Tag Archives: San Francisco

On Keynote Queues

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Wondering about the kind of person who would wait in line overnight to see an Apple keynote.

I’m not going to Macworld Expo this year. I used to go regularly and didn’t miss a show for about 10 years. Then I started skipping them. It just didn’t seem worth the time and expense. I went last year but am skipping this year.

I always watch the Apple keynote presentation, though. For a while, it was available as a live Webcast. Since then, it’s been available a day or two afterwards as a streamed QuickTime movie. That’s good enough for me.

Evidently, it isn’t good enough for some people. When I finally tracked down the date and time for this year’s Keynote address on the Macworld Expo Web site, I also stumbled upon some information for attendees wishing to see the presentation live. Here’s part of the instructions:

FOR PLATINUM PASS ATTENDEES:
As a Platinum Pass attendee, you have priority seating to view the Keynote in the main presentation room, based on availability. You may queue up on line any time beginning Monday evening, along 4th Street adjacent to the Moscone Center. We urge you to make every effort to be on line by 7:00am Tuesday morning to ensure your place in the queue, as we cannot guarantee seating late arrivals. Show management staff and security will be present to assist with any questions.

I should probably mention here that the folks who have “platinum passes” spent $1,695 to get them — if they bought them before December 1. If they waited, they paid $1,895.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of waiting on line in San Francisco overnight in January after paying nearly $2K for “priority seating” seems a little extreme. What kind of person would do this?

Now there’s a lot of hoopla over the fact that Steve Jobs is not doing this year’s keynote address. There’s even a bunch of whiners who claim they’re going to give Phil Schiller, who is doing the presentation, the cold (and silent) shoulder with each announcement. (These could be the same people who are willing to wait in line overnight to see a trade show keynote address.) So although I don’t expect a bunch of people to be standing out in the cold tonight on 4th Street (or Howard Street for the people who don’t have “platinum” passes), I do wonder how many people stood on line overnight in the past. Anyone have this info? Use the comments link or form for this post to share it.

Tourist Photos from San Francisco

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Or fun with a camera.

Note to feed subscribers: You may not see the photos in this article in your RSS reader. That’s because of the way they’re embedded. If you like photography, I do hope you’ll take a moment to visit the site and see the photos. If you don’t, just skip it. I understand.

I was in San Francisco last week for Macworld Expo. In the old days, I used to spend every day at the show. Nowadays, I’m more interested in seeing things outside the exhibit hall. With a half day to spend on my own, I took the cable car from Market and Powell to Fisherman’s Wharf. Here are some of the photos I took that morning.

I started my day just after sunrise at the corner of Powell and Market, five or six blocks from Moscone Hall, where Macworld Expo is held each year. This is the terminus for two of San Francisco’s three cable car lines. The photo here shows one of the cable car drivers turning the car around for the trip back to Fisherman’s Wharf. Although the photo is distorted (because of that darn fisheye lens I like so much), the ground here is relatively level. They manually push the car onto the turntable and turn it, then push it back onto the main track. After paying off a homeless person for telling me that I could buy my ticket on the cable car — it was either that or buy a newspaper I didn’t want to carry — and assuring another homeless person that I didn’t need him to take a photo of me and the cable car with my camera, I climbed on board.

The cable car took off up Powell a while later with a surprising number of people on board. The corner of Market and Powell isn’t far from the BART station and apparently the cable car is a valid mode of transportation for commuters. There certainly weren’t many tourists on board at 7:30 AM. We climbed up Powell, dropping off passengers here and there. I took this photo when the car was nearly empty. Again, there’s some distortion from the fisheye lens, but I think it’s a cool shot of the cable car and its driver.

The car deposited me at Bay Street about two blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf. From there, I wandered around, taking photos of the area. The sun was too low to get the shots I wanted, so went in search of breakfast. Boudin’s Bakery was there and I stepped inside. I love freshly baked bread, but I was on a diet and trying hard to avoid excess carbs. But I did get a good photo op when I saw this “Bread Line” sign. It was just too ironic for me to pass up.

Back outside at the Wharf with the sun still too low for shadow-free photos, I asked one of the fish guys where I could get a good breakfast in a place the tourists didn’t go. He pointed up the street to a “hole in the wall” called Darren’s Cafe. While waiting for my meal, I snapped this weird self-portrait with that fisheye lense. I don’t look happy here, probably because I knew the camera was shooting a picture up my nose.

After breakfast, I strolled north along the wharf area, stopping a few times to take photos of the fishing boats. Unlike most tourists, I didn’t stick to the well-trodden places. I poked around on all the piers, taking my time and seeing as many different things from as many different angles as I could. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies and light wind. Not very cold, either. Here are a few of my more interesting shots in that area.

After a while, I found myself in Aquatic Park, which is part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. There are a number of old, art deco buildings there and the light was just right to get creative with some shapes and shadows on a round building that used to house a public restroom. A flight of stairs curved up the side of the building to an observation deck on top. But the views from up there didn’t interest me as much as the stairs, shown here.

From the park, there were sweeping views of San Francisco Bay. But the best views were obviously from the curving arm of the Municipal Pier. So I took off on foot along the long, crumbling concrete and steel pier. The only people on the pier were a handful of Asian fisherman, although when I reached the remains of the building at the far end, another tourist pedaled up on a bicycle. We had a short chat before I walked back. Here are the photos I took along the way. They show, in order, the rust of steel embedded in the concrete, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Alcatraz.

It was nearly 10 AM by the time I got off the pier. I had to check out of my hotel by 1:30 PM, but I had a few errands to take care of on the way back. So I walked up to the cable car terminus at Hyde, which is just a few blocks away. By this time, the tourists were coming out and there was about a dozen people waiting. I snapped a series of photos of the cable car being turned. If I look at them quickly in sequence, they look like a movie. Here are five of the six shots in miniature:

Cable Car Turning at Hyde

On the way back to the Union Square area, I had a nice conversation with a woman who lives in San Francisco and uses the cable car to commute back and forth to work across the city. I couldn’t help but be envious. How wonderful it would be to ride in an open seat through such a beautiful city every day.

At Macworld Expo

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Are you there? I’ll be there soon.

As this is appearing online, I’m boarding a plane for Macworld Expo in San Francisco. This is yet another one of my quick in and out trips — I really can’t afford to be away from my office for more than two days. I’ll arrive in SF around 9:30 this morning and depart around 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. In between, I’m staying at the Nikko.

I have a lot to squeeze into this trip:

  • Wednesday, 12:00 PM – meeting with two editors, one publisher, and a representative from an online publishing group regarding ebooks and ebook piracy issues. I’m tired of seeing little ebook revenue while copies of my ebooks are floating around on file sharing sites. Armed with some excellent feedback from an ebook reader, I’m going to propose some changes to the way my work appears in ebooks. I also hope to spend some time talking to one of my editors about a book we hope to start next week.
  • Wednesday, 2:00 PM – appearing at the Peachpit Press booth on the show floor. I’m doing a 45-minute presentation and hope to cover some productivity tips and tricks for Leopard users. Peachpit will be videoing the presentation for eventual distribution online.
  • Wednesday, after 3 PM – seeing the show floor. I’ll be walking around armed with my cameras: Treo for instant Web publishing of images, Nikon D80 with fisheye lens for a very different look at the show floor, and video camera for content I hope to put together as a short Macworld Expo movie.
  • Wednesday, after 6 PM – attending one or two parties (depending on how tired I am).
  • Thursday, before 1 PM – see Wedneday, after 3 PM. More of the same.

If you’d like to see photos from Macworld as they are taken, visit my TumbleLog. I expect to start sending photos as soon as I arrive in SF. I’ll try to make them interesting.

Product ImageI’ll also be giving away two copies of my Leopard book during my Peachpit booth presentation. One of them will go to the first presentation attendee who tells me he/she read about the giveaway here.

If you’re at Macworld Expo and want to say hello, drop by the Peachpit Press booth. I usually pop in now and then during my time on the show floor. I’d to meet you!

On the Edge, Looking In

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One geek’s look at Macworld Expo and the state of the Mac.

Next week, I’ll be heading to Macworld Expo in San Francisco, mostly to do a presentation at the Peachpit Press booth.

For a 10-year period starting in 1992, I went to every Macworld: San Francisco, Boston (and then New York), and even the little-known Toronto shows in the mid 1990s. I was part of the Macworld Expo Conference Faculty and did a presentation in the Conference hall. One year, I did a solo panel and was on two other panels, too.

Those were the good old days of Macworld, when the speaker lounge was hopping with lots of friendly Mac “experts” and the attendees really did want to hear what we had to say about using Macs or specific applications. Everything was new and cool and even a writer who writes about something as ho-hum as operating systems and productivity applications for “end users” could put together a dynamic, interesting presentation in a room that was filled to standing room only.

Things change. Changes in show management and theme a bunch of years ago have left me feeling a little out of it. As Apple’s market share shrunk, only the Mac faithful and the Mac core user base — designers — came to Macworld in significant numbers. Productivity software and topics were out; design software and topics were in. I’m not a designer and I had little of value to share with conference attendees. I couldn’t come up with good ideas for conference sessions, so I just dropped out of the conference faculty.

Then, after a while, I just stopped coming to Macworld Expo. It didn’t seem worth the bother. I’d settled into a routine, writing revisions of a relatively large collection of books — mostly Visual QuickStart Guides — and that kept me busy. I didn’t need to go to the show to see what was new.

Instead, I’d tune into the live Webcast of the keynote address and learn about all the new products and features as Steve announced them while sitting at my desk, working on a book or another project.

Then Apple stopped doing the live Webcasts. I’d visit the Home page of Apple’s Web site after Steve’s gig and learn about the new stuff there. A while later, I’d download the Webcast and watch the show.

Things change. Apple’s introduction of innovative new products — starting with the original Bondi blue iMac all those years ago and the iPod much more recently — has gotten the Mac faithful excited about using Apple products again. Tiger was great; Leopard is pretty darn good, too. The ability of Intel-based Macs to run Windows effectively — either booted to Windows or while Mac OS X is running, as is possible with Parallels desktop — has gotten the attention of Windows users who are pretty unimpressed with the long-awaited Vista operating system. (Can you blame them?) Now Macs can run their Windows software. People are switching from Windows PCs to Macs. The Mac market share is growing.

This is great news for me. Although I write about Windows topics, I much prefer working with and writing about Macs. And with more Mac users comes more Mac-compatible products. In fact, there are more than a few software products that I use daily — TextWrangler, Scrivener, ecto 3 (in beta), EvoCam, iShowU, and Time Palette come to mind — that are only available for Mac OS. This not only gives me more great software to to choose from, but it gives me more Mac software to write about.

And that’s a good thing. Back in the early 90s, there were still lots of new computer users, people who needed step-by-step instructions for using software like Microsoft Word and Excel. Nowadays, these programs are old hat. Kids use them in school, for heaven’s sake! They don’t need books. And many of my old productivity titles are starting a slow spiral down to the backlist, never to be revised again.

So I’m going to Macworld. And I’m speaking at the Peachpit booth (on Wednesday, January 16, at 2 PM) about my new Leopard book and the cool things I’ve done with Leopard and Mac OS X.

But I’ll also be looking around at what’s new and exciting, ready to grab on to something different, something that’ll drag me deeper into the Mac community again.

It’s good to be a Mac user.

Apple Collectibles

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1996 Annual Report, Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, and more.

Today, while filing away some old investment papers, I stumbled upon a copy of Apple’s 1996 Annual Report and accompanying Report to Shareholders. Still in near perfect condition, I did what any self-respecting computer geek would do: I put it on eBay:

1996 was not a good year for Apple Computer. Gil Amelio was Chairman of the Board and CEO. The company reported a net loss of $816 million. And the company was trying hard to maintain its ever-dwindling market share.

The 1996 Apple Annual Report offers a “darkest hour” snapshot of the now-thriving company with a solid reputation for creating innovative, easy-to-use products. 36 pages in near perfect condition, with the original 6-color Apple logo on the back cover.

Also in the package is the oversized booklet titled “Looking Forward: A Report to Shareholders.” This promotional document was Apple’s attempt to keep existing shareholders by painting a rosy picture of the company’s future. The booklet’s cover features a child holding an eMate 300, which is also illlustrated in the booklet’s centerfold. Other products featured in the document include the MessagePad 2000, PowerBok 1400, Performa 6400, and original Power Macintosh.

Do you collect Apple memorabilia? If so, don’t miss this chance to own a piece of Apple’s financial past.

After listing this item, I decided to see what else was listed in Vintage Apple/Macintosh > Other Vintage Apple category. A lot of old stuff. Very old stuff. Like Apple IIe disk drives and Prometheus modems and more than a few Apple Newton eMates (featured in my annual report!).

Twentieth Anniversary MacintoshThis got me thinking about my own Apple antique: a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. Yes, I bought one of those. No, I didn’t pay $8,000 for it. (That was the original selling price.) I got it for about $2,000 using a hardware discount I used to get as an Apple consultant.

The computer has been sitting on a sofa table in my living room for the past eight years. It’s really an amazing piece of work. It has a LCD monitor — a big deal in those days — CD-ROM drive, floppy drive, FM radio receiver, television tuner (really!), and removable trackpad. Oh, yeah — and a Bose sound system.

It has a PowerPC 603e processor and came with System 7.6 (if you want to get a real idea of dates here) but I think I have Mac OS 8 running on it. (Read more specs.) I used to use it to play music when I was working around the kitchen. I have since taught it how to display photos and play music from my iPod. The screen is small, but the sound system really is good.

For at least the past year, I thought it was broken. It wouldn’t go on when I pushed the power button. I had a sneaking suspicion that someone had spilled water into the subwoofer, which also houses the power supply. I never thought to check all the connections.

Until today. And that’s when I discovered that the surge suppressor it’s attached to is dead. Remove the suppressor, plug the darn thing right into a wall outlet, and it works! Woo-hoo!

No, I’m not going to put it on eBay.

But I do have a bunch of other old Apple stuff that will make its way to eBay soon:

  • There’s a strawberry iMac (a G3) that I need to restore to its original hardware and pack up. I don’t expect to get much for it, despite the fact that it works perfectly fine.
  • There are about 20 never-worn Apple-related T-shirts carefully packed in plastic in my clothes closet. Shirts from Apple’s heydays, when Macworld Expo was one party after another. (I remember seeing Jefferson Starship playing at one party while Chris Issacs was playing at another across San Francisco.)
  • There are Apple Marketing CDs, full of documents to help retailers sell Macs.
  • And then there’s my prized collectible: Two versions of the Mac OS 8 demo CD, released about a year apart. The first version had a lot of weird/cool/funky features that never made it into Mac OS 8. It’s amazing to compare the two.
  • And in my safe: a 50-share stock certificate for Apple Computer, Inc. stock, representing my initial investment in the company. It has the original Apple logo on it, too.

What brings all this up? I’m just so tickled that the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh still works! I couldn’t imagine where I might get the darn thing fixed if it didn’t.