Here are some more Macworld notes, now that I’m home.
North vs. South As usual, most of the major companies were in the South hall and the small, funky booths were in the North hall. There were lots of iPod & iPhone accessories, games, and music software in the North hall. The Acura lounge in the North Hall provided a welcome place to rest, and the John Lennon Tour Bus was a fun place for playing rock band and trying out real musical instruments.
Best Product for the trip home FastMac’s True Power IV for iPhone. I’ll post a more extensive review soon, but it was awesome on the trip home. I charged it overnight and after more than 8 hours, including over 4 hours of music, 1 hour of video, and several games of Frenzic & reMovem, my iPhone was still fully charged and the IV’s battery was still full.
Cool product The Pulse Smartpen from livescribe captures everything you write or say.
Photoshop plugins Topaz Adjust, Simplify, Denoise, and Vivacity make photo touchups easy and let you create great effects like paintings, line drawings, and dramatic colorization.
It’s not about Apple. The real reason to go to Macworld isn’t for Apple; it’s for all of the cool people and cool products from the other companies. Apple’s booth is one of the least interesting, merely rehashing what we saw at the keynote.
Free Macworld Expo 2010 Passes. IDG is offering free expo passes (regularly $25) for Macworld 2010.
Lots of iPod accessories Vestalife was showing their iPod speakers & video screens. I even got a free Ladybug speaker after attending their presentation.
Party Bus Hear Planet’s Party Bus shuttled people between parties.
Lots of parties There were several parties every night, often at conflicting times. The only way to avoid missing a party was by spending a few minutes at one and running to the next one.
Google Dance This was the scene at the Google booth in the final moments of the show on Friday afternoon.
iLife 09 looks cool I use Aperture, but I’m very tempted to switch to iPhoto 09.
An old tradidion The Netter’s Dinner has taken place during Macworld since 1985. A big group treks from Moscone to Henry’s Hunan for a great dinner, interesting conversation, and free swag.
Drive Savers demonstrated graphically what can go wrong with disk drives.
The end At 4PM sharp on Friday afternoon, the lights were dimmed and the crowd was herded out of the hall.