Everyone is posting a recap and analysis of Macworld and I won’t be any different! My trip to Macworld this year, like every year, was a lot of fun, but tiring at the same time. In some years, I’ve worked at the Mark/Space booth, but most years, I just walk around the Expo floor (I don’t find conferences all that interesting to me). I spent the first day walking around the booths to get a lay of the land and talking to people I know (there are some people that I only see at Macworld). The second day, I went up and down every aisle looking for products that would be helpful for my work. Yes, I actually glanced at every booth. There were a number of products that I would never have seen just searching the web.
There has been a lot of speculation about the future of Macworld Expo now that Apple has said that it will not attend next year. For me, Apple’s presence is secondary to all the other vendors. While I can find out about products on the Internet whenever I want, there are many products I would never have known were out there. For instance, nekFIT is a holder for an iPod Nano that goes around your neck. It looks quite interesting so I ordered one (the guy at the booth said if I didn’t like it, contact him and he’d make it right). I love running and the headphone cord always drives me crazy. In addition to that, I did find stuff for work. There is a backup program called CrashPlan that backs up during idle time. Why haven’t I seen anything like this before? Then there is the BT-1 Wireless Webcam from my friends at Ecamm Network.
Will I goto next year’s show? I ordered signed up for my free Expo pass, so hopefully that is a good sign. Will vendors pull out? Likely, yes, but I hope that many of the smaller vendors choose to come. I know it is expensive to come as a vendor, but it is so helpful to come and have so many vendors in one location. The big vendors don’t interest me all that
In addition to looking for things for work, there was some exciting news for me. Mariner Software announced that it had acquired my ReceiptWallet program.