It’s not even over, though it’s over for me! Just don’t have the stamina anymore- and I’m so new to owning a Mac (2 months, now). These are random notes I wrote while walking around the exhibit floors yesterday.
Ran into another writer– who I fear is far more geekier- and had a total flashback to high school moment. 1988: I’m in the Macintosh User’s Group (why??). At a meeting someone asks me: “What kind of Mac do you have”? My answer: “Beige.” Well, at that time they were all beige. So flash forward … Adam goes, “Do you have an Intel-based Mac?” Me: realizing that color is no longer the correct answer, goes “I have a Macbook Core Duo.” They look at me, and continue to foist me off on pushy saleslady (for the parallel mac/PC software). So whew! Didn’t completely botch that one.
This is the conference where my mom found out her business would be made obsolete by PageMaker. Walking the halls, it had a kind of real impression that new tech is always out there, but there are old techs (and dreams) out there too.
Actually bought something- Storyist– I’ll doubtlessly write about it soon. It’s a novel-writing aid. I never spend money on my hobby so this was a minor indulgence. The guy selling it and I talked a bit- he had worked at Apple and left in ’93, “when things began to slide” and I commiserated, as that was when I attended/spoke at MacWorld- 90-94. Felt like an AA meeting, admitting our old creds.
On the fringe of the floor, trying to find the exit around 4:40PM, I hear a guy on a mike startup a class: “We’re having a great time here, folks. And Happy Hour is only 10 minutes away.”
There’s this balloon making guy, and nobody was wearing balloon hats. Another exhibit floor gizmo that didn’t fly.
OK, you go to a conference in San Francisco, and you eat at the conference food kiosks. Why? Why? This is the land of good food!
The music aisle was by far the most interesting- cool tricked out iPods and neat custom earphones. It was pretty mobbed there.
Despite it being 10 years later, I saw a guy presenting the almost same presentation I did when I was on the floor- simple animation software. Weird. Some software just presents very well.
The jokes by those presenter people does not get better. “I have bazillions of files. Bazillions.” Nary a laugh. Another guy: “I know kids in the audience go, why burn to a CD? I have a Nano.” Everyone in his audience was 40+ with Nanos, guy.
The conference person walk: they look to the left, they look to the right, but not in front of them, causing tons of near-miss pedestrian accidents in the hallways. And then, I ended up doing the walk near the end, as I grew more tired. Ugh!
Some products were interesting- competitors to Kodak in making printed out merchandise, the parallel software for running PC on Macs, and Storyist (which I got). I liked the iPhones and AppleTV, but honestly if I can’t play with it myself it’s hard to get very excited. Also- the AppleTV is a Mini, in my book.