I went to Mac Expo yesterday at around 10:30am for about 30 minutes.
My impression was that the event was very busy (given the time of
day), but not terribly exciting. The only other Mac event I have been
to was one of the old New York expos in 2000, when Apple came in
force and released some horrendous iBook (and perhaps the FireWire
PowerBooks - my memory is hazy), and this was much smaller in
comparison (because of Apple's small presence).
The deals at the show were not jaw-dropping. The range seemed to be
from 5% to 17.5% off, with 80% of items falling into the 8-11% off
bracket. That is not bad if you already know you want to buy
something, but it is not enough to spur on an impromptu purchase. The
most interesting part to me were the three companies at the home-
entertainment booth (eyetv/roku and some other company offering a
very cool wireless audio kit). It was too busy to talk to anyone,
though, and after milling around for 3 minutes I left. It is a shame,
I could very easily have been persuading to buy an eyeTV DTT if only
they had demoed the unit to me. Still, it is not their fault that
they were busy!
The deal of the show (to me) was the macgames.co.uk stall selling
Knights of the Old Republic for £27. The cheapest I have found it
elsewhere is £35, so that is a good £8 saving (£13 off recommended
retail) if you had wanted the game. Speaking of games, the game
section had two rows of PowerMac G5s playing a whole range of Mac
games. These were very popular, but it showed how dated some of the
games on the Mac are. Doom 3 next to Ford Racing .... hmmm ... Ford
Racing looked so 1999. Still, it got the message across that while
the Mac is not a gaming platform, it is an excellent productivity
platform that happens to do games on the side.
The Microsoft booth was nice and large, but no presentations when I
was there (or I would have listened). There was a good Toast demo,
but the show discount was minimal (about 10%, which you can find
online). I had hoped that some of the smaller Mac shareware
developers would turn up (OmniGroup, or Panic, or Ranchero, etc.),
but it was dominated by the big names. That is sad, as I would have
loved to give the Omni guys a hug and thank them for making my Mac
happy.
Adobe were giving very interesting presentations, and had large
crowds. There were lots of expo-girls handing out things, but nothing
worth having (all handouts seemed to just be adverts for products,
rather than free magazines, demo disks, etc.). The LaCie stall was
small but very clean and approachable. I want an external firewire
800 disk for backup, so again I approached the stall and waited to
see if somebody would talk to me. Nope. Too busy (again, not their
fault). I milled around looking for an example of a firewire 800
disk, but couldn't see any. Also, no prices on display. Ho hum. I
left empty handed (but will buy LaCie kit from Jigsaw24.com anyway).
There was a mini Pret, which is very good for affordable conference
food, but they had no ginger beer. That put me in a real bad mood! I
like my ginger beer!!!
So in short, not bad. Lots of companies displaying, which is a big
positive for the Mac industry. Lots of iPod accessory stalls as well,
no surprise, and I would guess that a a lot of people turning up
were iPod converts. It is over now for another year. I would not be
surprised if the Mac Expo company reveals record attendance, and I
would hope for a little bit of a bigger presence from Apple in future
years. At least you could see Aperture at the Apple stall. Hmmm,
tasty Aperture!
Just thought some people on list may be interested on some quick views.
Hewligan
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