Tom Bridge: MacWorldExpo

More Blogs!

Sat, 11 Jan 2003 16:22:40 GMT

Some quick googling and such has turned up six blogs that needed to be added at right. They are...

Chris and Gretchen are a great pair. They run Lockergnome with Jake and Lori and while they're split between the Bay Area (where Chris and Gretchen are) and Iowa (where Lori and Jake are), they're one big family. Great folks.

Also, we've got Courtney and Mike who were also on the trolley with us during that wild and crazy time. Great folks, more blogs to read! W00t.

Look at these awesome guys!

Sat, 11 Jan 2003 15:20:22 GMT

Here's a pic the Lockergnome folks took of us. I'm in the middle. Neil's on my left, Ben on my right.

Technology Entry!

Fri, 10 Jan 2003 23:58:38 GMT

Okay, this is going to be a bit detailed.

First of all, I think I'm going to have kick some ass over at Cisco for making their Pix VPN routers such a pain to deal with. First of all, their "browser configuration manager" should really read "Browser configuration manager only if you have windows, if you have a Mac, I'm really sorry." And to say that their documentation is difficult to understand is like saying that sanskrit is a dead language: a deep understatement.

So, what should have taken possibly an hour took about three or so, as we struggled with the cisco language structure and command syntax to set up the firewall to be configurable from outside the firewall. Thanks guys! *sigh*

My friend Mike and I were talking today about what he was looking forward to at SXSW in March: mainly, Airport connection in the meeting rooms. Well, this is what I discovered at Macworld Expo: poorly planned wireless nets are worse than no wireless at all. The Expo floor was covered in secured base stations that were on conflicting channels. It was such a nightmare.

There was a saving grace, however, thanks to Macwarehouse, who were providing WiFi internet access in the main hallway between stations, however, there wasn't enough space on their networks, their networks were prone to some hacking, and evne worse: phreaking. That's right, some script kiddies with a Linux Vaio showed up with some packet watchers to grab peoples' email passwords that were passed in plaintext. Worse yet: what they did was totally legal.

Now I have to change all my passwords.

Lessons:

proper planning of WiFi networks on a convention floor is a requirement.
secured email password passing through ssl or other medium should be a requirement.
hacker kids deserve beatings. The more public, the more violent, the better.

In order for Rendezvous to take off as a messaging zeroconf platform, it needs to handle not just peer to peer messaging (which it does right now) but also multiparty messaging, like an IRC daemon can. Perhaps there needs to be a small server built into iChat 2 that would handle multiple individual chats. The current implementation is good, but not good for say, conference sessions where you've got ad hoc networking, but not attached networks.

Just some stuff to think about.

New Blog at Right.

Fri, 10 Jan 2003 02:34:20 GMT

Oh, one last thing. Added the guy who's keeping a blog on Safari to the right navigation bar. David Hyatt wrote the browser, actually. So his blog "Surfin' Safari" is now featured at right. Hooray for developers at Apple reaching out to the community and getting responses. Of course, that could be because the browser's pretty damn near open source.

Rendezvous Session Notes

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 21:10:22 GMT

While I realize I will have to cut out early, here are my initial impressions from the Rendezvous Session:

They've moved their presentation from PowerPoint to Keynote for this presentation, having migrated it over for this session. Keynote's great in practical value.

Scott Sheppard and Adrian Mayo from OSX FAQ are running the presentation.

What is Rendezvous from the User's Perspective?

Three Macs, two printers and an Airport. Now what? Automatically form a network, no manual config

iChat is configured for Rendezvous network use. Will discover all local iChat services that are running on a local net.

Rendezvous in Printers: Printer manufacturers are incorporating Rendezvous. ALl Macs connect will see the service, as its advertized, either in color or B&W. Being adopted by Epson, HP, Lexmark, Canon, Xerox, etc.

Mobile phones will work w/ Rendezvous to access a network and sync.

Consumer devices like TiVo and Stereos will work with iTunes eventually.

Sybase and WorldBook have both adopted stuff to work with their suite.

You can surf via http://another-computer.local if that other computer has rendezvous enabled file-sharing or web-sharing turned on.

On to the "geeky" stuff...

ZeroConf runs on top of the existing TCP/IP stack in order to be chatty like AppleTalk was in OS 9. We see ZC for the first time in 10.2 Jag.

What is ZC networking?

A tech to enable plug and play networking. Doesn't require special servers, or manual config. It's cross platform. Things automatically locate each other and automatically share files and printers, nothing you need to do to set things up to talk to each other.

But the problem is that it's a work in progress. Apple's leading the pack, but others are joining along, including Philips and TiVo and others. Not yet been employed yet to build nets as much as they'd hope.

But what's the scope? Not aimed at really large network structures. It's all aimed for within a subnet currently. Really aimed for an impromptu network. Like a LAN party.

<insert boring ass over-simplified history of TCP/IP here>
this can be simplified by saying the Mac used to run two protocols: TCP/IP and AppleTalk. This is bad, twice as much can break. So, Apple dropped AppleTalk. Why? Well, some apps had to handle two protocols, which sucked. So OS X moved us to Unix, which meant TCP/IP is the native tongue, AppleTalk is worthless. TCP/IP is built for massively large networks, but not without some attention to details. But we want things to be easy when it comes to little Impromptu networks. The Goals of ZeroConf.

To enable Zerconf and casual networks
Run over TCP/IP
Run alongside configured Networks
Must be secure
Must not break existing applications

The services of ZeroConf

Address allocation - unique
Host name allocation - unique
Host name to IP address resolution
Service discovery
Multicast

This is where I had to go...more later when I find the PowerPoint on their website.

Gah. Crappy Session

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 18:58:48 GMT

Sessions that Suck. I just got out of Disaster Relief. You'd think they'd have prepared us for actual disasters... No such luck. Disillusioned. In search of shiny crap on Expo Floor until 4:30 for Rendezvous Session.

Pictures!

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 16:05:11 GMT

Pictures from the party last night.

Expo redux

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 15:39:19 GMT

Been a good morning here. We said goodbye to Neil about 9:30 this morning, he headed off to the airport to try to catch an earlier flight back to Chicago. Got ourselves checked out of the Villa Florence, which overall was nice, if very very cramped. The room was pretty but there was maybe 10 sqft of real floor space beyond the beds, and yes that may include the closet. Worth it at $70/night on Priceline though, although I heard that several people got into the Marriott at that price, so I suppose we didn't get the Killer Diller deal.

This afternoon I've got three more sessions and then we'll pack up and head back for Davis at 6pm this evening to arrive just before 9pm, having combined a bus trip to Emeryville and a train ride back to Davis from there. It's been a good Macworld. The keynote was incredible and the new iLife suite promises to do for creative integration what Office did for productivity. Apple's aligned themselves perpendicular to Microsoft at the moment, with some obvious overlay with Keynote. Microsoft obviously doesn't understand creativity, while Apple does. Apple doesn't have a huge grasp on office productivity, and while I won't say that they "understand" it, I will say that they are doing a better job. However, Apple understands the market better than their 5% market share suggests. I think this is where we see Apple succeed. Want to do stuff with those photos, those home movies, those goodies that are coming along with being a person with a camera and an opinion? Great. iLife says "You Can Do This!"

*sigh* I think Steve's Distortion Field is still in play. Oh well. I can live that way.

AppleScript Basics User Group Session

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 15:32:22 GMT

Change of Plan. This morning I decided I might be better served by a presentation on the beginnings of AppleScript, so here I sit in Room 305 instead of the Secrets of MacOS X presentation. Weather in San Francisco this morning is more murky and foggy, making for a more shady feel to this city that sometimes is as rundown and homely as I feel. Wandering about last night, a little bit in the bag from the good beer on the C|Net Party Trolley, I remember why I liked San Francisco. Pizza at midnight next to the Hotel. Buildings tall enough to be imposing, but unique in their architecture enough to be fun. Okay. Time to take notes!! Safari is indeed Scriptable, and is part of this demo! Eeeeeexcelllent. AppleScript was implemented back in System 7 as an open architecture. You could build systems that were built on it, a la QuickKeys or Frontier. Commands go into "tell" blocks. For Example:
tell application "Finder" empty trash end tell Safari being applescriptable means that you can create a daily surf run that includes a bunch of sites, their positioning and such. tell application "Safari" activate make new document at beginning documents set the URL of front document to"http://www.apple.com" end tell or something like this that grabs the properties of a webpage from within Safari...source code and all. tell application "Safari" activate set y to properties of document 1 end tell activate me y or you could grab all the text of just the article to send it via another scriptable app like Mail or Eudora and such. Like perhaps sending URLs to my weblog in certain fashions. Sounds good to me! What would be really kickass would be...scripting Rendezvous. Say, for example you've got your alarm clock. Script it to go off at a certain time as given by your controller. Say you want to wake up to music instead. Script your radio. This is the kind of integration I'm looking forward to. Moving on. The Program Dictionary. It brings up the whole "You can Script me!" list. From within the dictionary, you can look at the various classes, elements, properties and all that jazz for specific applications. So, I've got mailbox and message classes in Mail and those in turn have properties as well, etc. Recordable applications have the ability to write the code for you as you perform actions within the program. There aren't a ton of these. None of the Apple apps seem to be recordable, nor is the finder. Resources. AppleScript Website AppleScript Resources Join the AppleScript Users List. There's an Apple Script Language Guide in HTML out there (links of course to follow when I have real web access) Don't be shy about adapting other peoples' code if they've been posting it openly. It's all fair game. Apple Script Source Book
Macscripter.net

Some Parties Are Just Good Fun!

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 04:36:07 GMT

What a night. Thanks so much to David Lawrence and his lovely producer Lily for the awesome party they threw tonight. We met over at Gordon Biersch on Harrison tonight over at the Embarcadero. They had waiting for us some serious appetizers and a great big surprise: Our Own Trolley. We got on the trolley, having met the guys from LockerGnome (Chris and Lori and Gretchen and Jake, as well as their friends Courtney and Mike) as well as a bunch of other people who were there, having heard about the party from the expo floor or from the website.

We wandered about the city, getting free Gordon Biersch beer on the trolley (their Märzen is really high quality) and shooting a potato gun and heh, even mooning random strangers and getting boxer shorts for it. Look for my pictures to come tomorrow at some point.

We're all exhausted, but we had great pizza on Union Square and wandered around in the gorgeous city that is San Francisco. What a wonderful place this is. What a great party that was, and I think I may come out of it with some great contacts (like the folks at Lockergnome) and some good friends.

Thanks a lot everyone!!

On Opening The iLife Standards

Thu, 09 Jan 2003 00:18:45 GMT

Adam Bridge has put together a good presentation for why Apple needs to open the hooks for the new iLife suite of applications. He's right. Apple's basing their system on Unix, an open standard. Keynote, also, an open standard. Address Book, an open API. Apple needs to open the hooks to all its stuff. It's opening the "You can do this" statement to increasing the value of Apple's own stuff.

Expo Day Three Update

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:58:58 GMT

Picked up a few things today, in addition to going to a few sessions. Bought an AeroNET wireless card for my bronze laptop, since it's OS X 10.2.3 compatible and the drivers work pretty well. Should be a quality thing to make that machine more usable. Also picked up a two button mouse from Adesso that's awesome: it's like the apple pro mouse, but it lights up blue in the scroll wheel and is two button. Also got a charger for my T68i charger that's USB based. It jacks into the USB port on my TiBook and charges. Slick, eh? The guys from Timbuk2 sold me a TiBook sleeve for my current El Ocho bag. Clips shut at the top, and provides good padding. Very excellent. Tried to go to the SF Bloggers lunch, but I think I missed them by about 5 minutes, it was disappointing. Next time, I guess. Tonight is the Online Tonight party down at Gordon Biersch. We'll head down there in a little bit. In town? Reading my blog? Drop a comment and we'll see if we can chat tomorrow. Tomorrow's Schedule: 10:30a Best of Mac Secrets Room 308
1:30p Mac OS X Disaster Relief: Prevention Room 308 or .Mac session Room 301
3:00p Mac OS X Disaster Relief: Cures Room 308
4:30p Jaguar Unleashed: Rendezvous Room 303

Bluetooth Session

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 19:57:43 GMT

Notes from Apple's User Con Bluetooth Session Ericsson developed Bluetooth in 1994, three years later they created the Bluetooth SIG with Agere, MS, Motorola, 3 Com, and the founders: IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba. Fee-based SIG membership allows royalty free use. Also has a qual board that makes sure Bluetooth devices do what the standard says. Bluetooth is a freqhopper. Makes it hard to break into, also encrypted. Devices are paired. You provide a passcode for two devices that is self-generated and user-created. Headsets and such have set access codes, but limited pairing capabilities. Profile inclues: intercom, cordless telephone, headset, dialup networking, fax, LAN access, file transfer, object push, sync, AV profile is coming very soon. What uses Bluetooth? Cell phones. T68i Ericssons. Headsets. Bluetooth Adapters for Laptops and Desktops. Portable devices: PDAs, tablets. Printers, Data Entry Devices. Storage Devices: Portable File Server anyone? Using Bluetooth Today: Connect to Sony T68i. Transfer contacts, graphics, sounds. Call from Address Book. Send SMS. Receiver Caller ID, Use GPRS for internet access. Phone to Palm stuff as well. IBM Whiteboard Tool. Clip it to the corner of the whiteboard, it will track all the pen sleeves. Will transmit to those w/ Palms or TiBooks or phones w/ the whiteboard content. Slick. Symbol Ring. Barcode Scanner goes via Bluetooth to a WinCE device on a belt that goes via WiFi to the servers. UPS spent 100 mil implementing this. Sony Ericsson Pen. This is SO damn cool. Write something down, write a phone number, it sends it as a graphic. Whoa. Bluetooth could end up in your car, both for phones, and THEN for the car diagnostics. The Potential of Bluetooth is pretty enormous, there's a lot that can be done with the little chips. Bluetooth is also used in Access Points, a la WiFi. Some are for ISDN or Dialup connections as well. Bluetooth serial is legitimate as well, both as printing serial and as a serial adapter a la Keyspan. Bluetooth seems to be an emerging technology that has a lot of potential. AT&T has a service coming up where they will allow unlimited data usage for $50/mo. With some big names behind the standard, it's going to have legs, but I think it will be interesting to see what happens next in terms of companies to use them. Links from the Presentation: Site Presentation
Apple Bluetooth Info
Bluetooth Site
Bluetooth Community
Valhalla
Bluetooth Gear
Carrier and Phone info

Expo Update Day Two

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 15:16:48 GMT

Expo Update, Day Two. Expo's not as heavily attended as I would have hoped, but in some ways, I'm glad it's not. The crowds are manageable, but not sparse, either. The booths are full, but the floor seems more dead than in the past. Notes from Expo: - The new 12" iBooks are separated at birth from the 12" TiBooks.
- nVidia has the coolest booth tchotzke
- DV Forge makes damn cool little things for holding stuff
- there's cool stuff in the small booth
- no one is giving away stuff this year
- there are weird people here, like BofA and the IRS and Discover Cards
- I'm still waiting for the first killer product
- I love my TiHandle.

More later.

Day One Summary

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 00:31:43 GMT

Day One of the Expo is finished, and I find myself exuberant with the possibilities that are out there. In about two weeks, Apple's releasing iLife and with it, all the tools to really do more online stuff with my photos, in addition to doing more along the lines of DVD production from my photos, I can do a lot more with the stuff I already have made. Doing more with iMovie may be a goal in the near future, especially with new iDVD features.

I feel inspired by this Expo. Inspired to develop more content, inspired to develop MacSlash to include more original content, inspired to do more in the community, to foster some of this stuff. Maybe it's the Reality Distortion Field® that's having lingering effects tonight, but I really am excited by all the degrees of interconnectivity. Keynote also rocks my socks. This is a PowerPoint Killer, ladies and gents. I'll be doing a full review of its features in the coming month, for MacSlash and for here. Then there's Safari, which I'm using to write this entry, and despite its lack of tabs, this is a real kickass browser. It's fast. Like IE on the PC fast. It renders tables seamlessly. And for the most part, it's open source. It's built on the KHTML and KJS platform and tuned by the guy who wrote Chimera. Perhaps, we may see something tabs-wise in the coming months as part of the final 1.0 release.

Spent some serious time talking with the Asanté folks and the FirstClass devs today which I will detail at a later time, but I have found solutions to many things.

Woz Panel

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 19:05:52 GMT

Notes and Writeup on the Presentation Panel including Steve Wozniak, Neil Ticktin, Robin Williams and Bob LeVitus. Moderator is Dave Mark, editor in chief of Mac Tech. The line for the presentation snaked across the Expo floor from one exhibit hall halfway to the other. The crowds were being packed in with a crowbar to see the return of Steve Wozniak to the Apple banner. Despite MacSlash's press-credential-denial, we were still able to get a fairly good seat. The panel's topic is Moving to OS X. Some opening questions revealed that the audience was very savvy and very excited about the talk. Most had bought their Mac before 1990, as well. About 10% of the crowd was still booting into OS 9. First Question: What's your mac setup? Bob LeVitus: G4 Dual 1 Gig, Cinema Display, 17" CRT as well, PowerBook G4. 6 or 7 FireWire Disks. All running OS X. Robin Williams: G4 Tower 1.5GB OS X w/ SuperDrive. Old Orange iMac as well (9 only), PC in the corner. Flat Panel iMac. The IDG expo Dave: Titanium G4. Every Peripheral, iPod is favorite Woz: Tower dual displays, Cube is his family machine, "I love the cube". His personal is a portable. G4 TiBook. Current Wireless Setup: 802.11 in the school district he works in. Wireless in the house. "One less wire for neatness". Bluetooth, USB flash reader Neil Ticktin: 9 and X machines for the house. PowerBook and eMac in 9/X. What features do you miss from 9 that you want to see in X? Dave: Windowing/Layering algorithm. Interleaving of windows is frustrating. Bob: Unsanity is making WindowShade. I miss the configurable menu. Fruit Menu fixes. Labels X from Unsanity, too. Robin: Open Dialog Box can't type the first few chars to get to the file. Dragging by the edge no longer. Neil T: Click on a file is edit name, and you can't toss it out straight away. "Make windowing work as on 9 as a preference!" Woz: Draggability isn't a constant, and it should be. The longer program names change the way in which you hit the menus. That needs to go back. Advantages to Switching: Bob: MacOS 9 is better in OS X. Stability. No "forced brick" moments. Woz: "I switched my browser and got rid of my crashes." Switched to iCab, no crashes. Robin: The biggest reason is: you have to. Do I need to learn unix to make the most of OS X? Robin: No Bob: No Woz: Unix is great: it opens the Mac to Unix people. Neil: Probably not. What's the answer for disk utils? Bob: fsck. Just run it from the drive. Takes a few seconds. Woz: fsck is like rebuilding the desktop. Bob: Disk First Aid and fsck do the same stuff. DFA means rebooting though. Cmd-S runs fsck -y at startup. Neil: OS 9 could do that without a reboot. Bob: Diskwarrior is the last stop at protocol for reviving/fixing. Neil:Drive 10 is great. Bob: MacFixit.com is great for info about this. If you were the MacOS Product mgr...? Woz: More testing! There needs to be more testing before they ship. Neil: iPhoto should be able to handle a large number of photos without trouble. Woz: iPhoto has issues. Major Apps Missing: Robin: Quark. Mariner Write. Bob: Quark. But the consumer won't need anything special. Woz: It's all there. The expense between 9 and 10 is brutal. Dave: Digital Performer. ProTools. But both are coming. Neil: There's no reason not to be on X. There are some folks who need some other things in 9. There are solutions we need to encourage Apple to push for. Getting the whole community on X should be our goal. Woz: Why would I switch if they just work? Neil: But those aren't front line machines. If I was setting up a new machine, it would be in OS X. How will Mac OS X work in the biz world? Woz: OS X provides IT and Schools and such, with a solution to the enterprise needs. Neil: Apple's laying the foundation for small biz to move to Mac. There's features in Jag that make a lot of sense for VPNs, for cross-platform computing networks.Keynote and the Xserve as well.

Photos!

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 16:36:04 GMT

Photos from Day One at Macworld Expo. Posted via Dlink Wireless connection from Macwarehouse.com

Keynotes

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 15:08:12 GMT

I've survived the ordeal so that I can now claim a seat at the Keynote Address! Now we're starting up! Notes: Macworld is the biggest MP4 stream ever.
Heh, Ellen Feiss, Switchers
7.8 mil unique visitors for switch?! Kickass. 68% are Windozers.
Apple Retail: 51 Stores in the US. 85 mil people live within a short drive of Apple Store. I'm gonna have to go to the Grove in LA!

Revenue info: Right on Target for Retail. $148 mil. 50% Switcher Biz
1.4mil people in December. 20 Macworlds. Holy shit.

X for Teachers. Extended til March 31
iSync: syncing for the masses. 1.0 last week.
He's moving so damn quickly. .Mac: Email, iDisk, Homepage, Picture Books, Virex, Backup, iSync to sync across multimacs, iCal hosting. "We got some feedback." 250,000 subscribers. iPod: "Walkman of the digital age" 600,000 iPods. 1 every minute since shipping. #1 MP3 player in US and Japan. 42% Market Share in JP. Accessories: Burton makes an accessory: iPod jacket?! wtf. Switch in the sleeve. C'mon. Updates done in 15 minutes. 5 mil Xers, 10 mil by end of year. X transition is done. Office for $200. Extended til April 7th. QuickBooks Pro by Intuit debuted. Nascar Racing 2002 w/ Force Feedback. Virtual PC 6 Director MX out. This is all old news... Pro Tools from Digidesign. To ship this month. ProTools Sound stuff. Recording artists and such. $495 for the basic sys. Very slick demo. Software's only $75! FCP is #1 by units sold. Final Cut Express! Edit Like a Pro. Same chrome same project style as FCP. Same file format, but with also iMovie projects and others. Transitions the same way, with software realtime effects. $299. Still too high for me. Available today though. G'night OS 9. Been real. Digital Hub time: We rock, no one else delivers. Here we go! Hidden features: iTunes 3? iPhoto 2. Integrated with iTunes 3. One Click Enhance. Retouch Brush. Archive to CD and DVD. Searching is cool. Grabs from iTunes for the slideshow musak. iDVD integration. One Click Enhance. Holy shit. That's great. Retouch kit. Hot damn. Does a lot of stuff. iMovie 3. Full integration. Chapters in the films for iDVD. Ken Burns effect plugins. Precise Audio edits. Window interface. Adding Skywalker Sound Effects. This Ken Burns Effect Thing is really rocking. New Titles, Transitions. Chapter markers are cake. No more export to iDVD. Just click the button and go. iDVD 3. Fully integrated w/ iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie. 24 new themes for the discs. Scene Selection. This is slick. The New Themes are cool. "You can make this stuff." This is the new slogan. This is why I come to expo, I leave Excited and full of hope and possibilities, imagining what I can do with my own mac. This is what it's all about, self-expression through Macs. $3 a DVD. Man, I will be burning a ton from the London trip. Booya. iLife. January 25th. Bundled together with all new macs. Free Download iTunes. Free Download of iPhoto2. IMovie 3 for free. iDVD for sale. Whole thing for $49. Safari. Turbo Browser for OS X. First New Browser in 5 Years. Faster Browser. 3x faster on load. 2x faster on JS. 40% faster on load. Google searching native. Snapback. Bookmarking is different. Sheets help do stuff that rock. This will be an IE killer. Standards based. XHTML, CSS2 compliant. Apple used Open Source and are returning the Open Source code libraries better. KHTML based rendering. Beta release: Free Download: Today. Keynote. PowerPoint Killer. Built for Steve. Been in Beta for a whole year. Keynote supports full quartz graphics, all alphachannel support. PSD, ILL, Flash. Full Theming behind it. Imports and Exports PPT files. PDF, or QT Movie too. Open File Format. Can b manipulated with XML. Cost: $99. Very slick. Avail Today. Get it at Keynote. Nice. TiBooks. 2 years old. No one's caught up. 35% of apple's sales are laptops. Here we go. 17" TiBook. 1 Inch Thick. Thinnest PowerBook ever. They're in the booths. 1440x900 display. 16:10 ratio. Backlit keyboard. Fibre optic. Ambient light sensors. 7 lbs. Aluminum Alloy that's Anodized and NOT painted. 1 GHz G4, with 1 MB L3. SuperDrive. GeForce4 440 Go, 64MB, FireWire 800. GigE. SVideo, DVI/VGA out. Dual USBs. PC card in, line in, headphones. Wireless. Bluetooth BuiltIn. Airport as well. Airport Extreme as well. 54 Mbps. 802.11g. Fully compatible with B. Antennae are fixed. Range of the iBook. Basestation: 50 users, Bridging, USB printing over WiFi, $199. Lithium Prismatic Battery. 4.5 Hours of life. Price: $3299. Not bad. That's $100 more than this one. February Ship Date. 12" PowerBook. 1.2 inches thick. 4.6lbs. Smallest Powerbook. 867 G4. GeForce 420 Go, 32Mb onboard, slotload combo drive, WiFi ready, Bluetooth, AirEx. 5 hours battery. $1799. Most Affordable TiBook ever. Shipping in 2 weeks. This is a good keynote. Cheaper G4s, Cool ass keyboards, bigger screens, FireWire 800. the new iLife suite. Apple's creating a niche market. They want people who are fully enabled. Creators and Builders. They are a framework for creativity. They provide the stage, but you provide the show. There isn't a thing like this anywhere else. Thanks Apple. You power my creativity, my blog, my photos, my movies, my DVDs, my lifestyle, my writing, my focus. It acts a lens. New TV ads. Hilarious.

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 10:50:24 GMT

Here I sit, in the staircase at Moscone waiting to get into Keynote. I got up about 5:15 this morning to wander down to 4th St. and Mission past the Marriott toward the Center. I wandered past about 125 people, some there from 4am onwards, to my spot in line, with a couple design students from LA, an Architect from Long Beach and a couple of Mac Enthusiasts from USC. As they moved us around in the San Francisco predawn chill, up and down Harrison Street, past the street lights that had a mind of their own and moved their stalks up into pinnacles at 6am, past the box of donuts some kind soul placed on the steps to feed us all, and past the racks of free magazines for the show to where I stand now.

There's an interesting atmosphere here, one of hope, but also one of skepticism and disappointment. The architect wants his CAD program to work better under OS X, the design students want a faster, more accessible platform, the enthusiasts want to know why a video iPod will do anyone any good. I share their fears and their hopes. We're all here in search of whatever Steve deems to be the Next New Thing. Some are saying Wireless, others Rendezvous, others Digital Home Device. Me, I'd like to think it's some combination of all three.

Ben and Neil are off to Palo Alto to watch and post news from the Palo Alto Apple Store, they're wandering down on Caltrain and walking to the new store. It should be a fun adventure, and they'll be able to post news from the Keynote directly over the Wireless net in the Apple Store. Who knows, maybe they'll see the new goodies before we do here.

Enough for now. More inside the hall.

Tue, 07 Jan 2003 04:13:58 GMT

Well, we've survived the first day of Macworld.

After a long fight with IDG Expos, "MacSlash" was denied press credentials on the basis that we accept too much commentary from our users, don't provide enough unique content and don't have professional bylines. So, we'll need to make some changes.

I'm working on what we need to do, first we need to change to have real names in our stories instead of Vidmaster or AcaBen. Sorry guys, it's got to happen. We have to start doing more in our communities in terms of boosterism, interviews, and developer discussions. We need partnerships with O'Reilly and others.

But the City is both as gorgeous as I remember and sketchier than I remember. There are parts where the homeless problem has gotten far worse, there are parts that are infested with porno. But it's also got a beautiful appearance in others.

We wandered down Mission to Beale tonight for the Mac Managers Party (photos forthcoming for bandwidth...) which was great. Got to meet all sorts of people, Chuck Goolsbee of Digital Forest, Mark James from SoftRAID, a whole load of really scary smart people who've been Mac Geeks as long as there has been a Mac. I'm really outclassed in some things, but I did actually know which version of the Finder shipped with the Mac Plus (System 1.1) though. Wandering home, I am exhausted.

Five hours until I get up for Keynote.

Expo Update

Mon, 06 Jan 2003 13:35:33 GMT

Well, in about three hours, we'll be on our way down to San Francisco. The schedule so far looks like this: 12:27p Pick up Amtrak Train from Davis to either Emeryville or Richmond
3:00p Be at hotel
4:00p Be at Expo to retrieve Press Credentials and Keynote passes.
7:00p Mac Managers Pre-Keynote Party at Beale Street Grill Keynote's tomorrow morning at 9, and we'll likely be lining up around 5a, or so. Current weather: 45°F, Light Fog Current Picture:

New Category: MacWorld Blog

Sat, 04 Jan 2003 21:46:16 GMT

I've created a new webpage for all my writings regarding MacWorld, so, if you just want to read about my MacWorld exploits, you can check them out by visiting this webpage. I'll have keynote updates, floor updates which will include both pictures and commentary, and the skinny from all the cool parties. Updates will not necessarily show up on my main blog home, so be sure to check out the MacWorld stuff directly!

Ah yes, Airport Security

Sat, 04 Jan 2003 21:17:13 GMT

I have returned back to the ancestral homeland today, having gotten to Dulles in time to stand in a very long line at the ticket counter and then getting selected for Special Screening (what, like a movie? I thought...) which turned out to be less fun than I had initially thought. Apparently, something similar has happened to Penn Jillette in the Las Vegas Airport and while my crotch was not grabbed, I was patted down, wanded, had my bags dug through, my laptop swabbed for terrorist goodness (what exactly does terrorist goodness look like on a spectrograph I wonder?)

But all that aside, at least, A) they all spoke good workable English and B) nobody stole my stuff, even though about six different people handled it. So, for now, TSA passes. However if they are going to continue feeling me up, could we please pass a requirement for their employees to be former models or something? If I go to the doctor, I expect to have to turn my head and cough, but then again, I get to choose my doctor. No such luck this time. Next time, Al, buy me dinner first.

Ben and I are off to catch some good grub and decent food and we'll prognosticate some more about Expo here in the next day or so.

Pre Expo Jitters!

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 16:14:39 GMT

Tomorrow morning I leave for MacWorld, flying from Dulles to Oakland on JetBlue and taking Amtrak to Davis to spend a few days with my parents before Keynote on the 7th. I've already made my "Predictions for Expo" and that's the most fun.

As it stands, we're still working on Press Credentials for MacWorld and Keynote Passes, but we'll work something out, I'm sure.

This Expo will be my first as a productive member of the Mac Community. I'll be there both as a writer for "MacSlash" and as a part of an IT team for an all Mac organization. Either hat is no longer a trivial thing to me, I know the hours you have to put in, have appreciation for those that deal with this stuff on a daily basis. I'm excited to join the Mac Managers meeting before the Keynote. I'm excited to be on the floor looking for stuff that will make work more enjoyable as well, not to mention more productive.

Alright, enough Navel Gazing, time for some packing!