Here's a slightly amended copy for TS, promised yesterday in one of the birthday threads, of what I made of the AppleFest at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre (written up last night on my 'blog under the title 'A Rewarding Trip to Apple Expo).
Two things unmentioned in it were evidence that the very real speed gains to be seen in Panther were also notable in the revamped Preview app and on older
Macs; and that, while I was particularly interested in Macs and music, I'd like to have had somebody who knows far more than I do about graphic design along with me.
What I could see in the 3D field impressed me, but some of the things happening at the Adobe stand, for instance, were technically beyond my grasp."This year's Apple Expo was the first I really enjoyed visiting -- and well worth it despite the absence of any stunning announcements.
Late on a quiet afternoon proved a good time to go and by sheer luck I met, in different parts of the vast hall, more than half a dozen people in the French Mac world I've wanted to say 'Hallo' to for some time.
François [Demeyer; a pal and pioneer of Net access for the general public in France] introduced me to 'Soif': also a Francois [Déchery] and 'the founder, the administrator, the web designer, the moderator, the sleepless, the sweeper' at MacMusic.
'Soif' omits to add in his little
tale about MacMusic that he's an entertaining teacher, with colleagues who make difficult things clear.
He reminded me that their help site celebrates its sixth anniversary on September 29. [...]
There are one or two things English-speaking musicians who find the bilingual MacMusic useful may not know.
The editor explained that they'd turned the site into 'shareware' [the admirable way they did this got an
August 14 'blog mention] with 'heavy hearts', but can now hope to cover costs as best may and also, importantly, 'remain independent from advertisers'.
If anybody out there is able and willing to help with French to English translations, the team would be delighted to hear from them, since they currently do most of this themselves, with a handful of volunteers. It's becoming a workload which needs spreading out more.
While the software pages are apparently the most popular among anglophones, 'MacMusic' would readily publish many more small ads in English. 'Soif' was surprised these 'currently make up only a very tiny percentage of the total', but suspects this may be because people see the ones in French and imagine it's 'not for them'. On the contrary, those columns are open to all comers.
I saw some of a music-making demo at the stand, where 'Soif' played an active keyboard part, and the nice thing was that I even understood what was going on with the computer. Then my buddy and I split up again, and I last saw him clutching a glass of champagne with the '
Musicrun' (Fr) people, where what was going on was well above my head.
Apple products? Yes, there were quite a lot of those, which have been so widely covered elsewhere than I've little to add apart from personal impressions. The essence of Steve's keynote address has been on the
Apple Hot News site for [two days]. It was mercifully brief, apparently.
Yes, the already famed, very functional looking
Power Mac G5, with its 64-bit IBM processor, is one amazing beast to
see in action. Its phenomenal performance is really far more than anybody but the greediest home user could want!
The Apple-IBM partnership will go places.
I know what Maya's for and even have a copy of the
Personal Learning Edition' sensibly given away for free with some design magazines, but to watch this highly praised, heavy-duty 3D graphics software producing fine work in the hands of an expert with a G5 was a remarkable sight.
I also saw why Rainer [Brockerhoff; Brazil-based 'Mac guru' and friend, maker of
X-Ray, etc.] said over a most enjoyable dinner last night that after getting his clutches on Panther betas, he returned to Mac OS X 10.2.x Jaguar with some reluctance! (More on that meeting tomorrow.) [Yes, Rainer's now got a 'blog write-up, along with a fine Brazilian Mac mag.]
Panther looks
fast, and I've had no major complaints about Jaguar as it is. I kept returning from the various stands round the edges to keep an eye on a 'X 10.3 for Dummies' presentation on the "main square", which only scratched the surface of the new operating system, but sufficiently so to convince me that one of these days, I want that!
Novelties I saw the most of were
Exposé, a major improvement along with the more user-friendly Finder, and some of the subtle changes that will make the Mail application better.
I asked Rainer about a kind of 'secure delete' trashing feature I'd seen illustrated in one of the betas by France's Univers MacWorld, but this came and went and may or may not be in the public release. In any event, there's the new
File Vault for security freaks, which is far from proof against hardened hackers, but would still take some cracking.
A woman from [excellent French Mac monthly]
SVMMac [...] took one look at the press badge I'd asked for, since I didn't want to
pay to get in, and said:
'I thought you were on strike!'
'Sorry,' I replied. 'To be honest, I don't know whether AFP is right now or not, but if they are, then I'm on both sick leave
and strike.'
For which she rewarded me with an attractive big coffee mug.
Most of the other people I sought out came from various software companies I've had dealings with on the 'phone. It was good to put faces to the names and to find that I can now give a passable impression of speaking geek and understanding it.
I had a quick chat with
Yves Cornil (home page), one of the finest French advocates and historians of the Mac and a key player in this country's Apple User Group community. Mainly, I wanted to thank him for an invaluable list of
French Mac sites I must have recommended to dozens of people for their bookmarks.
A bigwig from the French branch of
O'Reilly was free for a chat and gave me some useful tips on where best to read up Unix and Open Source systems, principles and software further.
I bought two things.
I told the French Intego developers that I'd have liked to update their
NetBarrier firewall to version 10.3, but the upgrade itself was 'too expensive for me', despite the new features.
'Not here at the Expo it isn't,' I was told, and when they knocked off the cost of a meal [...] out came the card.
And now I confess.
The 'need' that had returned to 'want' status turned into desire at the FNAC [a French store] stand. [...] The iPod -- oh yeah! -- is still in its sealed box, to be explored and played with tomorrow. [It hasn't, I've been too busy.]
I walked away with the 20 GB
model and now have no excuse for failing to back up all of my data, not just the essentials.
After all, even Wagner's 'Ring' cycle, in high-quality AAC format, would only take up a 10th of the space.
And they threw in a free extra or two for the music machine.
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable three hours or so, without the horrible crowds of previous such visits."
And there you go.
Sigh. Nothing like republishing to see some of the little typos the sub didn't catch first time round... rolleyes:
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