MWSF Official Thread

garymum4d said:
The new Mini iPods are NOT on the UK apple store. All the other new stuff is, iLife, G5 Xserve and so on, but No mini iPods!!!

Are we not good enough? after all we are still waiting for ITMS
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Good. It gives them lots of time to re-think the price, before they make a loss on productiuon of these things. 4gb when you can have 15gb for $50 more? Thats so poorly thought out as to be laughable. I thought they were only looking at smaller sized iPods to take on the the other smaller mp3 players on the market, something they will utterly fail to do with this pricing scheme - what exactly, has been the point of designing, producing and manufacturing iPodMinis, other than research and trial and error for the next generation of iPods.
Regardless of how beautiful, functional, small, long-lived practical and durable it is, £249 is too much for a personal stereo (mp3 or not, data-carrying-able or not), and £220 for one with a third of the capacity is not only no better, its actually worse.

I loved the complete deadpan non-reaction when Steve announced the price - like "no seriously dude, how much will it be? No, no we're not falling for it, stop yanking our chains, what will the price be? WHAT? YOU'RE ACTUALLY SERIOUS!?!?!"
 
All right, here is a synopsis of my trip to the expo today. Pictures will be forthcoming.

My friend Ben & I took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to San Francisco in the morning. We got to the expo at, oh, 11:30-ish, and had to wait in line until about 1 with all the other cheapskates with free passes. :p

Once we got in, we turned left and wandered around the north hall for a bit. That was actually fairly boring, since there wasn't a lot of stuff to try and most of the game machines were in use. We then ate lunch and made our way to the south hall.

The south hall was quite a bit more interesting. Most of the booths had hands-on demos here, including a couple stands I like to call iMac Row and G5 Row. ;) Ben & I, being musicians, finally got to experiment with Garage Band, and it was quite something. After that, we managed to find the Guitar Center booth, where we talked music with some of the guys there.

Some other things we did (I can't quite remember the chronological order, but it doesn't matter): we watched a presentation on the iPods; I got a shirt saying "Life is short. Get a Mac;" I talked to Narasu Rebapraggada of MacAddict; Ben talked to Sinbad the comedian; and toward the end, we found a small Halo tournament. The winner got a free Radeon 9800, and the 2 runner-ups got a free game each. Then, while I was playing Halo with some other attendees, they turned the lights off to get everyone to leave. We checked out the Metreon for a bit, then took BART back to Dublin & drove home.

All in all, I had a great time. I (and everyone else there, including Sinbad) managed to convince Ben into desiring a Mac, since it's so good with musical hardware and software. This was also my first expo, so I have no basis of comparison to say it was better or worse than any others, but I definitely had a good time and I'm looking forward to going again.
 
The BART story was interesting (cough, cough). :) What can you tell us about GarageBand?

You say there were a couple of interesting hands-on demos. Of what? What made them interesting?
 
Arden said:
I believe the iPod Minis are scheduled for Japan next month and Europe in March.
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Hey, anyone in Dublin (Ireland) or UK wants to get an iPod mini next week? I could bring and sell one ... ;)
 
GarageBand is quite easy to get started with. The brushed metal is definitely darker than the run-of-the-mill brushed metal, but it also has thin wood panels on the left and right sides, so it may be half-way simulating an actual amp or something weird like that. If you've ever used Soundtrack, you already know how to use the looping part; if not, then it's not very hard to figure out. You can view either keyword buttons or columns displaying instruments. I like the keyword listing because you can click multiple keywords to either expand or narrow the instrument list; you could click "Drums," "Dark" and "Intense," for example, and it would show all the dark, intense drums (whatever defines that :)). You can also add live tracks with amp filters for many sounds besides guitar, and record anything into it. The iMacs all had alternating iSights and DV cameras, so the microphones picked up a lot of ambient noise, but you can listen to what's coming through in the dialog to create a new live track. I couldn't figure out how to add notes to MIDI tracks, though; it's either hidden or omitted.

There were hands-on demos of just about everything from Macromedia products to different speakers to games. What made some of them interesting was my interest in the product; I found the Guitar Center area more interesting than the FileMaker booth, for example. One booth that was interesting regardless of all that, though, was showing off a tablet that lets you move the cursor around with the pen. I can't remember what the product is called, but you hover the pen's tip just above the tablet to move the cursor (move the tip to a different area and the cursor goes there) and tap to click. It also features a floating box with modifier icons that you can click on to command-, control-, etc.-click. It's got a great role as a tool for education.

Any more questions?
 
Yeah, it was pretty fun, though I got a headache and an earache from BART....lol....I seriously think that I could go for a mac, and just start all my music production and writing on that, and keep this Dell for other small things that I find important
 
Giaguara said:
Hey, anyone in Dublin (Ireland) or UK wants to get an iPod mini next week? I could bring and sell one ... ;)
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But they dont ship till Feb 16... but nice try =)
 
I know Alex. Seriously, does anyone in UK (or Ireland) want an iPod mini next week? I can get one / more here, and bring with me to UK ..
 
Here they are, folks! :)

Some of these came out rather poorly... after all, it was just a slow 1.3 megapixel camera, so there wasn't a lot to work with, but I did try to salvage what I could. Anyway, enjoy! :cool:

01-ben_on_my_street.jpg

Yay! We finally made it to San Francisco! :D That's Ben, a.k.a. SynthFuzz, on the right.

02-moscone_rhymes_with_tony.jpg

This is one part of Moscone Center. This is actually the media hall; the exhibition hall that's open to the public is behind me.

03-look_ma_ants.jpg

The view from the lobby. We headed down... and down... and down some more.

04-the_main_attraction.jpg

It's so... so... so glorious!

05-stick_this_in_your_network.jpg

Now that is some computing power. All 3 forms of Xserve in a rack.

06-just_a_love_machine.jpg

A closeup of the Xserves... from top: Xserve, Xserve RAID, 4 Xserve clusters

07-bill_gates_dreaming.jpg

Poor little iMac... at least the data's okay, thanks to Drive Savers.

08-sir_mix_a_lot.jpg

This is a very nice mixing board. The sliders move themselves during playback.

09-narasu_too.jpg

Me with Narasu Rebapraggada of MacAddict.

10-lil_toke_yo.jpg

The new HiPod mini. :)

11-iposse.jpg

I call it the iPosse.

12-sin_badly.jpg

Ben with actor, comedian and mixmaster Sinbad.

13-born_to_be_geeky.jpg

Me and another guy sucking badly at a racing game.

14-goodnight_moscone.jpg

Moscone at night.

15-city_at_night.jpg

Moscone set against the buildings of the city... it looked better in person.

16-statue_of_limitations.jpg

Have you ever seen a three-handed statue?
And, after all that, Ben came out a wannabe switcher! :D
 
Good job Arden, thanks. Glad you didn't wear your drumming pjs to the show. :D Thanks again for the report. :)
 
Giaguara said:
Seriously, does anyone in UK (or Ireland) want an iPod mini next week? I can get one / more here, and bring with me to UK ..
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Giaguara

Seriously, I'd like to get hold of one pink one for my girlfriend (birthday on 24th January) - and a silver one for myself..

How to do?

I can get a (UK) cheque / cash to you if you're going to be in London when you return...

Thanks

ed

:)
 
Is it me or is the rebroadcast not working. I haven't been able to see it yet. My Quicktime is the latest PRO version and works for anything else. But when I click on the keynote it just sits there with the blue cylon eye going back and forth.
 
sorry this report is late but i was on vacation after macworld and i didnt have time to post all this stuff, first i went to the keynote which was awesome, John Mayer was really cool and a surprise, i was disappointed when we didnt get anything for free like garage band perhaps :D

on the show floor was cool too, garage band is certainly awesome and easy, plus apple had imacs with keyboards set up to use the program, basically every apple peripheral was there like iSights which were connected to apple employees, the adobe booth was great and showed off CS stuff, microsoft was boring but gave away entourage for free, the gaming center was great and showed off a good number of mac games, i bought Jedi Academy which rocks.... here are some picts from the show


this is a pict of the ads apple posted around san fran after the announcement
ad.JPG


me with garage band
gband.JPG


John mayer at the keynote addr
johnny.JPG


the line for the keynote wrapped around moscone around 5:30 am
line.JPG


me on the wireless network
me2.JPG


i got this shirt at the show
me.jpg
 
oh yeah i was interviewed by the contra costa times too about the ipod and accesories,i saved the .htm file, its pretty funny, i didnt even know if that was a reputable paper or where it was when she told me, being from the other side of the country :D
 
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