Wednesday, January 12, 2005

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MacWorld Expo San Francisco I just got back from a long walk up and down and between the aisles at MacWorld, the tradeshow, not the magazine. It used to be much bigger. Smaller is fine with me and my tootsies, but not so fine for the tradeshow business. I haven't yet taken inventory to see if most of the Mac players were there. If they were, it also doesn't bode well for the Mac platform. The huge Apple booth (pavilion?) in the middle of Moscone's eastern exhibit hall was fronted by a wall of the new mini-mini iPOD Shuffles. People walked up to one, gave a listen, then moved over to another one. Something about random music. They use flash media (a first for Apple)--the same stuff that goes into USB thumb drives and all those media cards, such as Memory Sticks, Secure Digital, Compact Flash and XDisc cards. The Shuffle is basically a thumb drive with headphone jacks and a fast-fprward button. The prices are high, in line with the ethos of the Mac--we're special and so you get cachet points by paying through your teeth for our stuff. But, actually, not as disproportionate as, say, the 40 gig iPOD. The 512 MB iPOD Shuffle lists for $99, the 1 GB lists for $149. For comparison, a secure 512 USB thumb drive sells for about $50 and a 1 GB USB flash drives go for about $100. A lot of people stopped in front of the wall of Shuffles, listened to one, then moved over and listened to another two or three. No one acted overtly enthusiastic, but maybe enthusiasm isn't cool. There were bigger crowds in front of the row of tables showing the new $500 Mac Mini, which looks like an overblown iPOD power transformer. The Mac Mini costs $499 for the 1.25GHz model with a 40GB Ultra ATA hard drive; $599 for a 1.42GHz model with an 80GB Ultra ATA drive. Add a keyboard, mouse, and monitor (just like buying a PC) and you've got your basic $800 to $1,000 Mac system. Attendees weren't slobbering over the Mac Minis either. One of the things that, for me, has always differentiated Mac shows from PC shows is the applause. Mac folks used to applaud at those large demos where the stand-up guy (or three blond women in black polo shirts) throw T-shirts into the crowd. Applaud. At sales pitches. Well, today, the Apple guys demo-ing Mac OSX Tiger had to prompt the audience. "Waddya think?" "Is this cool or what?" And then the audience applauded. Not like the good old days. 4:24:40 PM