Macworld Expo ’09 was the fourth San Francisco Macworld I’ve attended. Each one was entirely different, both in regard to what went on inside and outside the expo itself. I’ve enjoyed every one of them, but this one will get filed into memory as being my favorite.

On that note, it’s pretty unfortunate that ’09 will be the last “real” one. Sure, IDG (the company that runs it) claims that they’ll keep it going, but like with the Boston Macworld Expo, once Apple jumps ship, they’ll be lucky to squeeze a couple more years out of the show.

This was the first time that I didn’t have a booth to deal with and it was a huge relief to not have to cope with everything associated with exhibiting.

Not that it was pure vacation or anything… we kind of, sort of, somewhat launched a new season of MacHeist and we had a bunch of meetings planned throughout the week. So it was still a pretty busy trip overall.

The Travelers

The crew that went out this time was sort of a hybrid of tap tap tap and MacHeist: me, Scott Meinzer, Phill Ryu, Noël Rosenthal, and Andrew Kaz.

This was Scott’s second expo. Phill’s been out with me on all four trips so far. And Noël and Kaz were expo virgins before this trip.

MacHeist (non-)mission

Right after the keynote, we launched the previously mentioned MacHeist mission. Well, not really a mission, but I won’t say any more than this. Check it out if you’re not familiar with MacHeist. We always give away some great Mac software for free and this time was no exception with the sweet outlining app, Process, being included in the “loot”, among other nifty apps.

Even though the “mission” went off pretty smoothly and we gained a ton of new members (we recently passed the quarter-million mark!), tensions had been building within the team. And as a result, things got a bit ugly before going live, unfortunately.

Thankfully, we’ve all settled-down and we’re all cool with each other now.

MostlyLisa

I had the pleasure to spend time during the week with the beautiful, talented, and zany Lisa Bettany, aka MostlyLisa. Purely coincidence but Lisa bears a striking resemblance to our new MacHeist mission handler.

Seeing how much schwag Lisa managed to collect during the week and the fact that she looted an unnamed Bay Area company for all their Hershey’s Miniatures, I think she has a bright future as some sort of high-tech bag lady.

It was great getting to know her and really interesting hearing about a different side of the tech-world that I’m not used to dealing with. Be sure to catch Lisa on Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech, episode 177 along with LeVar Burton.

Digg visit

We managed to get a tour of the Digg office. I’ve been a big fan of Digg for years and Digg has undoubtedly contributed to the success of both tap tap tap and MacHeist. So it was fantastic to see their home base in-person.

photo by Daniel Burka

After the tour, Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka took us out to lunch at a great Thai restaurant in the neighborhood named Lingba. If you’re ever in the area, you gotta try out their Thai Beef Jerky.

When the meal was over, it was pretty sweet seeing Kevin whip out our former app, Tipulator, on his iPhone to calculate the tip. Kevin and Scott both own white iPhones and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen two white ones in the same location.

Schillernote

I didn’t pay much attention to Mac news during expo week but I’m sure lots has been said about Phil Schiller’s performance for the keynote. Here’s my take… he’s better than Ballmer at least. It’ll be hard, if not impossible to fill Steve Jobs’ shoes in this regard if Steve stays out of the limelight.

photo by Jordan Satok

Unfortunately, “he did ok” or “adequate” simply won’t cut it in the long-term when people have come to expect dazzling performances out of Apple with their trademark keynotes.

My biggest complaint about it? It’s that Phil used that same ugly-ass “Demo” font that Steve’s been using all these years. The feeling I always got when seeing it was like I was in the Museum of Modern Art the whole time, seeing great works of art… then all of a sudden a painting of dogs playing poker appears. Ugh.

photo by Jordan Satok

I seriously doubt that Schiller will continue to be Apple’s front-person for any length of time. But who will be? Your guess is as good as mine… unless your guess is Jonathan Ive… then you’re just plain wrong.

The expo

Not much to say here… the expo itself is always pretty boring and fulla suck. At least I didn’t contribute to the suckage this time since I abstained from exhibiting.

If you haven’t been to a Macworld Expo, it’s basically a giant warehouse of iPod/iPhone skins, cases, and accessories… with a smattering of Mac software and hardware thrown in for good measure. That’s basically it and if you’re efficient, you can get through the whole thing in a couple of hours.

But what’s nice about it from my point of view, at least, is that there are some indie devs who usually exhibit. So it’s nice to visit their booths and talk with friends that you typically only get to see at the expo or WWDC. This especially applies to devs outside the US.

One thing worth pointing out for this year’s expo is that the “alt hall” (this year being Moscone North) had plenty of traffic, unlike past expos where they’ve always been ghost-towns. This somewhat validates exhibiting in a hall that’s not the main South hall since anything not the South was always treated as some sort of bastard-child hall in the past.

I’m guessing that Jim won some sort of bet

As for the future of the expo, as I mentioned earlier,with Apple gone, its days are undeniably numbered. The only way I can see it having a sustainable future is if they piggybacked onto WWDC as I mentioned in the MacHeist forums.

California Academy of Sciences

One word… penguins!

photo by Scott

http://www.calacademy.org

Classics demo at the Apple Store

Apple put out an invitation to have Classics demoed at the San Francisco Apple Store. Kaz did a great job, especially considering this was his first time doing anything like this.

photo by Austin Sarner

The one big hitch was that he had major troubles with the Britney-mic they supplied. I have no clue what the actual issue was but it had something to do with his long hair. But thankfully they had a Sinatra-mic on-hand and once he switched to that, his presentation went pretty smoothly.

Party-time!!!

I remember the first MWSF that we went to three years ago and we hit-up pretty much every party we could find.

But year after year, that dwindled. We’ve thrown our share of parties, too.

This year was the first year I avoided every single party. I didn’t even look through the party list to see what was going on.

It’s not like I felt overly antisocial or anything. I just chose to hang out with small groups of friends every night. I guess it’s the result of 2008 being such a crazy, hectic year and I just haven’t been in the mindset to go out partying. I’m enjoying serenity a lot more than mayhem (it’s been the opposite for me in the past).

me with Chris Pirillo

Along similar lines, I avoided most media contact this time around, as opposed to the past where I sought it out. Cool geek Chris Pirillo did manage to snag an interview with Scott and me while we were walking the expo floor, though.

I’m the one with the limp collar and Scott’s the one with the overstated collar

And no, YouTubers… I’M NOT THE GUY FROM MYTHBUSTERS, DAMMIT!

I guess that this trip ended up being a much needed relaxation period for me. I’ve felt blocked creatively for a while, but I now definitely feel like good ideas are flowing.

The change of pace and different atmosphere surely revitalized me. I kinda feel like Thoreau and the W Hotel is my Walden.

The eats

It’s pretty hard to get a bad meal in San Francisco. Instead of making a boring list of the various places we enjoy eating at, I made an interactive “food map” using Google Maps to help you locate great places to chow-down at if you’re in the area (click the blue markers to get info on a restaurant):

view larger map

And although it’s hard to get a bad meal in SF, it’s not so hard to get bad restaurant graphics as the Pixelobster demonstrates…

photo by Ken Aspeslagh

I had to snap a pic of this place because a name like Educated Palate Restaurant totally gives me hope that I can start a Pretentious Douche Bistro franchise someday.

Moving to San Francisco

this is before it got really steep

If there’s one thing about San Francisco, it’s that everyone seems a bit crazy compared to any other place. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all… people just seem to be themselves and not care what anyone else thinks about them. I like that mentality.

Even when things are hectic, I still find the city to be relaxing overall… there’s a certain laid-back atmosphere that permeates it.

at the Hannspree Showcase

Cartoon Art Museum (I snapped this right before I saw the sign that no pics were allowed)

It’s a very interesting place and I always enjoy visiting, so I’ve decided to move out there. I spent part of the post-expo week finding a place to live and I’m happy to say that I now have a place all lined-up to move into on February 1st.

This was the first time I’d ever purchased a one-way plane ticket to anywhere.

One of the things influencing my decision was the cold. Take a look at these two Weather app screenshots. Then pick one…

Yeah, I thought so.

That’s a difference of 86°!? Eighty. Six. Degrees. OMGondola! (and note that the weathergods were off with their low prediction by 9°)

Semi-hiatus

As you’ve probably noticed, things have somewhat slowed down here. While MacHeist 3 is going on, Scott, Phill, and I are dedicating most of our time to trying to make the best MacHeist ever. And as a result, something has to give.

That something is a lot of the stuff I’m doing with tap tap tap for now. So at the very least, the blogging volume will be pretty low for a while.

But product development hasn’t slowed down, though… our developers are still going in full-force and we’re finally nearing completion of some of our new iPhone apps. So keep an eye out for them… they’ve been in development for a while and we hope they’ll be worth the wait.