Macworld 2002 Conference and Expo

Introduction

As most of you know, Macworld came into town this week and was situated over at the Jacob Javits Convention Center on the west side of Manhattan. On Thursday, I had the opportunity to take a walk through the exhibit hall floor and basically take in what it's like to go to a Mac conference. Hey, it wasn't half as bad as I thought it was going to be ! (Don't ask what I thought it was going to be though). In any case, Macworld of course centered around the many products and services that Mr. Jobs unveiled this week as well as a slew of third party companies vying for that dollar in you.

The Exhibit Hall

What can I say? I thought Macworld was fairly well done especially in light of the TechXNY conference a few weeks ago. I wrote up a quick overview of TechXNY that you can check out at your leisure. Compared to TechXNY, Macworld was just full of adrenaline and well excited people! Yes there were more people at TechXNY this year than in the last few years but the Mac following was surprisingly large here at Macworld. I was tempted to wear a Windows shirt but I thought better of it considering that I did need to go back to work at a reasonable time (and with my face intact). So what can I say about Macworld otherwise?

In all, there was nothing totally revolutionary at Macworld this summer. But that's to be expected in many ways. It was going to be very hard to outdo what Apple did with the new iMac back in January. In fact, if you think about all of the things they announced this week - Apple essentially upgraded products that we already knew and loved (or hated!). Whether it be the iMac with the 17 inch screen, or the new 20GB iPod which supports Windows, or the new tunes of iTunes3, most everything announced were upgrades.

With that in mind, I didn't see anything that literally dropped my jaws in awe. However, there were definitely a few items that I paid attention to. I drooled at the new 17 inch iMac as well as the 20GB iPod. With that 20GB iPod, I could have my entire mp3 library on the go! ATI was showing off their new Radeon products in a fairly small to medium sized booth. There were a great deal of hard disk drive makers ranging from 1394 drives to USB drives. I personally picked up some programming books from O'Reilly and Assoc, which had a nice discount on books as well as a free tshirt with 2 or more books purchased.

All in all, Macworld felt very much like a little refresher to the Apple lineup. Nothing too incredible but nothing too dull either. Sure OSX 10.2 is pretty much done and they were heavily promoting it.. but what's so awesome about it besides the minor upgrades? I'm not sure it's worth the 129 upgrade cost IMHO

If you're in town here in NYC for one more day - then try and drop by at the Jacob Javits. Even if you're not a Mac fan, you won't be able to help but feel pumped up by the crowd around you. Without further ado, here are some of the snapshots from Thursday July 18 2002 at Macworld.

Pictures:

Outside Macworld	In front of Macworld	Inside at the entrance to Macworld

iMac Intro	iMac new 17 inch screen	iMac G4

iMac 17 inch	iMac 17 inch continued

iMovie crowd	I see you..

New iPod2	iPod2	iPod2 remote control

OS X 10.2 everywhere	and everywhere...

XServ cometh..	XServ goeth..

Dual Processor Mac	Dual Proc Macs	Some More Dual Proc Macs

The guts of a Mac duallie	duallie G4 heatsinks	duallie G4 Expansion slots

Radeon 9000 Pro	Radeon 9000 Pro	Radeon 9700

We took a small video clip with our camera of the monitor showing the Radeon 9700. Though it's not a great video since it was taken with a digital camera.. you do get somewhat of a feel for this video card. The audio has been cut out and I've encoded the video into DivX 5.02. You can find the video here.

Six Degrees Software	Six Degrees S/W

JBL Creature Speakers	JBL's again	and more JBL's

Griffen PowerMates	USB Drives..	And more USB Drives..

Epson Photo 960	Epson Photo 960 Specs

Epson Photo 2200	10,000 dollar Epson Photo Printer

ExtremeMac iPod Gear	ExtremeMac iRise	ExtremeMac iRise Specs

Gamers Wanted	Warcraft III	Wingnuts

Star Wars: Galatic Battlegrounds	Medal of Honor	Aliens vs. Predator

And finally.. to leave you this day.. procreate...

We've got some more pics taken from the last day at Macworld on the next page

Got any comments? Saw some cool things here or at Macworld in person? Come on over to the forums and discuss it!