Live from Macworld SF 2008

Macworld SF 2008 started off as a big fiasco at registration. Traditionally, Macworld attendees receive their badges in the mail, and when they get to Macworld, they show them the badge, and receive a badgeholder. Normally, I show up half an hour before the conference starts, stand in a line for about 30 seconds, and I'm good to go. This was not how things happened this year. Regsitration, unlike years past, was moved into Moscone West's first floor. My sister and I drove by it upon arriving in San Francisco, and we thought it was just the keynote getting out. It was not -- the horde of people at Moscone West were people who had pre-registered who were waiting on their badges.

If you recall, in July, I blogged about the 3 hour line for pre-registrants to Anime Expo -- this was the same thing, except much less organized. In the end, (about 45 minutes after the exhibit halls opened) Macworld organizers decided to simply use the barcodes as the badge in an attempt to clear people out of the registration area.

The Macworld expo is stupid crowded this year - more people than ever before. It's starting to feel like comic-con, with just enough space to squeeze by.

Apple announced a smörgåsbord of new products this January, but the show stealer was definitely the MacBook Air. The 13 inch Macbook Air had more people surrounding it than any other product at MacWorld this year, and by my estimation, there were more people ogling it than were fascinated by the iPhone last year. I predict that despite the expense of the MacBook Air, that this is going to be one of Apple's best-selling laptops of the new year. The MacBook Air is extremely thin and extremely beautiful. The display is beautiful, and while I don't really like the MacBook style keyboard, the multitouch gesture based trackpad is really awesome. For all the treehuggers out there, it's also very environmentally friendly too -- the aluminum case is recyclable, the circuit boards are produced without BFR and PVC, the packaging is smaller, and the new screens use a glass that is both arsenic-free and mercury-free.

The MacBook Air comes in two varieties: MacBook Air 1.8 Ghz and MacBook Air 1.6 Ghz, with a 80 GB hard drive, 2 GB of RAM, a USB 2.0 port along with Micro-DVI, built-in 802.11n and Bluetooth + EDR. The MacBook Air doesn't come with a optical drive or a user-serviceable battery.

The other announcements today aren't all that exciting to me, but I really like the idea of a super-light notebook. My first notebooks out of college were sub-notebooks, and enjoyed them greatly because of the portability. While these days I use a 6-year-old 6 pound PowerBook to use as my work machine on the go, it sure would be nice to have a lighter load.

Flickr: Macworld SF 2008