Let's face it. Macworld Expo 2008 didn't exactly blow people away with its product intros. There was the MacBook Air, Apple TV Take Two and...um...not much else. And there could have been. Think about it. The Mac Pro was quietly upgraded in the days that led up to the event (psst, hey you, interested in some raw computing power?), and now the iPhone and iPod touch have received some major memory upgrades in the February slump. Both upgrades, as we have now seen, were relegated to Tuesday-morning sticky notes.
It's not as if Apple couldn't have announced this morning's memory upgrades in January. I'm pretty sure these new iPods and iPhones didn't just magically spring into existence within the last 3 weeks. The product that was announced, the (*yawn*) major AppleTV upgrade with movie rentals. is already delayed, and no sign yet of the "late February" iPhone SDK.
So what's going on with Apple? Is there some sort of mojo shortage? Or maybe Steve just wanted some of us to do badly in our keynote predictions[1]. You tell us in the comments.
One item in our loot from Macworld was a shiny new (though now slightly ruffled from the flight) MacBook Air poster. You want it? Sure thing, just leave a comment and validate. It may be the closest some of us will get to a real MacBook Air, until 2011, when all MacBooks adopt the same form factor, naturally.
To enter, leave a comment on this post, validate it so it appears in the comments section.
The comment must be left before February 3, 11:59PM Eastern Time.
You may enter once. We'll check.
One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
The one winner will receive a MacBook Air poster, worth whatever is being fetched on ebay, because you can't buy this thing anywhere.
Click Here for complete Official Rules (after the jump).
This morning I finally shipped out the first round of swag-bag winners from our Talkcasts. Congratulations to those who called in, I hope you enjoy your junk prizes. Unfortunately our pre-Macworld t-shirt winners wound up with their t-shirts handed out at Macworld, and those were the very last of our version 1.0 TUAW t-shirts. Time and budgets will tell if we make more. Instead, I shipped the folks who responded to my winner emails some goodies courtesy Dr. Bott.
And speaking of Dr. Bott, they've been generous enough to provide a big bag (or two) of goodies from the likes of Griffin, Marware, H20 Audio, ifrogz and othercoolmanufacturers. So be on the lookout for more giveaways-- my wife won't let me keep this stuff lying around the house forever! (Hint: we've got an extra MacBook Air poster hidden away)
I'd also like to thank Equinux for the copies of Coverscout and Mail Stationery Packs, plus some show swag, which is also making its way out to you lucky readers.
Two weeks ago the world was a-twitter with speculation as to what in the world Apple meant by "Something is in the Air." Of course, if you tuned in to our talkcast, you heard a pretty good tip on that score, but the next day El Steve-O dropped a shiny-new, paper-thin, slightly-underpowered (depending on your needs) portable in our collective laps.
So as we bid adieu to TUAW's complete Macworld 2008 coverage, we'd like to point out you can relive the magic in several ways. First there's the video in this post, with a frantic run-through of the floor, interviews, booths and more. Second, there's our Macworld 2008 tagged pages. And lastly, our Macworld 2008 summary page, nicely organized into manageable chunks so you can find what you need quickly. We're still uploading all these videos to the various video places around the web, and as we update individual posts, we'll update the Macworld 2008 page too.
The next big event for us will be WWDC (whenever that happens to be, but last year it was June 11-15). Of course, TUAW will be there, interviewing developers and hopefully hosting another fun meetup. Stay tuned!
If you've got the time, we've got the pixels. Relive the glory of Macworld 2008 even if you weren't there with our 132 pictures from the show, featuring:
In the press room at Macworld there was a little foyer with alphabetized buckets where you could pick up press kits from the various vendors. This is an exercise in wastefulness, as many of the press kits are glossy folders filled with photocopies and CD's.
Now, I realize the coordination required to put all this on a single DVD or USB drive would be immense, so I'm not blaming Macworld/IDG here, but surely there's got to be a better way. I've made a gallery of the leftover press releases, CD's and cases I was left with-- and I didn't even take everything! I also had to discard all the covering folders for what I did grab, because I didn't want to pay $60 extra for the additional weight in my luggage (no kidding, it was like an extra 10 lbs. of junk). Sadly, that stuff got trashed in my hotel room, and I'm sure it didn't get recycled. Maybe next year the dream of a "paperless" Macworld can be realized...
So let's say you've got a Panther machine on your DSL connection with a firewall, and another computer across town running Windows 98 on a dual-ISDN connection, but you really need to control the Mac from the PC. No dice, right? According to Webex, this might just be possible,* although your experience won't be a zippy thrill-ride.
Webex uses a subscription-based tool to allow remote access across computers, and at Macworld they were talking about Mac-to-PC friendliness. Scott had a chat and wound up with pricing (it's as cheap as $10.35/month), a website (pcnow.com), and the aforementioned horrific scenario of connectivity. Oh, and they've got iPhone compatibility of a sort, just be aware of the limitations.
*In theory, Webex engineers say a 56k connection will allow connectivity. The specs also provide compatibility with Panther and Win98 on the low end. Note I said "low end" which means the performance won't be anything close to a high-speed connection and some more current OS'es.
BusyMac had a good thing going with BusySync 1 and 1.5: seamlessly share and edit calendar info across your home or business LAN using iCal. Version 2 (due next month) features sync via the cloud-- so you can sync a work and home computer, even if you don't work at home. There's also Google Calendar support in BusySync 2, which could be the holy grail many of us have been looking for. Mike does a quick run through in the video.
Mike Lee, the "world's toughest programmer," and official Major-domo for Delicious Monster sat down with Scott to show off some features coming to Delicious Library 2. We know a lot of you are itching for the release of this one, and Mike gives an answer to when it'll ship... sort of.
Other items in the video: - sharing your library - media launching - more categories (now tracks gadgets) - .Mac (and more) publishing options - metadata support - robust import/export tools - one click backup - why no pro version? - scripting support! - plus a first look at a feature that will have Cory flipping out
Mike also talks about charity, and his efforts to help in Madagascar. The read link will take you to Mike's Club Thievey where you can help.
If you've been dying to find out what the MacBook Air is really like, and weren't fortunate enough to be at Macworld to spend a little time hands-on with the latest Apple laptop, our colleagues over at sister-site Engadget have been busy testing the MacBook Air, and have just posted their review.
Taking you through all the innovations (and compromises) it comes highly recommended especially with the galleries. Even as someone who was at Macworld, I remain astounded at the engineering involved in getting this machine just as thin as it is. Ryan Block makes some excellent points, and his concluding sentence (not wanting to ruin it for you) will undoubtedly resonate with a lot of people -- TUAW staff included.
We stopped by Rogue Amoeba's booth last week and chatted with Paul Kafasis, CEO and big amoeba on campus, about all of their apps. Paul was kind enough to give us a quick demo of Airfoil 3 (I loves me some Airfoil Speakers) and Fission.
It's no big secret we love the funky look and wonderfully simple apps that come from the Plasq team. And there's no denying that Comic Life was a big hit for them. To follow that act they've been working on Comic Life Magiq, which we only had a taste of so far, but it looks just as funky and useful as you'd expect from these guys. Check out one of those age-old photo tasks: cutting a person out of a background. They actually make it look fun.
Netgear's ReadyNAS is a NAS, yes, but it comes pre-configured with an iTunes server, bittorent, wireless disk and printer support and more. Quite the plug-and-play darling, Netgear was kind enough to create some Mac-friendly tools to manage the thing (it's got a Widget!). You can configure the thing to your heart's delight , which makes it that much more versatile. The ReadyNAS line was previously sold by Infrant prior to the Netgear acquisition, so the products are distinct from Netgear's earlier NAS products.
There are several flavors of ReadyNAS: a rackmount server for business folk, the Duo series, and the terribly gorgeous NV+ series -- Netgear also sells a cute entry-level NAS called Storage Central. The sweet spot for most people will likely be the Duo or NV+, as the Storage Central doesn't have the extensive RAID tools every other model does (and as noted by our commenters, the older/cheaper devices can't be administered from Mac OS X).
Prices for the NV+ with a whopping 4TB of X-RAID storage ran from roughly $2,000 to $3,000. By comparison, the old Storage Central lines can be found online for around $70 (hard drive not included, $90 from Netgear), but the new line, Storage Central Turbo, was floating close to the MSRP of $200 (shows $189.99 on the Netgear store).
There have been plenty of attempts at LCD glasses, iPod goggles, 3D eyewear, and even a hacked iPod cyborg model, but the Zeiss Cinemizer is a little different. First of all, if the name Zeiss looks familiar, it should be. That's Carl Zeiss, one of the most respected names in optics. The Cinemizer, as a result, has a pristine viewing experience, but perhaps more importantly, doesn't suffer from the front-heavy, nose-jamming weight you find on previous offerings.
The Cinemizer supports 3D (if the video is 3D to begin with), and has a battery/control system that's about as elegant as you're going to get with something you have to strap your iPod into. Check out the video as Mike puts it through the paces. Unfortunately our "mind's eye" adapter was in the shop, so you won't be seeing what Mike sees, but his description and facial contortions are hilarious ample enough.
We're kicking off a few weeks of giveaways with a little bit of Macworld swag from Ambrosia Software. If you didn't attend Macworld, now's your chance to pretend you stopped by the Ambrosia booth anyway (for the full experience be sure to watch our interview with founder Andrew Welch too).
What's in the box? A WireTap Studio t-shirt (XL), a WireTap Studio pin, and a DVD with trial versions of all Ambrosia apps. Basically what you see in the image to the right. Not bad, considering all you have to do is leave a comment on this post (be sure to check your email and validate the comment so it appears). We'll leave comments and the giveaway open from now until Friday just before midnight (11:59 Eastern). Oh, this one is still just in the US, you gotta be 18, etc. Full rules after the jump.
Recap:
Ambrosia Macworld swag giveaway, prizes are a t-shirt, pin and DVD.
To enter, leave a comment on this post. If you're really cool you'll tell us your favorite Ambrosia app.
Comment must be left before January 25, 11:59PM Eastern time.
Three winners will be chosen, and their prizes shipped directly from Ambrosia.
Let's face it. Macworld Expo 2008 didn't exactly blow people away with its product intros. There was the MacBook Air, Apple TV Take Two and...um...not much else. And there could have been. Think about it. The Mac Pro was quietly upgraded in the days that led up to the event (psst, hey you, interested in some raw computing power?), and now the iPhone and iPod touch have received some major memory upgrades in the February slump. Both upgrades, as we have now seen, were relegated to Tuesday-morning sticky notes.
So let's say you've got a Panther machine on your DSL connection with a firewall, and another computer across town running Windows 98 on a dual-ISDN connection, but you really need to control the Mac from the PC. No dice, right? According to Webex, this might just be possible,* although your experience won't be a zippy thrill-ride.
We stopped by 
There have been plenty of 
We're kicking off a few weeks of giveaways with a little bit of Macworld swag from 
