Shack Attack

NeXT T-Shirts vs. Booth Babes: Macworld in a Nutshell

2012-01-28T16:37:55-08:00

The future of the Macworld Expo is a big question mark, I think. The new name (Macworld | iWorld) is terrible, but it shows the very rift that is ever-expanding down the middle of the Apple community.

On one side, the old-school. The guy wearing the NeXT shirt. Guys like me, who have used the Mac basically their whole lives, and wouldn’t learn much from the Mac IT track.

On the other side, the customers all of those companies with the busty Asian chicks luring nerds into booths. While it is clear that iOS is the cornerstone of Apple’s business today, I’m not sure the community behind it will every be as tight-not as the one that formed around the Macintosh.

TrulyNet hooked me up with a press pass to MacWorld, and I noticed the same thing: the upper levels, with the tech talks and panels, were mostly occupied by longtime, professional Mac users. The expo floor, however, was full of day-hire promo guys, booth babes, and gauche displays that are everything Apple is not. Sure, there were some of my favorite companies there (AudioEngine, Rain, and Henge, to name a few), but you had to look for them in a sea of crapware: ten kinds of "protective iPhone films," candy-colored Korean headphones with $5 bills of materials, and random electronics companies that decided to paint their random products white and mark them up 20%.

On the other hand, iOS devices have pretty much catapulted Apple to being the second most-valuable company in the world, and you can't fault capitalists for being capitalists. The geeks can always hang out upstairs- they already saw this stuff come out at CES, after all.

The Patagonia Winter Sale is On.

2012-01-24T19:05:54-08:00

30% off lots of fun stuff, from the only outdoors company that cares about short guys. Seriously, the XS gear goes so fast you'd think other companies would get in on that market.

The True Story of Audion

2012-01-21T07:16:31-08:00

From the Panic blog: the wonderful story of a great little music player.

To be honest, my memory is a bit compressed here, as the whole experience was nothing less than surreal and difficult to process. To find ourselves — just two nerdy guys who make Mac shareware — sitting on Apple Campus, in a meeting with all of these brilliant bigwigs, pretty much caused our heads to continually and rapidly explode, humbled to say the least.

Jobs wanted to know how big we were, and how long we've been doing this. He wanted to know a few more things that I can't even really remember. I remember he asked, "Do you have any other ideas for apps you want to work on?" I replied, genuinely, "Well, we've got an idea for a digital photo management program..." and he replied with a simple, "Yeah. Don't do that one." Everyone in the room laughed but I had no idea why — remember, my head was still exploding — so Steven Frank had to explain to me that he meant, basically, it was already being made and, of course, it would be called iPhoto. Oh. I get it now.