i went to san francisco macworld today, just the exhibit hall since i had a freebie pass. on the escalators the guy one step down from me unselfconciously picked his nose the entire ride. he was really rooting around up there, i feared he was going to touch his own brain. we made eye contact and he kept ramming his finger into his sinuses the entire time. must have been a programmer.
the new imacs are alright, the base is bigger than i expected. several reviewers have mentioned it is "slightly larger than an half-cantalope" but i guess they are familiar with larger cantalope than i see on a regular basis: it looked more like half a honeydew or half a seedless watermelon. something is deeply weird when fruit are used to describe consumer electronics. the design really begs for the screen to be touch-sensitive, its odd to have to push around a mouse to use it. otherwise, it looks a lot like those 1x/5x make-up mirrors one sees bolted to the vanity in nicer hotels.
this show wasn't as depressing as the 1997 show but it was a moderately close second.
jeni said at 11:55 AM 01-10-2002: i thought it would be too, but its very rugged. the LCD monitor is perfectly counterbalanced on the articulating neck, it just takes a fingertip to adjust its position-- -yet the neck is sturdy enough to use as a handle (apple guy demo'd this part to me). you could kill someone with a blow the the head w/ the melon-shaped base.
zack [email] said at 3:08 PM 01-10-2002: I think they look kind of neat, although I don't know if the public will get as excited by them as they did the original Blueberry iMacs.. But they are even better than before, what with the G4 and ability to write DVDs & CDRs... pretty hip. Almost makes me want to get one.
josh said at 4:37 PM 01-10-2002: Yeah, they are neat but not enough under the hood for a tech nerd like me. It's something I'd put in my waiting room, if I was a dentist or something, though. Or if I had an internet cafe... I'd definitely like to have a bunch of these, perfect for an upscale yuppie type place.
I was hoping they'd announce the G5s. I want to get a Dual 800 G4 and FCP 3 for OS X... But the price tag is a bit much for me. I figure when the G5s come out, the Dual G4s will be more affordable. Hopefully this will happen in the early summer... They are overdue for a speed boost.
jeni said at 8:21 PM 01-10-2002: agree about the long-needed cpu speed bump. note that the new imacs are only 67mhz less than the current top-end tower (g4/800 vs g4/867). they both have superdrives too. other than case expandibility there's almost no difference other than $1K.
my WAG is faster CPUs in the tower at mwtokyo but i dunno if they will be g5s
