Macworld Expo NYC 1999
This is an after-the-fact diary of my experience at Macworld Expo.
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Keynote
Wednesday morning, I got in line for the keynote at about 7:30 AM. The line didn't look too bad, but then much later I realized that it started inside! :) Finally we started moving and when I got in, I was way in the back section, though if I wanted I could have gotten something further up if I wanted to. I didn't want to burn any bridges, and I was happy enough to be in this room that I just sat down.
This would be a test. Having dropped my Palm (and cracking the screen), this week was going to be hell for me. The one week I could say that I needed it was this week. And here I was without one. So I took notes from the keynote on a hotel note pad. :-( Don't know why I bothered. Anyway, the keynote was no different than the others I witnessed via web or via satellite. The only difference is content. You know that everyone who is in that room is a Mac fan (or an Apple employee, like the sea of white shirts near me), so you rarely would hear any boos, but instead raucous applause at every turn. When "Steve Jobs" came out, something seemed strange yet normal. The thought process went like "That's Steve Jobs, but not quite Steve Jobs." Something different about him. Well SJ was safe and sound backstage. We were looking at Noah Wyle. Ha ha!! After doing his "Pirates" schtick, SJ came out and showed him how to do a keynote (Open the water bottle, grab the slide controller). Very funny. On to the speech...
As always, Steve starts out with the financial information.Basic idea: Apple's back and has been for a quite some time. mentioned inventory turnaround time (.6 day for Apple, 2 days each for Compaq+ Dell. - "the mail order twins") and iMac sales. 1.9 million iMac purchases expected by its first birthday (August 15, 1999, four days before my 22nd)
He went on to talk about products starting with QuickTime. He said that with 23 million downloads of the high-quality 25 MB Star Wars trailer, they had transferred 400 terabutes of it in the biggest Internet event ever. Meanwhile, QT 4 got 10 million downloads. At this point, he announced QuickTime TV, which seems to me be just more and better content for QT Streaming Video. Providers such as VH1, ABCNews, Warner Bros., and Disney have joined the QT4 bandwagon to provide content, some of it interactive using Shockwave Flash. To demonstrate QT4's straming, Phil Schiller played Werid Al's "The Saga Begins." Nice touch. Even better touch: We saw a Toy Story 2 teaser.
OS 9 was next on the agenda. Apparently, Apple and the makers of the other OS9 worked something out and Apple will be able to call Sonata by its appropriate numerical name: OS 9. It will sell for $99 in October and will have 50 new features. The only was that was discussed was Sherlock II which allows sets and has built-in channels. Apple noticed that many people used set for comparison shopping, people searching etc, so they created built-in sets called channels. These are invoked by buttons and the columns in the search window are tailored for each channnel Very nice addition to Sherlock. Glad they put it in, though in the meantime Baker Street Assistant works for me, as the best one out there.
Now for the hardware, and the most anticipated Apple product - the consumer portable. The four part matrix is finally complete with the announcement of the iBook (i= consumer; Book = portable). But before that, he threw out some stats about iMac sales and software development.for the Mac platform. Bungie showed a 3D demo of Halo, and Ozzie Osbourn of IBM showed off ViaVoice for Mac (missed only one word! :) )
Finally on to hardware: the consumer portable. What do we want, he says. An iMac to go. Here's what we get. 12.1" TFT display (800 x 600). ATI Rage Mobility, 4MB VRAM; 300 MHz G3, 24X CD, 32 MB RAM up to 128 MB (?), 56K modem, Ethernet and USB. It has a full-size keyboard, 6 hour battery life, a handle, and an AC adapter shaped like a hockey puck to automatically retract the cord. Oh yeah, and it has wireless capabilities for wireless LANs. So you can hook up ten iBooks to a single base station for roaming throughout your house (up to 150 feet). The iBook has the antennas built-in, but you need a $99 card to go under the keyboard. The base station is $299. This isn't very economical for one uer, but a lab will find this more useful. The base station has 56K modem and Ethernet connectorsto support both connections. Pre-order now for $1599, due in September.
Steve then showed the ads for the iBook. Personally, I liked the first one as being the only one that can be respected- the rest were just goofy. The clever thing is Steve didn't show us the wireless stuff until after we saw the ads. He said "one more thing" and went on the web. Then he picked it up and walked to the other side of the room, passing it through a hula-hoop! Then he discussed the wireless technology (called AirPort) and showd an ad for the base station, which made it look like a UFO. Very cute.
After tbe keynote ended, Apple employees scatered around the croud stood up and took out their iBooks!! They were in generic black bags so no one would suspect anything. Anyone in the keynote could have tried one, which were leashed to its employee. See that below.
That's it for the keynote. Let's head to the floor.
Show floor report
Wednesday was my day for collecting product info and finding the deals. That was my day to get data sheets. Castlewood was there, which was a nice surprise since they said they weren't coming. They make the Orb drive which is a 2.2 GB removable media drive $199 for a SCSI drive, and $29 for the disks- sweet!! I also grabbed some info on home networking (phoneline stuff).
I had "registered" for a bunch of the User Conferences, and skipped about half of them. The one I could not miss was David Pogue's "PalmPilot and Macintosh: A Match Synched in Heaven." (buy it here) It was a laugh riot, so I decided to hang out at his presentations in the Palm Pavillion. He then autographed my iBook poster (Who wants to touch me?).
In the evening, I went to the SF tradiotional Netter's Dinner, after freaking out that I wouldn't find them. We went to L'Allegria (44th and 9th), 30 of us. Service was "eh" but we were a huge group. We talked about different stuff, like Apple WWDC, Star Wars (sorry, my fault, if I recall correctly) and of course iBooks.
Thursday, I met up with Ed Keyes of HackMaster fame. We got LinuxPPC CD's and Orb hats (whoo!) I hung out in the Palm Pavillion most of the afternoon. Today was my buying day, picking up Conflict Catcher and Speed Startup at a $59.99 bundle by Casady + Greene. I also found some accesories for my Nokia phone, at a small discount. In the afternoon, I hung out in the Palm Pavillion near LandWare, and the founder asked me to help out the next day....
Friday, I worked at LandWare in the Palm Pavillion, giving information on the GoType and the GoVox (Voice recorder in a Palm flip-cover).
During the show, I also found a few new and noteworthy items of some interest to me, maybe to you also...
•ORB Tools for my Orb Drive (Mac Version) will be ready in about two weeks (
•Now Bundle lovers can expect an update to version 3.7 in 2weeks also. They will have 3.8 including Palm Sync early next year.(I have to check on that date.)
•Entrega has a new product called the USB Dock. It's a USB hub with converters for serial and SCSI. They also offer many multi-function hubs which can have serial and parellel ports as well as USB ports..
•Powerlogix was announcing new G3 upgrades for PM 6500:
- 240/120/512K $199
- 320/160/1MB $399
- 400/160/1MB $599
I think that's all for me. Let me know if you want to see more info.
Pics below (except for the last one) by Geoffrey Rosenberg who really wants his name on this page.
Thumbnails by Blu Forman (no relation!)
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| The Two Joshes-Josh Weisbuch and Josh Forman (me). | iCEO Steve Jobs smiles for the camera |
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| Hello world Steve holds up an iBook | It's all
mine! Me holding an iBook. (No, it's not mine.)
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