cases, stickers, stands, etc. The iPhone deluge is just starting.

This year the exhibit hall was noticeably mellower than years past. Several of the bigger names were notably absent: Adobe and Belkin. And one common product type was RAID-style storage, where you have several user-replaceable drives in one unit.

But as always, I did find one product that got my geek juices flowing. — the new version of VMWare Fusion, which I’ve always wanted to try out. I just installed a copy of Ubuntu within Fusion on my MacBook since I don’t have a copy of XP handy. This is the sort of geekery that MacWorld induces in me, and I’m glad for it — finding something fun to tinker that ideally, will help productivity.

So as always, I’m glad I attended MacWorld. It’s always been a fun to follow the continuing story of Apple, along with the other companies that surround it in that particular area of the geek-o-sphere.

Gee, I might just talk myself into attending next year’s.