MacWorld 2008 San Francisco Post-Keynote Activity Recap

The post-keynote Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) buzz is all about the new MacBook Air and yes it is thin & sexy. Already my friends are tweeting about orders for them, in some cases for multiple. I’m absolutely in the target audience for the new Air, I try to always buy an even lighter laptop than my last one and there are very few laptops with full sized keyboards which are as light as the MacBook Air and certainly very few indeed that come anywhere close in terms of the sheer design elegence.

That said it is certainly not without some issues to quibble about, my current laptop does not have EVDO built in, though it was an option, and I do have a slot in which I could add an EVDO card (which I expect I’ll do later this year). Likewise though I didn’t realize that this machine came with it when I ordered it, I do have an SD card reader as well, a feature I use quite frequently and which saves me from carrying (and losing) another cable to pull photos from my camera. My current laptop does not have an optical drive and with only very few occasions I don’t miss it – there are a few times each year when I need to install new software or I want to rip a CD – that is when I use the dock which I have to add the optical drive – but that’s quite rare.

And though I don’t have a need for it at the moment I certainly see the appeal of the 1TB Time Machine as an all in one network router, hub, print spooler and backup storage – and when I upgrade my desktop to Leopard I could certainly see getting one (though I’d also love to be able to use Time Machine with other network attached storage devices). It makes a lot of sense to use wifi access to backup laptops – far more sense than plugging in and unplugging external storage devices.

I will be interviewing a bunch of people with booths here at MacWorld over the next few days, on deck at the moment are Plasq about Skitch and their other new products [full disclosure I know a few of the founders from various events around SF] (Wed) and some of the designers from Google in charge of their recent Mobile applications for the iPhone (Thurs).

Much of MacWorld are various accessories and hardware products, but there are some notable differences this year from years past. There are far more business focused applications and companies here this year. Lots of graphic design products, cameras and the like but also small business products and much more. While there are still a few small booths with very small companies, in general this year has a highly professional polish to it, far more so than I have seen in past years and previous MacWorlds. The Mac community has grown considerably in the past few years and this show reflects it.

I will be here all week, if there are specific companies and questions CN readers want me to talk with and ask please leave comments here and I will make my best effort to reach them. The schwag this year is not plentiful, but there are many exhibitors with show specials and discounts, I’ll try to collect them and put up a post with all of them w/links before the end of the show.

Shannon Clark is a founding partner at Nearness Function, a new ad network for the publishers of dynamic content. He is the organizer of MeshForum – an annual conference on the study of networks and the one day MeshWalk series of walking conferences. He has been blogging for many years at Searching for the Moon where he covers technology, economics, food, and the life of an entrepreneur.