Macworld Conference & Expo

Macworld Expo January 15-18, 2008, The Largest Ever
Excitement builds. We are two weeks away from Macworld Conference and Expo held at The Moscone Center in San Francisco. With over 400 exhibitors and a 28 percent increase in pre-show registration, it promises to be the biggest show in expo's history. Stay tuned. Or should I say iTuned? (sorry)

The show brings together Mac devotees from many fields. These include the traditional Apple strongholds of education, small business, advertising, music and publishing – the production areas of print, image, video and sound are the haunts of that 900-pound gorilla named Mac – so the audience will be largely a creative one.

Steve’s Keynote And The Hot New Rumors
Steve Jobs gives the keynote address at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, January 15th. Like most Mac devotees, I wonder what he'll announce this year. Is it hardware or software accounting for the gleam in his eye? Will he satisfy all the hot new rumors swirling about water coolers and Apple blogspots? Introduce the multi-touch MacTablet? Or iTunes movie rentals?

Feeding the rumors was the recent New York Times article (December 28) claiming that Apple has been in talks with Hollywood moguls for digital movie rental rights via iTunes as well as the leaked 1.1.3 iPhone update that supposedly fixes and expands many facets of the software, a scaled-down version of OS X, loaded onto Apple’s brisk-selling phone.

Who knows what Steve will say, but all eyes and ears will be focused on the simulcast.

Mac Base Grows Dramatically In U.S.
Although nationally both consumer and corporate computer sales were weaker than expected late this year, the Mac base is growing in the U.S.

Gartner estimates Apple's Third Quarter U.S. growth this year to be in the double-digits with shipments growing a whopping 37.2 percent compared with SQLY.

This correlates nicely with the large increase in pre-registration for Macworld Expo and the increases in Macs reported across the nation on college campuses. Take Cornell for instance. In 2000, their Mac toters made up only five percent of students and faculty; now students’ personal computers running OS X comprise 21 percent of the total. Or Princeton: 60 percent of on-campus computer sales in 2007 were Macs.

2008 Expo Highlights
In addition to the keynote address, there are pavilions for developers (presumably on The Mac Developer Boulevard), special interest and user groups. There's a Dice Career Fair for Mac professionals, a Learning Center sponsored by Macworld, a Podcast Studio, a Dream Studio for making music, even a John Lennon Bus Tour — I'd hop on that one — and, get this, a Microsoft Blogger Lounge. However, I doubt we’ll meet Bill Gates there: he gives the International CES keynote in Las Vegas January 6.

Exhibitors include old stalwarts like Adobe Systems and Quark, Alsoft, Belkin, Extensis, FileMaker, Griffin, LaCie, Marware, Newer, OtherWorld Computing and Roxio. Relative new names are also represented, Parallels, VMWare, ProjectWizards and many others supporting or accessorizing iPods and iPhones.

Noticeably absent? Gamers.