Macworld Expo 2007 Begins Today following Steve Jobs' Keynote at 9am PT--The Prelims

[1/9] [Updated] Macworld Expo 2007 Begins Today following Steve Jobs' Keynote at 9am PT--The Prelims

Macworld Conference & Expo 2007 began yesterday with the Power Tools Conference Series 1 and on-site registration. Steve Jobs' keynote address is today at 9am PT and the Expo show floor opens right after the keynote at 11am PT.

Yesterday, we picked up our badge and a copy of the Event Guide with the latest insert. We are pleased to see that the Macworld Expo for 2007 has expanded from recent years to use a good part of the show floor in the North Moscone Hall. Most of the Expo, including Apple's huge presence, is still contained in South Moscone Hall. We saw reports that IDG, Macworld's owner, announced that pre-registrations are up some 28 percent--excellent! We found that media registrations are way up, too. In fact, there are so many that even the overflow media room, with a televised but real-time presentation of the keynote, is full. Media representatives not pre-registered are being told with a pleasant smile to come back during the keynote or later for media credentials.

Thumbing through the Event Guide to see who's here and where they are to plan our show floor walks, we immediately noticed a major absence. Neither ATI/AMD nor Nvidia, the graphics card giants, are listed. ATI, now owned by chipmaker AMD, has been present nearly every year that we can recall. The one exception we remember was when an ATI news release faux pas revealed a new Mac product before Steve Jobs' keynote. ATI spent a year in the penalty box as a result. Nvidia has been present a couple of times but our memory of the New York, Boston and San Francisco events is rapidly fusing. Only the San Francisco Macworld still exists. Apple still uses ATI and Nvidia graphics chips along with those from Intel. Intel has a booth so we wonder what ATI's absence may signify, if anything, beyond the mundane. Fortunately, there is still a major gaming area and it has been located this year in North Moscone.

Also in the newly reclaimed North Moscone Hall are large sections devoted to Enterprise IT, Enterprise & Business Solutions, Digital Photo (HP-sponsored), Digital Media & Multimedia, the Special Interest Pavilion and the cool Berklee Dream Studio John Lennon Educational Bus Tour.

One thing that we noticed in the Event Guide that we haven't noticed before is that there are guided tours of the Macworld Conference & Expo. Now, maybe they have been there before and we overlooked them but they look like a neat idea to us. Staffed by volunteers from Apple User Groups, they will help anyone find anything at Macworld, including getting seats at show floor demonstrations. [Update: Mike Henigan, President of the Atlanta Macintosh User Group wrote us that the volunteer guides from Apple user groups have been available for several very successful years. He reminded me that there is a User Group Lounge where speakers make presentations and talk about their products and, also, how they can help User Groups. So poke your head in and find out what's going on. The User Group Lounge is Room 250 of South Moscone Hall according to the Event Guide.]

We plan to file a report on Steve Jobs keynote and then a quick hands-on report on the new Apple products...uh, if any...before heading off to some appointments with the likes of Adobe and to begin our 2007 show floor walk. Stay tuned! This will be a great week. [Bill Fox]