Review: MacWorld Expo 2010

[hrj]

As the first SF MacWorld Expo where Apple wasn't an exhibitor, there's been a lot of buzz about what the effects would be, and whether they'd be distinguishable from the effects of the general economy. (And also a certain amount of buzz noting that, given the timing of Apple's iPad announcment, it seems a bit stupid for Apple not to have participated in the Expo and announced it there.) I have to say, from where I stand, that there's a real possibility -- but far from a certainty -- that the absence of Apple has triggered a death spiral for the event. I've only been attending for the last half dozen years or so (I think -- I'd have to do some research to figure it out precisely) and I've seen the size of the Expo flow and ebb. There was at least one previous year when it only filled half of the Moscone Center space, as it did this year, and it was back to both sides the year after that.

But when scotica and her friend Rob and I were mulling it over on the drive back to her place (for Olympics viewing) after attending the Expo yesterday, we kept coming up with more and more examples of long-term favorite exhibitors who were absent this year. All in all, it felt very thin on the ground. (Another metric is the sad scarcity of freebies -- although I think some of that perception is fueled by the shift from stacks of software demo CDs to pointing people at downloadable demos, which is hard to fault on an environmental basis. But the useless tchatchkas -- pens, keychains, foam toys, etc. -- were also very thin on the ground.)

I went into the Expo with a small handful of "missions" as well as the usual intent to check out new stuff, and I failed at all of them, either due to the relevant exhibitor not being present, or due to exhibitors having skipped bringing the stuff I was interested in. I did come away with several nice new toys: a solar charger for the iPhone (handy for future camping trips -- you can leave it on the dashboard charging during the day, then fully recharge your phone when you come back in the evening), a sport armband iPhone purse-case from ArmPocket, which should be handy for bicycling, one of those Gorillapod wrap-around tripod thingies for my digital camera, and for one of this year's emergent themes a pair of Telefingers touch-sensitive iPhone gloves, which enable you to use your touch-screen without freezing your fingers off.

There were several emergent themes from the Expo:

The aforementioned touch-sensitive iPhone gloves. (Three or four different vendors. There was one vendor who had some very nice leather ones, but I'd already bought a cheaper pair elsewhere and while I've been thinking about getting a nice pair of leather driving gloves, I don't know that I'd want to combine the functions.)

Portable iPhone/iPod rechargers (also portable laptop external batteries). These have been available pretty much since the emergence of the power-guzzling iPhone, but there seemed to be an explosion of new products this year. Maybe I just don't use my iPhone enough, but aside from camping trips to locations without electrical outlets (which, coincidentally, typically don't have enough signal to use the iPhone much), I've been quite satisfied with the one model of emergency backup power that I have. So I wasn't in the market.

Page-feeding and ultralight sheet-feed scanners. The sort that ScanSnap has been featuring for years, but I think there were four companies with very similar product ranges this year. My crew chatted up all of them about putting out an ultra-light rolling (rather than sheet-feeding) scanner -- something equivalent to the PlanOn Scanner for which I'd like to see competition -- but nobody seemed to have anything similar in the works.

It was also amusing to see how many of the accessory manufacturers already had finished prototypes of gear for the iPad. Targus had some truly drool-worthy cases and sleeves. Some company I won't name or link to because their salesman annoyed me had a keyboard-dock (prop the iPad up in it as a semi-vertical screen and type on a full external keyboard). And, of course, the promise of iPads was the biggest common feature of vendor raffles. (I will probably be buying an iPad after about a year, when they've had a chance to work the bugs out. I note, however, that one of the potential uses for it that I was kicking around at the Crosston Ball -- i.e., a sheet music reader -- is quite likely to be developed (heads-up courtesy of ohiblather ). So I have high hopes that by the time I'm willing to take a chance of a new Apple device, I will have discovered enough practical uses for it that my conscience will be clear in buying one.

On the whole "Death spiral or temporary slowdown?" issue, I have to say that there wasn't enough meat to this year's MacWorld Expo to draw me back for a second day, even with the convenience of it being open on a Saturday (today) and even with the draw of an iPad demo today. I will definitely still plan on attending as usual next year, but if next year is as thin or thinner than this year, I'll re-evaluate. This would be unfortunate for the Apple byproducts market, because attending the Expo has driven a enormous percentage of my software and peripheral buying. And, frankly, for me the Apple corporate presence was never a big part of the draw. Yeah, it was nice to see the new products in the flesh, as it were, before buying. But that's not what I spend my money on at the Expo itself.