Yay! Opening day of Macworld 2008, general love-fest for the Mac community, and a usual time for Apple to bestow upon all of us the fruits of their labor. I carpooled from Mountain View up to San Francisco with Pink and TVL. While waiting for them (at 4:30 in the morning) on a foggy, foggy morning, I saw this halloween tree in the Hotel Avante parking lot.
Why up so early? So we could wait in line (in the fog) for the Steve Jobs keynote.
Luckily after a couple of hours, they opened the doors of Moscone West so we could then wait inside. This small aisle of folks is the path to the Restroom Facilities.
TVL is the master of the "go to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass go, have a nice day" look.
la la la, bored bored bored, no iphone to play with, so here I am photographing five different shades of black. And then my wife sees this picture and says my socks are on inside-out.
A slightly manic Yours Truly (taken by TVL). "I got up how early... for what?"
Eventually we got moving again, but the Macworld staff kept us in line until after the keynote started (boo), and there was no room in the main hall (double-boo), so we had to go to an overflow room (triple-boo). So I guess in addition to paying over three hundred dollars specifically for the privilege of seeing the keynote, *and* waiting in line for *hours* starting at 5:15 am, you still aren't allowed to see the whole thing. Not that I'm bitter. Oh, these are a bunch of attack robots coming to eat conference attendees.
There's a lot of folks here. I've heard in the 40-50,000 range. The conference facilities were split between Moscone West and Moscone North, which were about a block or two away from each other. Here is a bolus of folks risking life and limb crossing the street.
I think San Francisco drivers are used to conference goers standing in the middle of the street with cameras.
All along the streets are Beautiful People paid to hand out product literature. There was also this gentleman on the corner with this sign. It was the only placard I saw the whole time. (Who would be protesting Macworld, outside of keynote attendees?) The website mentioned at the bottom of his sign is a placeholder / site squatter site.
Things don't get weird until you see the other side of his sign. I find it most fascinating that the number of galaxies only varies in the tens of millions digit. And is the number going up ...... or Down? (ominous music in the background)
Inside of the conference center is this giant two story ICBG (interContinental Ballistic Google), with icons from Google's Macintosh products. I work for Google, but things said in these captions are my own deranged thoughts. As if anyone else would try to claim them.
The view of a small sliver the show floor from an observation gallery. There was a lot more software on display this year than in previous years. in 2006, it was 70% ipod cozies and 30% software. This year it was 40% ipod cozies, 30% iphone cozies, and 30% software.
One of the first sights on hitting the show floor.
Time to dance the Virginia Hosereel.
AHHH! PENGUIN INVASION!
These folks prove they don't monkey around. They actually make a cool bendable camera tripod. (for the AWoP crew: 4A-CGPod?)
The general rule this year was: "if the booth is rather bizarre, they carry ipod and iphone accessories."
Very few software company names are as friendly as this one. I didn't see Horrible Software on the showfloor this year.
An O'Reilly speaker demonstrating proper rapping technique. I was told later that there was a funky breakdancing workshop (promoting the new book "Funky Breakdancing in a Nutshell") immediately after this session.
It is to my shame that "Hey, nice rack!" was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this banner.
"Alarm is Activated! Apply Directly to the Forehead!"
Too bad there's no ipod or iphone cozies here.
This one is for Billings, who is putting in a two-dimensional appearance.
Tiny tents for people who go camping, and feel guilty when they leave their DVD player or Orange iBook home alone but also don't want them to get sunburned. Alas, the diet Dr Pepper was not available for purchase.
There was a mini wrestling ring in the middle of the show floor, used for settling inevitable disputes. It wasn't nearly as much fun as the Thunderdome from Macworld 2006. "Two Vendors Enter, One Vendor Leaves! Two Vendors Enter, One Vendor Leaves!" was a popular chant back then.
I'm not sure I want to know what that thing is looming over this guy's head... Maybe I should just move along.
These Geffen Goodies are a pretty shade of blue.
There were seven Galactic Death Ray vendors. Luckily nobody shot a hole in the Moscone North roof this year.
We even had some Mac industry celebrities show up.
Rogue Amoeba is a powerhouse in the Mac software community.
Led by PX "Paul" R, who is obviously modeled after (BEEP - next slide)
Ammo, the Rogue Amoeba. The resemblance is striking, almost eerie.
Spore was actually being demoed! I asked the inevitable question "when will it be released" "this year" Hopefully it won't be December 87th.
There was a shrine to Mr. T over in Moscone West. I couldn't find the Hasselhoff Meditation Chamber, even though it was on the conference program. Later on I was told that the HMC was in *room* 847 rather than *booth* 847.
While searching for the room with the HMC, we saw this cool mural, like a modern-day Hieronymus Bosch .
!slatrop lanoisnemid-snart erom ,staR
Bizarre booth (lincoln logs), ipod and iphone cozies. The pattern continues.
One booth had a Bulbous Bouffant Lamp. Here I take a self-portrait.
Too bad there are so few i-product cozies this year.
Acura had a lounge area in the West building, here showing a Lamaze race car, one of the ultimate ipod accessories.
I presume this is the driver's side, with Radio and Fuel buttons. Looks straight out of Mad Max.
I presume the racer is equipped with "lasers", given the very large and bright red "Fire" button.
Cool logo, cool name like a heavy metal band: "SKULLCANDY"
That sells fuzzy headphones.
This one is for Drunken Batman. PZIZZMAN WILL EAT YOU NOM NOM NOM NOM.
The Apple booth (unsurprisingly) was huge and packed, and covered in drool from everyone drooling over the new goodies.
The Macbook Air. It's insanely thin and lightweight. It almost doesn't feel real.
"seriously, you're saying this is really made out of graham crackers?"
iPhone mating station, courtesy of the American iPhone Breeder's Association.
This is what starts happening to your vision after several hours on the show floor.
The Lounge for Fat Attendees.
Pink capturing an image of the upcoming Google Booth.
What is that lurking in the distance?
Yay! It's the Google Booth! Woooooo! Google Engineers got Booth Bunny duty for the first day of the conference. Since I work on Mac software, I was not allowed to escape.
It was cool being amongst a constant swarm of people. The Google Booth was packed all day, doo dah, doo dah.
There were four demo stations: "geo" with Earth and Sketchup, "Mobile" showing our iphone compatible web services, "YouTube" with cool demos and a 'record your own message' dealie, and the Mac Applications, showing off Google Desktop, Gadgets, Notifier, and uploaders for the Picasa Web Ablums[sic] that you're looking at now.
You could pick up a little "passport" at the booth, and get it stamped at each of the four stations. The more stamps you get, the better shwag (conference goodies) you get. This is the Mac Client station. The passports actually had "Mac Applications" for this station, which confused everone. In true Googly fashion, the Engineering Solution was to fix the sign immediately with whatever tools were available until a suitable replacement could be procured.
The demo(e) stations were around the perimeter, and in the middle was this little minitheater (at least until it gets replaced by a banana and an organic granola cheese stick).
The minitheater got used for demos over the course of the day.
Such as this one showing Sketchup.
DPO highlights the finer points of our applications.
Mac team members personing the booth.
SM showing the raw hotness that is Google Desktop up on the Big Screen.
PJ shows the software he works on, Sketchup.
After you have stamps on your passport, you can cache them in on product logo patches, no-slip ipod pads for your car, socks, or flipflops. Due to a Canadian to English translation error, when Dmac said "we're giving out thongs", the rest of us perverts thought he was talking about skimpy underwear. Luckily we were wrong.
A new product going into beta soon will be self-service vehicle registration.
But only for vehicles that display the proper set of icons (L->R is Google Notifier for Gmail and Calendar, Earth, Desktop, Picasa uploaders, Sketchup, Gadgets, Toolbar for Firefox, and Mobile.)
It's actually a Vespa scooter.
Which is being given away. I don't remember if we settled on a simple drawing or another thunderdome. While admiring the scooter (and the groovy URL), you can read the complete works of Shakespeare on the single attached sheet.
KG shooting JGM.
Pink *so* goes into the zone when demoing. Almost like he's controlling us just by using using his psychic powe... yes master... I will... Obey...
KG and her mini-camera.
Special K kicks off the "Meet the Google Mac Enginerds" at 4:30.
We have a pretty good sized team. We didn't all fit into this shot. We said a little bit about ourselves (I think my "I make balloon animals and collect stuffed badgers" frightened some people. I apologize.) and also answered question folks might have had.
Avi pulling out his Tough Guy Look. "I Piddy da foo who neva been to MacHack!"
GR and CR kickin' it back goog-styles.
During the Meet The Geeks, we had a surprise visit by ccgus of Flying Meat, one of the superpowers that rules the Mac software industry with an iron fist, and Brent Simmons, of Net News Wire fame.
During the MeetTheGeeks time, Dave Sevick from Pittsburgh, (the Fearless Leader of NPMUG, the North Pittsburgh Mac User's Group - they're an awesome group of folks) came by. It was about 5 pm west-coast time, so 8 pm east-coast time. NPMUG was having a meeting, and Dave was running around with the laptop showing folks the show floor with his MBP camera.
In the front s Bob Donaldson, a fellow photo geek (except he's actually *good*, and does photography for a living), in the meting room at MacOutfitters in Cranberry PA. You can see my self portrait in the iChant inset window.
Meet the Geeks is over. I've played with the MacBook Air. While heading back to the parking deck I got one last shot of Moscone West.
I got confused with this Parking Fee Collector. I kept reading the middle part as "Do Not Leave Playstation". I had no idea that abandoned Playstations were such an issue around here. Anyway, that's the end of my Macworld 2008 adventures. Thanks for watching.
