Wednesday
Sep132006
Quite an Eventful Day...
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 8:51AM Whoo what a day! Up at 6am. First the Apple Expo in Paris, some lessons learned...
- Easyjet allows you to print your boarding card online so you don't have to check in. I left myself a good 20 minutes before the gate closed but discovered it took 18 minutes to get through security - close call!
- Despite Paris being only an hour away via direct flight, the Expo was on the other side of Paris from CDG and took one mainline atrain and two metros to get there, so add another 90 minutes onto the journey.
- Paris trains get very hot on a sunny day.
- French people speak French! From the Information guy at the Airport, to the ladies serving in the Expo, no-one spoke English. Also, all the main sessions in the Expo were in French although most of the vendors on the booths spoke English. Very English of me to expect otherwise but after working in Holland for a while (where almost everyone speaks English) it was a bit of a suprise.
- The Macs in the Press Center (yes they gave me the Press Pass OK) all had French keyboards which don't conform to the QWERTY layout. Now I'm not a touch typist, very much hunt and peck but I was suprised how difficult it was to use.
- If you use a web based email solution as your primary email (such as gmail) and have it configured via Mail.app at home, don't expect to remember the password - Doh!
- Despite the French having such a reputation for good food, Bagettes seem the order of the day, and mainly ham bagettes at that - Bagettes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
- Apple move so quickly they don't always have the latest stuff - quite a few Mac Pros around but no 24" iMacs (as far as I could see) - I saw FCP on a Mac Pro with two 30" screens manipulate some HD stuff - awesome!
- There are only so many iPod accessories or iPod accessory stands you can take in in one day!
- Met up with Dan Counsell of Rapidweaver.
- Saw the DVD printer I'm probably going to buy - Primera SE Disc Publisher
- Saw the cool new Viewsonic monitor with iPod dock built into the base.
- Harmon/Kardon has a really nice car integration package for the iPod.
- Good to see so many Mac fans in one place!
- Saw some new applications with potential for demoing on ScreenCastsOnline.
- Had some thinking time on the return journey without the distraction of my mac or ScreenCastsOnline comitments - Managed to finalise the new arrangements for the Extra! membership - OK so nearly!
- Bit dissapointed on the lack of the 16:9 widescreen iPod but hey, something else to look forward to.
- iPod updates look good - Wonder if the search will only appear on the 6th Gen ipods? (Update - Gapless works great and is automatic - on install your iTunes library is analysised and updated - tested Pink Floyd - Dark Side OTM and it's now gapless - how cool is that!)
- ipod Nano now looks very much like a slimline iPod mini!
- New shuffle look great!
- Itunes 7 seems a pretty solid upgrade (installed it after the keynote) but as usual, over here in Europe we miss out on Movies - heck, we're still waiting for TV shows! At least they mentioned Internationalisation in 2007. 640x480 is still suprisingly low resolution in the era of HD but I suppose they are limited by download capacity for most people. Bring on the HD stuff - I don't mind waiting but again I've got a 10 Mbit connection!
- Don't forget 640x480 (or VGA resolution) is still only 4:3 so how are 16:9 movies handled? The pirates demo seemed to have black bars top and botom plus on both sides?
- Need to test if ScreenCastsOnline 640x360 now works in H264!
- Coverflow I recognise and have been using as a standalone app for while. A quick check on the site and the guy has sold the technoloy and IPR to Apple - I hope he made a bundle and good luck to him!
- Games seemed a little low key.
- Steve seemed to have taken on board everyones disappointment with the lack of "just one more thing" announcements - was it three or four in the event?
- And finally, iTV - At last!
- Looking very much like a Mac Mini (stackable?) the missing piece tying the ipod, computer and TV together. Looks good but I expect a few more whistles and bells to be announced at launch. Strangely no mention of HD other than iPhoto. It will need to support HD video (over wired ethernet). Update - Stackable under/on top of mac mini - PVR functionality built into leopard? Imagine a stack of an iTV, a Mac Mini and an Apple branded 500GB Hard Disk built into another mac mini form factor box? Or why not a HD built into the iTV. The case is certainly big enough! Just a thought :-)
- A good market to be in now is in HDMI switchers - Once the iTV is available I'll have two devices needing to plug into my single HDMI port on the TV.
- So a very quick install of iTunes7 and Quicktime update. Plugged in my iPod and updated the firmware and I'm up and running. Bought Tetris and had a play - the experience was much better than I expected - good idea, well executed!
