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Craig Mathias

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Macworld 2009 - Not Much Mobile

By Craig Mathias on Fri, 01/09/09 - 10:02am.

. What's this?

So I'm usually at CES this time of year, and I expected to be there this year, since I missed 2008. But I'm in Silicon Valley for a project, so I decided to visit once again Macworld, it suddenly occurring to me that I've actually not been to one of these since it was last in Boston, and that was a very long time ago indeed. Besides, thanks to price-gouging on the part of the airlines, the only cost-effective non-stop to SFO was at 6:02 AM yesterday, giving me a big chunk of yesterday to walk to show floor.

Macworld was largely a disappointment for me. No "iPhone Nano". No large-screen iPhone or iPod Touch. No Mac Mini with .11n, still critical to my personal plans. No tablet MacBook (although, if you want one of these, take a look at Axiotron's Modbook. They repackage 13.3-inch MacBooks into a tablet form factor; very clever indeed. But there wasn't much new overall, especially WRT wireless and mobile. The new 17-inch MacBook will have appeal, I'm sure, to some, but I don't get it about these meganotebooks. I think portable computers should be all about the portability, and this product, while remarkably light, is still physically much too big to carry around. I like to think of it as a semi-portable iMac, there being no 17-inch iMacs at present. But it's also US$2700+, and that's way too much for a mainstream product.

While I saw a lot of stuff that I will add to my personal Mac arsenal, the only other wireless products of interest are the Eye-Fi family of Wi-Fi SD cards aimed at the digital camera crowd. These have been around for a while, and add Wi-Fi to many digital cameras simply and cost effectively. But with recent advances in resolution and other performance parameters relating to cameras embedded in mobile handsets, one wonders how long the standalone digital camera market will continue to prosper. And I still believe the majority of new handsets shipping in four or five years will have Wi-Fi.

Apart from that, I wish I'd been able to go to CES instead. I'll have a few highlights from that for you next week. There was also some buzz about Steve Job's health (wholly inappropriate, IMHO, and we all wish him well regardless - this is a guy who deserves every bit of the success he's achieved) and the fact that Apple isn't going to attend this event from this point forward. I don't get that one at all. It can't possibly cost them all that much to get all this press. And, for the record, if someone wants to sponsor FarpointGroupWorld, I promise to keynote the conference very year and buy booth space as well. I wouldn't miss it regardless.