Macworld was a bit of an odd experience, as it was a coming out party for Apple's forays beyond the desktop. Or the laptop for that matter. And I had no idea how many companies were actually making and marketing iPod accessories! I mean, I knew there were a lot, but how many plastic sleeve manufacturers can stay in business long term?

Okay, obviously there are some things in this world that I am not meant to comprehend. Like why in any mall in America you can find a cart filled with cel phone faceplates. I mean, how many people are willing to spend twenty bucks to give their phones a leopard print faceplate?

Speaking of Leopard, where was it? Outside of a rehashed demo and a new ad taking potshots at Windows Vista, where was Mac OS 10.5? or iWork/iLife '07? Missing, and tantalizingly so. Are they waiting until after Vista gets the inevitable press rush to display the hinted at new features? Is the integration between the OS, Apps and the new iPhone so deep that you can't reveal one without the others? Is everything coming out of Cupertino going to be insanely great all year long?

Yes, the reality distortion field is in full efect. The fact that Apple didn't announce things has caused a stir among the faithful. You can debate whether or not Apple has reinvented the phone, but there's no debating that Steve Jobs is a master of manipulating the media.

David Pogue is at Macworld hawking his books and getting to play with the new iPhone, making him the envy of most everyone here. He gave his impressions about the iPhone for the NY Times.



When I stopped by the O'Reilly booth he was talking about the input with the virtual keyboard, and that yeah, Blackberry addicts would prefer a tactile keyboard. This thing is for the rest of us. Well, at least those with $500 to blow on a phone.

On the software front I kind of got what I expected. No Microsoft Office 2008 until fall or later, and no Adobe Creative Suite CS3 until "spring". Frustrating since those are the apps in their non-universal form slow my day down the most. They love the rainbow ball. And no update of iWork or iLife? Probably on hold until Leopard/Mac OS X 10.5. Even the demos of Leopard are mostly a rehash of what they showed at WWDC last year.

Looks like Project Management is starting to finally happen on the Mac. OmniPlan and Project X both look interesting. I'll have to do some more investigating...

I spent a bit of time sitting in on a presentation on the New New Media by Jon Alper of WGBH, a PBS station in Boston. Jon talked about podcasts and context, and what motivates conent creators and aggregators. He made two very interesting observations about creating content and web sites.

1) Web projects require three distinct disciplines: editorial, technical and design. Each discipline should be represented by an expert on the team. I wholly agree - only there are only two of us here at Social Edge. Hmm. When you are getting things started this might not be practical and you may end up with overlapping responsibilities.

That said, having a designer handle your tech architectue or vice versa can leave your implementation wanting in one area or another. Each needs to make concessions to the other in order to produce a cohesive end result.

2) Boundaries are important. They make content creators' work easier. Let your users do what they need to and keep the technical bells and whistles out of their way.

I've always been a big believer in constraints. They allow people to focus on the task at hand rather than getting lost in the possibilities. If you want to write about hybrid NGO business models, you shouldn't spend a bunch of time making colored tables and slidesets from scratch. You should tell me about hybrid NGO business models!

At the end of the keynote presentation yesterday John Mayer played a couple of songs. In between Gravity and Waiting on the World to Change he said something to the effect that Macworld was like the exact opposite of terrorism. It was fun. It was about making cool new things. Then he launched into his latest hit about changing the world and how the younger generation feels cut off from the ability to make a discernible difference in the world. I'd love to introduce him to someone like Kyleigh Kuhn and have her tell him about her Pennies for Peace project.



iPhone will change things. It really doesn't do anything that different than today's smart phones, it just does the same things better. It's that whole Think Different mindset that Apple has. As I was riding the train to San Francisco I found myself thinking about transportation and what it would be like to rethink transportation.

Segway went down this path and made a device that was a really different take on getting from here to there. GM did the same with the EV1 and have just announced a new plug-in hybrid called the Chevy Volt. The Toyota Prius is all over the place and Tesla is releasing their high end electric Roadster.

Some are incremental changes and others are big leaps in a certain direction without a definite destination in mind. What's the best way to overhaul how we get to where we want to go?

Which brings me back to the train. Every morning there's a regular and an express train that leave my station at almost the same time. Every morning the two trains are there but not in the same place. There's no indication as to which is which, either on the train or on the led screens telling us to be aware of suspicious activity. The only way to know which is which is to ask another rider who got on at a previous station which one they got on.

Seems like a simple UI issue that, once solved, would go a long way towards making the train an easier more pleasant way to get around. Have the trains pull in to the same location every day. Put a sign on the train indicating it's number and type. Have the LED signs say which is which.

Big changes are usually an accumulation of small changes from a lot of people solving a lot of related problems.

Well, hanging with Steve and thousands of his closest pals.

After some trepidation after hearing others in line for the keynote discussing a dreaded "overflow room" I was quite releived to get into the keynote presentation. Others were not so lucky. I guess catching the 5:56 train from San Jose to San Francisco was worth it.

When Steve said that he was debuting three revolutionary products in one, he wasn't kidding. The iPhone appears ready to change our perceptions about what mobile connectivity means. Sure, we're starved here in North America for the kind of mobile connectivity that parts of Asia and Europe enjoy, but the UI that the iPhone has and the capabilities changes the paradigm a bit. Right now it's $499. (Or will be in June.) Imagine it at $100 and see what kind of shift takes place. I haven't seen so many grown adults drool over a toy in my life. Reminds me of the last day of school when I was a kid - everybody excited about the fun to come.

The presentation itself - wow. And I heard a lot of wows the entire time. If you need to learn how to give presentations, look for the video of this or any of Jobs' old keynotes. The Reality Distortion Field was in full effect. He announced two products, neither of which are available for purchase, and the whole crowd was in awe. Contrast it to the brief presentations given by the CEOs of Google, Yahoo!, and Cingular. The energy dropped off considerably when Jobs left the stage.

It was hard to tell at the end if the standing ovation was for the products introduced or simply for the presentation itself.

I'm going to my first Macworld. As a longtime Mac-geek, this is my pilgrimage. Of course, the anticipation I am sure is greater than the actual event will be. Booth after booth of tech toys and software. Oooh, Mufasa!

There are plenty of pundits out there predicting what will be revealed at Steve Jobs' keynote. It used to be just a small group of MacGeeks that salivated over these things, but now with the success of the iMac, iPod and iTunes, CNN and the Wall Street Journal even get in on the pre-show hype. Of course, most of the predictions are just logical extensions of a product cycle, and others are logical guesses and some are based on component orders or leaks from partners. The most fun of course are the wild ones based off of what people think they want Apple to make. Like an iPod with a GPS and a built-in pocket knife.

I'll spare you my predictions, and just say that as someone who has sat through his share of horrid PowerPoint presentations where the only question I wanted answered was 'when will it end?' I'm looking forward to a presentation where I'm actually happy that it's two hours instead of 1 1/2. I like good presentations. It's an illness, I know, but I do.

All the fun hardware aside, and the obvious fun of the distortion field pales in importance, however, to the software updates that hopefully get announced. MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite updates to Intel native versions and more features of the upcoming Mac OS X Leopard.