Within freaking MINUTES of the COW newsletter going out this week (Jan 22 '08), people were on my case arguing with my assessment of this as the best MacWorld in years. So I figured I should answer once, and point everybody else here.
As I teased in the graphic but will say here straight out, this was the weakest set of announcements from a MacWorld keynote that I can remember. And while I've missed the last couple, I've been to nearly all of the other MacWorlds, on both coasts (and both east coast cities).
That includes shows where there was no Jobs keynote because he didn't work there anymore (or yet), and one where Apple's own presence was so diminshed that I can't remember if they even showed up. "Paging Dr. Amelio -- please report to the Lost Children counter."
Although to put keynote buzz in context, the most excited I've ever seen a MacWorld audience was for the introduction of the Mac Cube and Apple's first clear plastic mouse -- one of which was attached under every seat. Freakin' pandemonium.
And neither of those products is still around. So there you go.
This year was still weak by my measure. Scroll down the blog home page for ample agreement.
Now look at the rest of the banner in the newsletter: all the good stuff happened outside Apple's booth, and had nothing to do with Air. Except this, which is wicked cool. Has to do with Air, but not from Apple.
I'm going to take some time to unspool my argument over the next couple of days -- or right here in the comments section of this entry -- but I'm sticking to it. I'll go further and say that there were more, and cooler, announcements in this MacWorld than there have been in recent NABs -- a show whose day has passed, as we're well on record saying.
Here's another way to put my position in context. There was a time when MacWorld was THE show for video pros, because the only interesting pro video was being done on Macs. That's why companies like DT and Puffin launched Media 100 and Commotion, respectively. Over the years, MacWorld has continued to be a pilgrimmage destination, but less and less a pro show.
Around the turn of the century, it was little more than mousepads. The biggest booths were Microsoft and Palm. (Was Palm at MW this year? And not that there's anything wrong with MSft -- they still sell more Mac software than anyone but Apple.) While it has been picking up for a while, MacWorld was still more about iPods and accessories than data vaults.
The fact is that this would be the best MacWorld in years for storage alone. You can scroll through some of my "News Not to Lose" entries, most of which have at least some mention of storage.
Here's a fantastic storage roundup from MacWorld the magazine. (You remember that the show is named after the magazine, right?) Some of these I'd already found, and I was tracking down the full stories on others...but again, in the spirit of speediness, I wanted you to see where I was coming from.
Seriously, take a look at that lineup: our pals from Sonnet, CalDigit and G-Tech all had big news, as did ATTO, Nexsan and others including LaCie, SansDigital (RAID controllers), Silicon Image (now you can mirror part of your array and leave the rest just, well, arrayed), Samsung (ridiculously small drives), and Newer, with silicone sleeves that let you pop in any bare drive to become an external protected hard drive -- starting at $8. Crazy.
All of this stuff works on Windows too, btw.
The most striking example of the return of MacWorld to super-duper hardcore pro relevance is another Best of Show winner, Gridiron Flow. Gary Adcock wrote effusively about it here. As you can see from what I wrote a couple of days earlier, I completely agree.
Even if you've got a small office, but have lots of data and digital assets, Flow is going to blow you away. If your office or workgroup is even a LITTLE bigger than small, this will be your most important purchase for the next several years.
Tiny editorial note: when Gary sent me his article to post, I changed one word. See if you can guess which word.
He says that Flow "is so freaking cool I can't stand it."
Now that you've guessed which word I changed, any guesses what I changed it FROM? :-)
Okay, that's enough for now. I look forward to you chiming in. And whether you're looking forward to it or not, I'll be chiming in some more too.
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