It's the countdown again, and I am not going this year. After almost getting my ankle broken in the stampede by the media into the keynote last year, I thought I'd take a break. As a matter of fact, after just getting an iPhone out of the keynote I told myself that was the last keynote see. I was disappointed with the entire conference last year. I was being nostalgic of how exciting it was in the old days. If you were press back in the day, it meant something. You'd have to buy a new suitcase to bring home all the goodies and actual software they threw our direction. MacWorld just isn't like that any more.

Even after saying those things, I find myself searching rumor sights and seeing what Steve has in store. Oh, I know none of us really know until the keynote, but isn't it entertaining wondering, and seeing what images the sites come up with?

There has been one not-so-rumor that came true and has set the imaginations afire. If they have already announced a 8-Core Mac Pro and an 8-Core Xserve, what cool stuff is there to announce this year?

This year ibt has been especially entertaining. There has been a ton of portable computer rumors. A touch screen one that even stands up, is dockable with a bluetooth keyboard. There are a bunch that are super thin and have a track pad almost the width of the keyboard. Another site has the new MacBook Pro line in black and regular aluminum. Now, the line is over due for a face lift for sure. So, I personally expect something new, and since I need a new machine, that's my personal hope.

There have been these wild keynote rumors. The last I looked, there were 3 supposed keynotes that were a copy of the actual one. Doubt Steve would let that happen. He's always been the one who freaks out if an employee lets anything slip. It's hard to believe he'd let a copy of the actual keynote get out of his hands. Yes, I realize he probably doesn't write the entire thing himself, but come on, of all things, that isn't being slipped to the media. All 3 have some things that are similar, but some major differences. By all means do a search for them if you are intrigued.

Now Steve himself said there would be a ton of actual new products this year. He said the iPhone was just the tip of the iceberg of new (not updated) products. The rumor sites have a ton of patents supposedly released from 2006 on some of these, Apple is closing deals with studios on movie rentals and pre-ripped iPod/Apple TV movies included on disc. Apple goes green finally some state. New cinema displays, iPhone updates, and of course the ultra thin portable with an optical or Flash drive.

So, will we be surprised and there will be a new iMac first? Maybe a 3G 16GB iPhone? iPod HiFi? I can hardly stand it. It's 6:30 in the morning the Saturday before the keynote, and I am still scanning the rumor sites. Go back to bed I tell myself. I will, but when I get back up I know I have a ton of work to do, I can't "play" and dream, so I am using this time of the early morning to do so. I hope you too would like a late holiday of new Apple gear. I may not be physically at the keynote this year, but I am mentally there.

Did you know they use to sometimes out something they were announcing under the chairs at the keynote? Those days were fun. I might end up back at a MacWorld again sometime, but for now, I'll go back to bed and dream of a new MacBook Pro on my desk waiting for me.

This is my final day, and am leaving first thing in the morning. I'll make a more technical summary later.

Neither Lisa or I were feeling fantastic. Especially after walking back to the hotel the night before. I do have to tell a very funny story first about that. I was so tired after the walk that we went downstairs to the bar & grill in the hotel. It was freezing in there so we got our food to take back up to the room where the heat was cranked up. We went to wait at the bar where the bartender looked at me and said, "She can't sit here." while looking at Lisa. OK, so by this point, not feeling well and no makeup, wearing a huge hoodie and a Koala bear nano carrier she just bought, no one would know her true age. But under 21? HAHAHAHA. So, she says "What?" and he says, "Legally she can't sit at the bar." and I almost fall off my bar stool. He thinks I'm her mom. OK, so I am 9 years older than Lisa (as of this Monday) but hey, that's not nice. Still funny though. Back to MacWorld stuff...

Lisa had her voice back a little, but sounded like a cell that keeps dropping parts of the call. You just never know when her voice is going to cut out. So, we slept in a bit before meeting with Sean Corfield for lunch. I had the biggest Calzone you ever saw. All of the other people eating started commenting on it. The waiter just said, stick your fork in it and see. So, I did and it deflated to a flat-ish pastry with some bits inside. Funny though.

Onward to the conference. Thursday seemed like the day where there were the most things happening. At least before Lisa bought the DVD of all the presentations it seemed the day to see the most. Once she bought the MacWorld DVD, nothing seemed that pressing. So, it was a good time to get to the booths we wanted to get back to, and the Booth presentations I hadn't seen yet.

Adobe's booth had The Russell Brown Show. Filled to the brim with people, and can you blame them? It's Russell Brown for gosh sake. For those who haven't been a Photoshop nerd for the last 17 years, (and not the British politician)he has been apart of the Adobe Dream team and has written many books. Russell is a nut. A brilliant nut, but that's what makes him such a draw at Adobe's booth. He's fun to watch.

I wanted to make sure and see the Lynda.com booth for the Ruby on Rails instructor. The problem is they only have anywhere from a half an hour to forty-five minutes to present, not a long time to go in-depth on a subject like this. Did I learn anything? Nope. I did feel a little sorry for him and all the web presenters. They hardly had anyone at their sessions. I forgot how the general Apple public is, and am use to the web geeks at this point. I feel more at home talking about the latest CSS standards and how they work with IE7 and Firefox, then how to work in iTunes these days.

I tried one last time to see a session in the User group lounge, but it wasn't what I expected it to be. I thought they were going to be talking about how to revitalize your UG Board. Thinking it would be about how to re-energize the Board, but in reality it was how to get new board members. Boring! Sorry, but for our group, we have elections every year, no need to find a new Board member. The woman talking said their President stayed president for over 11 years. Egad. Why would anyone want that for that long. Power hungry? Who knows. Anyway, we have a hard time keeping ours for over 3 years. They get burned out from trying to get volunteers etc.

Luckily, I don't have too much of that problem with the Adobe group. I just ask nicely to the people that have the most to share. Lord knows if I waited for them to actually volunteer we'd have fewer meetings. Truth is, there are always members who have more to share than they think they do, and seem happy to share once you make sure they know just how much other members would get out of their presenting. Speaking in front of others scares some, but we are a small friendly group and hopefully no one judges a small case of the nerves.

Anyway, after that, there didn't seem to be much else on the schedule and Lisa wanted to take some pictures before it got dark. The wind had really picked up as the temperature went down. We stopped at the Metron to see what stores they had. There was a cool store in there last time with some bags I liked. Not there now, so we went all the way up to where there was an exhibit artifacts from the Titanic.

We took a couple of pics from the roof and then headed down in the elevator. Several people joined us on the next floor down, including a man about 7'2" in a huge blue fur coat. A kid in the back said, "Do you play basketball?". This is only funny because it was Shaq. I was trying not to stare as I was right next to him. I didn't even get a picture of him. Lisa was amazed because I still had the camera in my hand.

We took the trolley car down to the Wharf. It was getting kind of late by then. We looked at a few shops and then decided to eat at Scoma's, as someone had recommended the night before. I hadn't had fresh, caught that day, fish in a while. The crab legs were amazing.

See all pics on Flickr.

So, to wrap things up... MacWorld was somewhat fun. I was heavily disappointed in the keynote. Since they overbooked all the sessions I wanted to go to, like Aral's sessions, and none of the press got into anything without paying for them, I didn't get to see anything I went to MacWorld to see besides the keynote. FlashForward was the only reason I went and didn't find out till last minute I wasn't going to be allowed into anything. If I had known, I would have bought tickets before the early bird registration was over. I had no intention of paying as much as they wanted without a discount. MacWorld is a very expensive conference.

I don't plan on ever attending a MacWorld again. I will focus my time on conferences that will benefit me and potentially enhance my career. I'll be at MAX this year, and maybe go to the Flex conference beside Frameworks. I'd like to get my Flex certification and take some classes to embrace AS 3.0. For those of you who know I am a designer, yes I know I should give up on OOP, or so you all keep telling me. For those of you who actually know me, you know I can't. It's my sole purpose to learn something new all the time and stretch my comfort limits in that process. Being uncomfortable learning something makes me want it that much more.

Next time I blog, I will be preparing for Frameworks by a series of Design for Developers tips and tricks of Photoshop, Fireworks and CSS.

Till next time,

Dee

Last night was hysterical. Cheap Trick played the party. I hadn't heard them in about 20 years. We left early though, so I'm not sure what the big drawing was for but I hope whoever won, liked it. I'll find out later, promise.

We, Lisa and I, we both pretty wiped out after yesterday, so we slept in a little bit before the Adobe UG breakfast this morning. Lisa started getting sick a few days ago, and this morning has no voice whatsoever.

Adobe User Group Breakfast

The first presentation was Apollo. I think it's a bit of a stretch to say the majority of the room understood anything he was saying. As a matter of fact, the integration of Apollo between the internet and a desktop program is something I certainly can appreciate, but it's too bad most people won't get how cool that is.

The second presentation was from the Video guy. He showed a nice combination between After Effects, Premiere Pro for the Mac, Sound Booth (free right now) and Encore. If you are a video person this combo is essential to your work flow. I saw this presentation yesterday and was impressed. I'm sure if I were a video gal I'd be more impressed, but was pretty excited with Sound Booth. If someone coughs for instance, Sound Booth has an auto heal effect that gets rid of the annoying sound. This would also help you get rid of um's and ah's in a podcast before publishing.

Terry White started talking about Acrobat. The crowd must be all asleep because Terry is having a hard time getting them to respond. He showed how to create a PDF out of multiple files and now you have the choice in making a PDF like normal, or you can make a packaged PDF. That means the other files you brought in can be a separate PDF within the PDF you made. You can make a PDF from InDesign files, images, text and more.

Since a lot of us are UG people are use to seeing a Breeze presentation, now named Acrobat Connect, but it's really new to the Mac Users here at MacWorld. Terry showed everyone how to work a Connect meeting. Then he showed my favorite new feature in Acrobat because I do a ton of forms. Acrobat now auto detects form fields. It really does an amazing job. There are only a few times you have to tweak the form. It even detects a signature field. A digital signature is a legally binding signature. Anyone with the free reader can submit the forms.

Lightroom was next. He was showing things that aren't in the public beta version. The product is pretty self explanatory. The Lightroom team was told to not look at any other application and put it together the way it should be done. They did such a good job that a lot of the features from it ended up in Photoshop. If you aren't even familiar what Lightroom is, it in a nutshell is a Digital photo management for those photographers who manage a ton of photographs. There are 5 main environments which are Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print and Web. The last 3 are pretty easy to figure out what they do.

Any of the adjustments you want to do in Quick develop are non destructive. In develop mode you can see the entire image all by itself and darkens the rest of the panels by pressing L. If you press L again, the application goes into full screen mode and shows the image only. If you want to get back to the panels, just move your cursor to either side, and there are you panels. The slideshow uses iTunes playlists for the music behind the slideshows. It's a simple slideshow (there are other products that focus on making a slideshow) but that's OK.

The print and web presets do a really nice job. The print preset can do things we only wished Photoshop would do before. It's super intuitive and just knows to re-adjust images to be landscape or portrait. Most things just work the way we think it should work. It can even handle GPS info from the cameras that ca use that attachment. If so, it will launch Google maps and you can see exactly where you were when you took that picture. The web can either be html or Flash based. Terry made his images Flash based and I was surprised how nice the interface was.

Of course Terry had to show the new Beta of Photoshop and Bridge. In Bridge (shows all Adobe files in one place) Filters is a new panel. It lets you quickly get to the image you want using keywords, date, document type and more. I am on the Beta, but honestly I hadn't looked around too much. I didn't realize it had a loop tool feature. Lets me get super close without having to open in Photoshop, AI or Acrobat to get the right file. All the panels are liquid in both appearance and the how you can move one, and the rest will follow.

I don't know how many of the readers here have downloaded the public Beta, but PS is getting really cool. There is now a quick select tool, smart filters, image auto alignments and more. The auto align can do perspective, and auto blend layers. The panoramic features have been drastically improved. Vanishing point has also been improved so you have more control of where the vanishing point goes. The angle is what I am talking about.

There was the standard question and answer session and Dave Helmly showed the group how to get the on Demand pre-recorded sessions to se at their groups.

Meanwhile back at the Adobe booth...

At 11am Adobe was showing Flex. On any other presentation at the Adobe booth, there would be a standing room only crowd. Not at the Flex, building Rich internet Applications presentation. The presenter showed the different types of components. As usual, they (the developers they have show the products) always try and show things in Design views when they aren't comfortable there. He finally just showed the code, thank you. I gotta say, even as a designer, I am more comfortable working in the code. So, for all you developers out there, it's OK, designers aren't always afraid of the code. Show us. If nothing else, it will help us to understand it better.

Trying to find someone to interview

I admit that I am getting tired. Lisa can't even talk now and my back hurts from my Adobe bag being too full of junk. Not the, wow this is cool junk, the why did I pick this up kind. After thinking I was in the right place for the "news" I was getting from the parallels guy Lisa knows, I was in the wrong place at the right time. LOL I am pretty sure they got a MacWorld award.

I walked around to the North hall and we talked to a few vendors about sponsoring the user groups. I got the sure we will, from Bare Bones, VISE and Fetch. I am going to pass their info off to the main UG program manager at Adobe so they can benefit all the user groups.

I spent quite awhile today in the Apple UG lounge. I was so tired I don't know if I would have cared who was talking. I did listen to Chuck Joiner of MacVoices talk about getting our groups into the 21st Century. I actually had it out with him about doing a meeting on My Space. I had the FBI involved with my daughter and a sexual predator, so you won't catch me supporting My Space. It certainly won't help us get younger kids into the meeting. More on this topic later maybe. At 4pm we went over to see the diggnation guys doing their podcast from MacWorld. One of the guys is a Mac guy, while the other kept talking about Vista. Gutsy at a MacWorld convention. They were useless and talked about goats in trees, you'd have to see their site, and drank bear. Now this concerns me that if 2 stupid beer drinking guys get this much attention, the youth won't care what we talk about in the meetings unless the topic suits them anyway.

Too, too tired. See you tomorrow. New pics are up on Flickr Dee

OMG., what a day. Lisa and I got up before the crack of dawn to get in line for the keynote. Good thing she did, or she might have been sent to a overflow room. I, on the other hand being press, shouldn't have shown up till 7:30. I did go have some breakfast, but then went ahead over to the "media" line at about 6am. Interesting bunch the other "media". They were all nice enough until it was time to get in. When the doors opened, it was like a scene out of a National Geographic documentary. You know the ones where there is a stampede to the water hole? I may have some bite marks still by the time I get back to prove it. Actually, they pushed me into something, which fell over and I tripped on it while some guy stomped on my ankle. OUCH!

As you all probably know by now, there were only 3 announcements. The Apple TV, the iPhone (finally after 2 1/2 years of rumors about it) and the name change at Apple (see farther down).

Well, he did put up some numbers for the iTunes music, TV and movie sales. Basically, more than 2.0 billion songs were sold, and 50 million TV shows. In only 4 short months 1.3 million movies were sold on iTunes. Paramount is their newest partner so instead of 100, there are 250 movies now on itunes.

Music players How did the Zune do the first month in sales? They had a whopping 2% of the market share with iPod in at 62% in November. Steve didn't have December's numbers. Funny though.

Apple TV, not iTV It's a 40Gb media machine, thinner than the Mini, but oh so cool. (Of course, duh) The Apple TV is designed for a widescreen TV and streams content from up to 5 machines. Invite your friends over for movie night! It starts at $299 and ships next month.

And now for the newest revolutionary machine... It slices, it dices, it's a widescreen iPod with touch control, it's a mobile phone, and a new way to communicate with the internet. What is it Steve? It's 3, 3, 3 things in One. The iPhone. Cheering, whooping applause....

OK, so even I was impressed. No buttons to push? Scroll with a flick of a finger, and it runs OS X, amazing.

It syncs like an iPod through iTunes and stores tons of data as well via the 4Gb or 8Gb version. The stunning 3.5 inch screen at 160 ppi is super thin 11.6mm. There is a 2MP camera built in and a proximity sensor and touch sensor that turns off when when you answer the phone as well as a ambient light sensor to keep you from burning extra battery life when you don't need it. One amazing feature is the accelerometer that switches from portrait to landscape depending which way you turn it.

There were many quotes that came out of the keynote like,"touch your music", and "The internet in your pocket". My favorite was when Steve was talking to Jony Ive in public for the first time in a conference call on the iPhone. Jony said "It ain't too shabby" when Steve asked him what he thought. The British are so funny.

Here are some more features:

• Visual voicemail
• Random access voicemail
• Amazing sounding audio
• Quad-band GSM_EDGE
• Super easy to conference call
• iChat basically built in as SMS messaging
• Photo management app built in, "the pinch" makes the pics bigger or smaller
• Rich html email
• any IMAP or POP email
• Safari browser
• Google maps- amazing
• WIFI and EDGE
• Widgets-cool
• Yahoo is going to provide free push IMAP email to all iPhone users
• Rich text
• Split view as well for email
• Safari can zoom in, have multiple pages open etc.
• Google or Yahoo search
• Cover flow video(expands screen to full viewing area)

There is also already accessories in the works, like an amazing new Bluetooth device. It's pencil thin, has 16 hours of audio and 5 hours talk or video time. You also might have heard, that it is exclusively Cingular. Doesn't surprise me, but hey I just went back on T-Mobile. Aw, shucks. Yes, they have over 200 patents on it. Finally. It will be $499 for the 4Gb version and $599 for the 5 and will start shipping in June.

The final announcement before John Mayer played was that since the official name for Apple has always been Apple Computers, and since they don't really fit that name any longer being much, much more than that, that the new name will be just Apple, Inc. Smart move if you ask me.

John Mayer played 2 songs. He had presented at several recent MacWorlds and didn't want to miss this one. I had never heard him play live before, and all I can say is WOW. Amazing voice. I really like his music anyway, but wow. The sound was the best I had ever heard. I don't know what equipment they had, but what great sound.

I do have to say... being an old timer when it comes to MacWorlds (my 6th) that I did look under my chair when I sat down. For those of you who have never been. They use to put things like computers under the chairs. Didn't actually think there would be anything there, but I looked anyway. LOL

The rest of the day After the keynote, and a quick lunch we headed over to the conference. I wanted to go to the Apple UG lounge to hear a discussion on newsletters and how we can make them better. Can't say I learned much except found some resources I wasn't aware of. The one thing that blew me way was, a topic came up about the users getting the newsletters easier and faster and what we could do to get into the 21st century. HA One younger guy said we could make sure and blog and provide a RSS feed. I kid you not that the other managers, all older I have to say, had not a clue what that was. Maybe it's the fact I am an Adobe UG manager, and a web manager at that, although I shouldn't be surprised. Mac groups seem to be very far behind in general with technology other than Apple hardware.

There was one woman who wanted to know what software there was to put together the newsletter quickly and easily without having to speed time and money to get it done. I almost fell out of my chair and quickly said, ah.. Pages. I don't think she even knew it was an Apple product, as others told her it was indeed from Apple, and via ASW (Apple Sales Web) she could get it for the group for just shipping. Again, amazing and not the, wow this is awesome, amazing.

We headed over to the exhibit floor after that and walked around. I should have warned Lisa I was an impulse buyer and to stop me from buying something before I had seen everything. I, on the very first row we went down, bought a clear red case for my black MacBook. It looks like a black cherry soda now. TeeHee. I did see a different vendor I know and love who had the same sort of case for several dollars less, and had better ventilation. See, I need to be stopped.

I missed the first Bert Monroy session at Peachpit, but saw him at the Lynda.com booth. He's.... Bert. No other words describe him. OK, so I'm tired and off to the MacBlast party. Maybe I'll take pics there, but then again, maybe not. We'll see.

OK, I looked this over again for misspellings after I got back from the party. What a Cheap Trick. No really Cheap Trick played the party. They look and sound almost the same. VERY FUNNY to me. Didn't take any pics. Lisa is super sick at this point, and I don't feel great either. She sounds like the godfather. A deep scratchy voice. Not so attractive on a petite girl like Lisa.

The pics are all up on my Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/31866566@N00/

Talk to you tomorrow! Dee

OK, well, technically it took me too long to get registered. I of course forgot to print out the confirmation email. Silly me. While in line, I saw about 4 people I knew. 2 from KC and 1 from St.Louis where I trained recently. Funny. You don't expect that at a conference as large as MacWorld.

Here are some pics from Lisa and my hotel room. They are on Flickr for now.

Keynote in the morning. We are going to get there very early to get a good seat. Good thing Lisa is here to get me out of bed that early. LOL We are going to the Blast party tomorrow, should be fun!

See you guys tomorrow. I think I am going to try and install Scorpio while I'm waiting for the keynote, or read more about Model-Glue in prep for the Frameworks conference.

See ya soon, Dee