Macworld 2010 – My Full Report

I was fortunate enough to attend the Macworld 2010 expo in San Francisco from 2/9-2/13 on my employer’s dime. This was the first major convention I’d ever been to, and I had a great time! I learned stuff, saw cool products, hung out with friends/colleagues and ate far too much delicious food. I’m writing this with myself in mind – that is, the ‘me’ of 2 months ago when I didn’t understand exactly how the convention was organized or what to expect. Skip to the bottom if you just want to see the awesome food we ate.

What is Macworld?

Well, it’s an expo, and a convention. It’s also called a tradeshow and a conference. And it’s a magazine and corresponding website. So yeah, it’s a lot of things. From the Macworld Expo website, the event can be broken down into 1) the expo and 2) the conference. The expo is a giant show floor with lots of vendors and speakers while the conference consists of various classes divided into categories like MacIT and Creative Safari.

This was the first year that Apple was not involved. There was no Apple booth and no Apple presentations or speakers. I read that attendance was down slightly, but it was still a huge event – I surely didn’t notice a lack of participation.

The Conference

How the conferences work and what classes were when and which ones I could take were the most confusing things for me. Here’s the best way I can explain it:

Although Macworld starts on a Tuesday, the expo (and the accompanying crowds) doesn’t start until Thursday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, attendees go to Power Tools sessions, which are 2-day sessions that are much more in-depth than the 1-2 hour sessions that occur on the other days. There are also some shorter “MacLabs” on those days. The Power Tools sessions range from photography to server administration. On Thursday, the expo gets under way and people line up to see the speakers – like David Pogue, Kevin Smith and BT – and to peruse the vendors on the expo floor. In the past, Steve Jobs would unveil products at Macworld, but no longer. From Thursday-Saturday, there are dozens of classes to take at any given time, and I took about 8 under the MacIT and Users categories, each one about 1.5-2 hours. The categories were tiered – since I was signed up for the MacIT conference, I could also attend any of the Users conference sessions.

To add further confusion, there are specific tracks to the MacIT conference, but you can also pick and choose your sessions. I picked and chooseded, but I probably could have squeezed in another session or two if I’d done the tracks.

And of course, the more stuff you sign up for, the more expensive it is. Here’s a breakdown. Hope that sort of explains things…

Favorite Sessions

The things that stuck with me –

Mac Enterprise Integration

This was my 2 day Power Tools session, and I learned a lot about how Macs can be integrated into an existing Windows environment. Most people use the ‘golden triangle’ method where the OS X client is bound to multiple directory services – AD for user authentication and OD for machine policies. Of course, this requires that you have an Xserve running OD, so that’s a significant cost if you don’t already have it. Did that make sense? Ok, good.

Mac and iPhone Security

This session was led by a fellow named Rick Mogull who was a great presenter and didn’t go overboard on the technical details. He answered the perpetual “which OS is better?” question by explaining that safety and security are different things. The analogy is that an unlocked house in a great neighborhood is safe but not secure, and a locked apartment in a bad part of town is secure, but not necessarily safe. Keeping this in mind: Macs are safer, but Windows is more secure. Windows simply has more advanced security features, but the fact remains that there are no widespread Mac viruses. This could change, of course, but that’s how it stands right now. In case you’re wondering, he was referring to OS X 10.6 and Vista/Windows 7. Also, unless you jailbreak your iPhone, you don’t need to worry about it being hacked.

Intro to VR Photography

This is where you take multiple photos and stitch them together to create a file (traditionally a Quicktime .mov) that you can drag around to see all around you. You know, like Virtual Realitiy?!? I’ve played with it in the past and want to get into it again, so I got a ton of great tips from this session. The session leader, Scott Highton, clearly knows his stuff. You should check out his website – www.vrphotography.com

BT

If you’re not in the know, BT is a composer/musician that uses a lot of technology. His music is considered electronic, but it doesn’t often fall into a category very easily; he’s incredibly diverse and always trying new and weird things. He’s a big Mac user (hence his presence at Macworld), but he uses a lot of acoustic instruments, especially when he’s composing. At the beginning of his interview they passed out glow sticks and Red Bull BT’s website – www.btmusic.com

Favorite Products

What held my attention on the expo floor -

Joby – All of the Gorillapod stuff is cool, but I really want their new ball head. And their flashlight with magnetic feet. And most of their accessories…

Eye-Fi – the new Pro X2 card holds 8 GB by itself and supports ad-hoc connections to a laptop (no router needed) for transferring photos. Perfect for location shoots.

Flatscreen Arms – slickest, prettiest (and probably priciest) arms for flatscreen monitors I’ve ever seen. Their website (on 2/16/10) only shows a few of the products I saw.

Verbatim – teeny tiny flash drives that are supposedly quite durable. Me want.

Blue Mikey – a high-quality microphone to record directly to the iPhone. Great for bootlegs!

Tunebug – turn your bicycle helmet into a speaker. I actually did my senior engineering project on similar technology.

Hotel

Where I lived for a week -

I stayed at the Marriot Marquis on 4th/Market, which is next to the Powell Street BART station. This made it super-easy to get there from the airport and it’s just a block away from the Moscone Center, which is where Macworld was. For those that have never been, Market Street is pretty much the center of the San Franciscan universe. Shopping, public transit, street vendors, tourists, restaurants, cables cars, crazy people… it’s all there.

Another nice feature of the hotel (other than location) is the View Lounge, which is on the 39th floor. It’s a great spot for views of the city through huge windows. You can see West towards Twin Peaks and the setting sun on one side and East towards the Bay Bridge on the other.

Getting Around

Here’s what I needed to know -

BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) are the trains that go all over the entire Bay area, serving a huge number of people. Most notably, it goes under the bay from SF to Oakland. To ride, you buy a card and load money on it. You scan the card when you enter a station, and then you scan it again when you leave – it deducts based on how far you rode. It cost me about $9 to get from SFO to downtown San Francisco. I learned the hard way that the earliest train to SFO on Sunday morning is at 8:40am. I had a 9:50am flight so I was forced to take a cab.

Muni is the city transit, including trains and buses. These get you all around San Francisco, but you’ll have to look for another bus system to get you beyond the city limits. The trains are interesting because in some parts they run underground like a subway, but in other parts they run along city streets and are more like buses. When it’s a subway, the stairs come up to make a flat surface, and they turn back into stairs when it goes back above ground – it’s neat! I bought a 7-day pass for $26 that includes the cable cars.

Cable cars are awesome, of course. They work by grabbing onto a cable buried in the road that runs constantly running and is miles long. The operator has quite an array of levers and pedals to grab the cable for uphill and for braking going downhill. I noticed that there are two operators on each car, and they communicate to each other by ringing bells. I guess the main operator can’t always see if people are getting on or off and this is how they prevent running them over. Obviously they’re a nostalgic form of transportation but they’re quite functional, too.

Bridge

Useful for walking to Marin County –

The Golden Gate Bridge, that is. I was able to get up early one morning and catch a bus to the bridge, walk across it, and catch a bus back before my first session at 10am. I have to give props to the driver who let me ride, even though my Muni pass wasn’t valid for that bus system. The Muni website lets you look up dozens of bus schedules for other systems, which I suppose it convenient for some people – I was annoyed. Anyways, I got dropped off just before the toll booths. From there I walked the full 1.7 miles across, and then back. I was not expecting such a long distance!

The bridge is amazing and awe-inspiring, but it’s also loud as hell with the traffic zipping by at 50 mph. I was lucky in that it was not windy. Another thing to keep in mind is that bicyclists use the bridge in the mornings, and you’d best pay attention lest you get run over. The view of San Francisco at sunrise was incredible, and it was also neat seeing a few ships pass underneath. To sum up, I highly recommend walking the bridge – it’s a great experience but be prepared for noise, distance, fast bikers and potentially lots of wind.

Gastrodebauchery

Where I got my calories –

Needless to say my hotel room did not have a kitchen, so I ate out every meal. Luckily I had some friends also attending Macworld and a few others living in the Bay Area, so I didn’t have to think too much to find good places. Here’s a few of my favorites:

• New Dehli Restaurant – award winning Indian food
• Ghirardelli – best hot fudge sundae you’ll ever have
• House of Nanking – Chinese in Chinatown, packed for a reason
• Blondie’s Pizza – good/cheap/quick
• Zazie – amazing breakfast, try the poppyseed pancakes

Here’s a map of everywhere I ate. Most are close to 4th/Market. The only one I wasn’t impressed with was Lori’s Diner – all the others are well worth your time and money.

House of Nanking

Martini @ Marriott

Ghirardelli Sundae

If I Go Again I Will…

• Definitely stay at the Marriot again
• Add a vacation day or two so I can visit museums (esp. the cable car museum)
• Use the Muni more, to see other parts of the city
• Wear more comfortable shoes
• Take more photos of strangers

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See all of the photos on SmugMug – San Francisco Gallery