Macworld Expo - Wednesday
January 16, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
2comments Categories: Castle, Marketing, OSX, Puter Stuff, Travel, gnash-teeth, iPhone
Ok you’d think at the expo of one of the savviest, consumer satisfaction driven, technologically advanced computing companies of the century - wireless Internet would work. The expo is being held at the Moscone Center here in San Francisco, CA home to thousands of blockbuster movies, not a third world country. Most of the time I couldn’t get assigned a DHCP address, when addressing this issue to one of the Apple/Moscone liaisons she had no clue. I asked if there was someone else I could talk to, but apparently everyone would have referred me to her. Big help.
While outside for a smoke during the afternoon I managed to pickup a free wifi signal with good pipe and downloaded the IPhone and iTunes updates. Later as we sat inside and tried to install the iTunes update, I found out iTunes needed the Quicktime update as well. That’s when we met Nate and Nenu who work for an un-named defense contractor - too cool. Nenu had the Quicktime update, but not the iPhone update, so we searched our computers for the stashed download. Copied them to our CDW branded, 1GB flash drive, swag that we each got at registration and between the four of us managed to trade all the updates. Meeting those guys was one of the highlights of my day.
Later on the walk home, in the wrong direction, we met a group from the Griffin booth. I borrowed a light, so I could smoke from one of them and we had a good conversation until we realized our misreading of Google Maps.
This is one of the cooler updates I was waiting for. Basically the Google Maps application of the iPhone received an interface and features update. What’s really slick is a ghetto GPS that attempts to triangulate your current position within 20 meters via a company known as Skyhook. I typed in the address to our hotel and asked how to get there from my “Current Location” - too cool. I was actually on 4th St, but it gave me directions from 3rd to my hotel so still just as good. Unfortunately as anyone who knows me well, knows I can’t find my way out of a paper bag. I have zero sense of direction. My roomie I come to find out also suffers from this debilitating affliction.
Finally back at our hotel, the Internet in our room still just as bad, we head down stairs to reverse the $30 charge and get a comped wifi access code for the lobby wifi. Which at times is marginally better. We headed over to the attached cafe for some 7-Up to calm my upset tummy from either last nights seafood bonanza or todays burger and milkshake.
It took 5 minutes to just get a signal. I waited while I drank my $2.35 can of soda. I’ve got ping times to the router ranging from 100 milliseconds to 2.5 minutes. It’s not good enough to download all my email or do anything worthwhile. After waiting for far too long, I was able to load this blog posting page though.
I don’t have enough bandwidth to actually upload any photos, so those will have to wait. So many things to see, everyone peddling their wares - it’s a high-tech bazaar . Small booth stages replace soap boxes, wireless headsets and speaker systems allow their testimonials of how the end to software as we know it is over, their application/product will change everything - so each claims.
I played with the Apple Macbook Air, it’s cooler up close. Surprisingly thin, light weight, stylish and sturdy. I asked a ton of questions and played with the new features they took from the iPhone. Such as taking two fingers to stretch or squeeze a picture. You can also use three fingers as a forward or backward browser navigation, and two fingers to rotate a picture. The specs are reasonable considering they had to take into account heat from the CPU and hard drive, elimination of most of the ports, including ethernet and firewire as well as no optical drive. There’s a small area that drops down to provide USB and DVI video I believe. They still managed to squeeze in the built-in iSight though.
It comes with and is maxed out at 2GB of RAM which is half of what the Macbook Pro can handle. After searching through all of the specs and giving the Apple employee a good inquisition I realized that I’ve taken my Macbook Pro for granted. Most notebooks that are light aren’t powerful enough to be used as an actual daily workstation. Not true with the Macbook Pro, it is and has been my portable workstation. Thus the Macbook Air is a little less beefy and more sub-notebook indeed. I’m still tempted to get one…
It was at the small stations (not even a partial booth) that we found the coolest people and gear. What I first mistook for a girl hitting on me (what?! It could happen. Couldn’t it?), was actually a wily booth lady for a company called Eye-FI. They make and sell a 2GB SD memory card common to most digital cameras. What’s special about this card is it has built-in wireless capabilities. The card looks exactly the same as any other, same size, but is able (once set up) to send pictures directly from your camera (provided that it’s in range of your wireless home router) to your computer. You have the option to also have the images wireless transmitted to any number of Internet sites - Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, Shutterfly, Costco and more. It works with Linux, Mac and Windows. Costs $99 and one sits in my room right now which I can’t wait to use.
My wireless pass is about to expire, so I’m cutting this short. I’ll try to post more tomorrow - bandwidth willing.
