Tag Archives | Macworld

The Ultimate Guide to Phone/Tablet Styluses

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 30, 2011 at 5:12 pm

I’m still looking for the idea stylus for my iPad–I like to draw, and it’s way easier with a pen than it is with a finger. At the moment, I’m using Adonit’s Jot and mostly liking it, although I’m still not sure whether it’s possible to build a truly great stylus that works with an iPad. (I want one with a feel exactly like that of a good hard, pointy pencil.)

Serenity Caldwell of Macworld has spent way more time with digital styluses than I have. Maybe more time than anyone has. Here’s her amazingly exhaustive review. (The Jot scores quite well.)

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Live Coverage of Apple’s iPhone 5 Event

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 3, 2011 at 12:06 pm

I’m not going to be at Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday at 10am PT. (I’m in Tokyo attending CEATAC and participating in one of the keynote sessions.) But I will be tuning into Macword’s live coverage–and the Macworld folks were nice enough let me embed it on Technologizer at technologizer.com/iphone5.

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Me on Macworld’s Podcast

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 21, 2011 at 12:12 pm

Hey, I guested with Jason Snell on Macworld’s podcast, and it’s up now for your listening pleasure. The topic: Windows 8, especially as it relates to Apple’s products.

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Macworld 2010 Recap

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 13, 2010 at 7:17 pm

As I write this, Macworld 2010 is wrapping up over at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. As everyone who cares about the conference knows, it was the first edition since Apple pulled out–which meant no Steve Jobs and no Apple space on the show floor.

How’d the event survive the big transition? Well, there’s no doubt about it: A Macworld with Jobs unveiling something interesting onstage and Apple employees demonstrating stuff in the hall would have been better than this one. On the other hand, some of the most bustling, vibrant Macworld Expos I ever attended were held in Boston in the late 1980s, when Apple itself was sans Jobs and not releasing anything terribly exciting. And when Apple said it decided to leave the show in part because it could interact with its customers at Apple Store locations, it was a rational explanation even if you didn’t like it. One of the largest Apple Store locations is a few blocks from Moscone, and basically amounts to an Apple Macworld Expo booth that’s open year round. When I walked by it last night it was mobbed–with conventiongoers, I assume. Continue Reading →

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Macworld Without Apple: Coming Next Week

Posted by Harry McCracken on February 1, 2010 at 11:41 am

Somewhere, in another universe, Macworld Expo San Francisco 2010 was held in early January. The biggest news out of the event, by a factor of something like 20,000%, was Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the iPad–a moment that got the conference front-page coverage in newspapers around the world.

Okay, back to this reality. In December 2008. Apple announced that Macworld 2009 would be the last one with an Apple keynote (by Phil Schiller) and Apple on the show floor. Many Applewatchers took the news to spell the end of the show, and IDG, Macworld’s owner, spent a year regrouping and reimagining Macworld, attempting to make the show a success without the presence of the irreplaceable company that defined it for its first quarter century.

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How a Macworld Cover is Born

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 9, 2009 at 9:04 pm

I love doing my thing on the Web, but I’d be a liar if I told you there weren’t things I missed about being a magazine journalist. And one of the top three things I pine for is the fun (and challenge) of creating a cover every month. So I love, love, love this video which shows how my pals at Macworld put together the cover of their new issue. And as much hard work as it shows, it doesn’t capture everything involved in doing a cover, since it focuses on the photography and layout aspect of a process that also involves story ideas and wordsmithing, and sometimes multiple, significantly different mockups of different ideas.

Here’s Macworld’s story about the video.

(Side note: I may have implied that I don’t do magazine stuff anymore, but I lied–in fact, this very Macworld has a piece I wrote, on the war between Macs and Windows and why it doesn’t make anybody happier or healthier. It’s the first article I’ve written for the magazine after more than twenty years of reading it…and eventually sitting next to the people who make it.)

(Additional side note: If we’d been clever enough to do time-lapse photography of the complete PC World cover process when I was there, we’d have been required to include footage of me sweating for several weeks as I waited for newsstand sales reports to come in and tell us whether we had a hit or a flop on our hands.)

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Macworld Expo Moves, Accepts Its Nickname

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 30, 2009 at 10:37 am

Macworld LogoHere’s the first hint of how IDG’s Macworld Expo will change in the wake of Apple’s decision to pull out of the show: It’s moving from early January to February 9th-13th (which includes a Saturday–the show has been weekday only). The conference sessions run for the entire duration of the show; the show floor will be open on the 11th, 12th, and 13th. Everything is still at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

The change sounds like good news. I’m not sure if mid-February is the optimum time to hold the show or not, but I know that early January was a royal pain: It was so soon after the holidays and the new year that anyone who had to do much planning for it (like, ahem, a tech journalist) had to dedicate part of his or her time off to getting ready. It collided with the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas–also known as the “Every Other Electronics Company on the Planet Except Apple Show.” And as so many folks pointed out, the right-after-Christmas timing wasn’t great for product announcements.

[UPDATE: PCMag.com‘s Sascha Segan pointed out to me that Macworld Expo now brushes up against Mobile World Congress, the big European phone show–it officially kicks on February 15th next year. Should still be possible to attend both, though, since you won’t need three full days to take in everything on the Macworld Expo floor.]

The Saturday show-floor day is an acknowledgment of a essential fact about the event: Unlike most tech conferences, Macworld is a consumer event. (Among other things, it’s one of the few where selling stuff on the floor is not only permitted but encouraged.) Consumers, of course, might appreciate the option of attending the show without taking a day off from work.

Did I just call the event Macworld? That’s also a change: Its full name is Macworld Conference and Expo, but the official site calls it “Macworld 2010” in most instances. Most of the folks who care about the event have always called it just plain Macworld, but IDG has tended to tack the “Expo” on to the end, presumably to differentiate it from Macworld the magazine. (So have I when talking about it here on Technologizer–as a former IDG employee, I’d trained my brain to be fastidious on branding issues.)

Show manager Paul Kent told me the switch to “Macworld 2010” is to reflect the name that attendees have long used, as well as the fact that the event is more than just a conference and an exposition. Makes sense to me.

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