Friday, January 12, 2007
Woke up too early—around 5. Got up and checked work e-mail. Went back to bed for an hour. Woke. Usual oatmeal breakfast plus vanilla yogurt. Chatted with Geordie. Prepared for my first Macworld. Reviewed some of sneeper's photos. Yesterday at the computer support coordinator meeting, Steve Lubeski talked about burglaries at UCSF. He mentioned that Kensington cable locks can be thwarted simply by yanking hard—when the device it protects uses plastic at the lock attachment point (rather than metal) the plastic just breaks away. Although this makes sense to me, I feel like I've been had since I've purchased many of those locks for both home and work. It reminds me of those u-shaped bicycle locks which were found a few years back to be easily thwarted by an inexpensive Bic pen. Is it my responsibility to ask the computer or monitor vendor if the lock attachment point is metal or plastic? Our Dell desktops use metal where those locks attach, but I'm still suspicious since the metal is very thin in the lock location. Over the holidays some offices at UCSF were burglarized. He mentioned that the burglars had thrown a fire extinguisher through glass and punched holes through walls in order to gain access. They clearly made as much noise as they wanted and got away with it. In another case, they very carefully removed a glass window from its frame and left the window and frame intact after having burgled by climbing through the window frame. He also mentioned that some students had their laptops stolen when leaving them unattended for as little as 2 minutes, so, particularly in public spaces such as the library, it's important to understand that thieves are sitting nearby watching you and waiting for you to make exactly such a mistake. Left for iPodworld—I mean Macworld. It actually was very helpful that I have no interest in iPods because it seemed that maybe half or more of the vendors were there exclusively to sell iPod accessories: cases, scratch protectors, headphones, locks, speakers, speakers mounted into toilet paper holders, and so forth. I wish that IDG had separated the iPod-only vendors from the rest of the vendors, but no such luck. I learned and saw so much. One vendor had a giant Wacom tablet that was also a screen—he demonstrated a painting app called ArtRage. I had never seen such a Wacom tablet before. Another vendor had document scanning software but I was more interested in the hardware on display—I had never before seen hardware that would convert paper to TIFF or PDF in extremely large quantities. At the Brother booth, I saw a laser printer filled with printed output—its pages curled—and in my mind I rolled my eyes because I have the exact same mostly unresolvable problem at home with my Brother HL-5250DN. At one hard drive manufacturer's booth I asked what happened to the 5-year warranty on consumer-grade hard drives from 10 or so years ago and I got a rather rude, brusque reply: "We've never had 5-year warranties on those drives." Of course, I saw the newly announced iPhone. The Apple marketing geniuses placed it inside a sealed chamber slightly higher than eye level, lit from within—it was like a religious altar. Inside the chamber, the iPhone was turned on, and it sat on a slowly rotating platform. I didn't even bother getting up close to it partly because there were so many other people doing the exact same thing (and taking photos of it—there are probably hundreds of this exact same photo on the web by now) and partly because I think I got a better look at it from the Flash demos on apple.com than I could in person. The Flash demos are really impressive—an amazing amount of work went into them, but they do a great job of communicating how the iPhone works. A great, rare example of when it's right to use Flash on the web. I learned what I wanted to know about Apple TV—can I hook it up to my computer monitor? The answer is no—it was intended to be hooked to a special kind of TV using HDMI or component video, so I can safely say I won't be buying Apple TV because I don't have space for a separate TV. And I won't be buying the iPhone, either. After you accessorize and purchase service, you'll be out more than $700 dollars, locked in to a contract with Cingular for 2 years, and you'll still have conversations such as, "[phone rings, you answer] Hello? ... Hello? ... Sam, is that you? ... If so, I can't hear you... Call me back, okay?" and you'll still receive voicemail messages that people left for you 3 hours ago. At the keynote introducing the iPhone, Steve Jobs is said to have quoted user interface designer Alan Kay: "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware," to which one could respond, "People who are really serious about cellphone communication should make their own communications networks." The iPhone appears to be a great, innovative design, but it currently relies on unreliable cellular communications networks. However, much of the world seems to be quite willing to pay for unreliable cellular services, so I believe Apple has a winner on its hands. At noon, I met Geordie, Michael, and Marc at Thirsty Bear for lunch. We talked about LeapFrog, Fisher Price, San Diego, cellphones, 3D paper models of the iPhone, more. Afterwards we went back to Moscone Center and wandered the exhibit halls through the event's last hours. Mike left us "10 minutes" in to go back to work. I only got 3 tchotckes: a TiVo antenna topper, a ballpoint pen from Maxtor, and, from Belkin, a ballpoint pen that when you twist it the chamber exposes small Post-It flags. I took some photos of some Belkin devices which I thought were particularly beautiful in the visual design sense. It seems every vendor had Macworld deals and special offers—visit their website through a certain date and enter a special code and get whatever percentage off anything. (Let me know if you are buying any Mac hardware soon and I'll see what I can find in my pile of discounts.) MacTank gave away coupons good through Tuesday for a free pizza slice and soda at Blondie's. iStockPhoto gave away 5 free credits. I found a trial cdrom of a drawing program for Chris C who had been wondering what happened to MacDraw. After the show closed, I accompanied Geordie and Marc to Beard Papa where they got a snack and I continued to wait for Patrick. Geordie and Marc took off, and I met Patrick at the Metreon. We had dinner at Long Life Noodle Company, then for dessert we used part of the Beard Papa gift certificate that Phil, Danny, and Drew got me for my birthday. Went to bed very early, around 8:30 PM. Patrick gave me a nice massage before I fell asleep.