MacWorld SF 2010 in Review

In 2008, Apple announced that MacWorld SF 2009 would be their last MacWorld. 2010 marks the first MacWorld without the booth presence of Apple. Along with Apple, several other major perennial sponsors of MacWorld were not present this year, including Canon, Epson, Nikon, Peachpit Press, O'Reilly Books, Yahoo!, Google and Adobe. Even the guy who tries to sell Martin Hash's Animation Master at every convention and conference I've ever been to on the West Coast didn't bother to show up. Lynda.com, which had a huge presence last year in the spot next to Apple, did not make an appearance,

However, several major companies did show up at MacWorld, including IBM, Xerox, VMWare, and Microsoft. Much of the rest of the floor was dominated by smaller independent companies. MacWorld still faces the problem that 80% of the show is focused on iPod/iPhone, and the remaining 20% is Mac-related, usually in the area of carrying or mounting the Mac.

This year, the market for cases and screen covers seems to have exploded; several companies offered customized case/cover services which would allow artwork to be uploaded and printed.

While the show was smaller than previous years, the show floor remained crowded. One improvement which will need to be made in the future is a better display area for iPhone apps; the current situation with 4 developers to a table is simply too crowded to have any value.