fuxor
11 Jan 2004, 9:48am
No, I haven't converted to Apple or anything, I got a free pass to Macworld through a friend and decided to check it out.
I was thoroughly unimpressed with what was set on the table. Apple itself toted a slightly smaller ipod, and Microsoft's Office for MacOS. there was also a conference type thing for Jaguar 10.3, but I didn't stick around too long to see the updates.
I sauntered over to ATI's booth, hoping to catch a glimpse of the next GPU in action, but instead was "wowed" by a radeon 9800 pro on a g5... which suspiciously seemed slower than my geforce4. They were showcasing the graphics with a lame wakeboarding game. There was halo on another pair of macs to show the difference between ATI's card and the competitor (unnamed), but there was no keyboard so you could only rotate in the gunner's seat of a warthog on either system. It was glaringly obvious that all the details on the "competitor's" system were turned down.
I almost walked away demanding a refund from the show I got into for free, but there was one product that was actually worth checking out. The SqueezeBox from Slim Devices (http://www.slimdevices.com/) is a sleek little box that connects to a computer or hub with an ethernet cable (or wirelessly), and lets you use a remote to go through your mp3 collection and broadcast the music to a stereo, or even directly to a set of speakers. The best part is that it's not just for mac, it's cross-platform compatable. My stereo is already connected to my computer, but it's a cool idea to be able to browse through my mp3s with a remote when i'm not at my computer. Compared to its competitor, the homepod (http://shop.store.yahoo.com/gloolabs/homepod1.html), the SqueezeBox is well-built and easy to use. In all, that was the only product really worth seeing at macworld.
Did anyone else go?
I was thoroughly unimpressed with what was set on the table. Apple itself toted a slightly smaller ipod, and Microsoft's Office for MacOS. there was also a conference type thing for Jaguar 10.3, but I didn't stick around too long to see the updates.
I sauntered over to ATI's booth, hoping to catch a glimpse of the next GPU in action, but instead was "wowed" by a radeon 9800 pro on a g5... which suspiciously seemed slower than my geforce4. They were showcasing the graphics with a lame wakeboarding game. There was halo on another pair of macs to show the difference between ATI's card and the competitor (unnamed), but there was no keyboard so you could only rotate in the gunner's seat of a warthog on either system. It was glaringly obvious that all the details on the "competitor's" system were turned down.
I almost walked away demanding a refund from the show I got into for free, but there was one product that was actually worth checking out. The SqueezeBox from Slim Devices (http://www.slimdevices.com/) is a sleek little box that connects to a computer or hub with an ethernet cable (or wirelessly), and lets you use a remote to go through your mp3 collection and broadcast the music to a stereo, or even directly to a set of speakers. The best part is that it's not just for mac, it's cross-platform compatable. My stereo is already connected to my computer, but it's a cool idea to be able to browse through my mp3s with a remote when i'm not at my computer. Compared to its competitor, the homepod (http://shop.store.yahoo.com/gloolabs/homepod1.html), the SqueezeBox is well-built and easy to use. In all, that was the only product really worth seeing at macworld.
Did anyone else go?