Tomorrow morning, along with 4,500 or so of my closest friends, I'll be watching Steve give his annual Macworld Expo keynote. After that, it's off to the show floor, where 20,000 folks will try their best to cram into an area (Apple's booth) sized to hold perhaps a tenth that number. For the remainder of the day, I'll be visiting vendors to see what's new and interesting in the world of Mac (and, I'm sure, iPod).
If you'd like to say hello at some point, here are the dates/times when I'll be stationary for more than a few minutes:
Tue Jan 9, 8:00pm onward: I'll be at the Macworld Blast! at Mezzanine (444 Jessie Street). Party ticket required to attend.
Wed Jan 10, 11:00am - 12:15pm: Best of Mac OS X Hints presentation, room 303. A Conference pass or better is required to attend. I'll be presenting an assortment of my favorite OS X tips and tricks.
Thu Jan 11, 11:00am - 11:45am: Macworld booth 408 on the show floor. Dan Frakes and I will be presenting some of our favorite apps and utilities that you've probably never heard of.
Fri Jan 12, 11:00am - 11:45am: Macworld booth 408 on the show floor. A scaled-down version of my Favorite OS X Hints talk.
Other than that, I'll be around the show floor, in and out of Macworld's booth, and generally trying to wear out my shoes visiting all the vendors...
In observance of the Christmas holiday, there will be no macosxhints.com updates today. We'll return as usual with the usual collection of tips tomorrow. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday with friends and family, and that you receive that new [insert desired tech-oriented super-cool product's name here] that you so desire!
I've posted a new poll about the upcoming Macworld Expo -- what piece of Apple hardware do you most hope to see announced at Expo? The answers are based on things I've spotted on various rumor sites, so it's founded in that level of reality :). Keep in mind that this isn't a poll about what you think will be announced, but what you want to see announced.
BTW, I left iTV off the poll intentionally, as it's already an announced product -- just lacking a release date. The poll is for things that haven't been officially announced yet.
It should be interesting to see where the public opinion lies a few weeks before the Expo...
I've posted a new poll today, the second reader-suggested poll in what will be a continuing series. I'll leave this one up through Macworld Expo, and then I'll post one about the newly-revealed Apple products (iPhone!).
The current poll, though, is all about text editors nee word processors. Not which one do you think is best, or even which one are you forced to use, but rather in which one do you do most of your writing. I realize that most of us use more than one tool for writing -- I personally alternate between Word and Smultron depending on what it is I'm working on. Nonetheless, you can pick but one as your most-used writing tool. Also, I have a limit of 20 poll answers, so I had to leave a few options out. Sorry for those that were overlooked; you'll have to use the 'Other' option if you use a program that didn't make the list.
For those in the United States, I hope you have an enjoyable and safe Thanksgiving holiday. For those not in the United States, this means you won't see any new hints here today or tomorrow, as Macworld is closed both days for the holiday.
We're closed today, of course, for Thanksgiving itself (friends, family, giving thanks, and football!). We're closed tomorrow (along with basically every other non-retail business) so that everyone can recover from eating too much today, then rush to the malls, push and shove their way through thousands of like-minded shoppers, and eventually stand in a really long line for the right to buy the latest version of the Elmo and Barney Teletubbies Tribute Band Dolls. That's right, Friday's the start of the official holiday shopping season, and I'll do everything in my power to make sure I'm not part of it -- amazon.com, here I come!
Have a wonderful holiday, everyone, and we'll be back with the usual assortment of tips on Monday.
I've posted a new poll this morning, as suggested by reader hmelman in response to my call for help. I chose to run this one first because I find launchers an invaluable addition to OS X, and was curious which launcher (if any) others chose to use.
It's basically been two months since I posted a new poll ... and after 150+ polls over the years, I'm in need of some fresh ideas (we're due for another Browser Wars soon, but that's hardly a fresh idea). So I'm asking the community for some creative help -- please use the comments to this post to suggest topics you think other OS X users might find interesting to vote on and discuss.
Keep in mind that polling here is quite basic -- the questions must be multiple choice only, and to keep things manageable, the number of responses needs to be somewhat limited. Please browse the list of existing polls before submitting a suggestion, as we may have already posted an identical or similar poll. Topics are typically related to Macs, OS X, iPods, or computing in general.
No guarantees your poll question will be used, of course, and the only claim to fame I can offer is that you'll be recognized as the contributor of the question when the poll goes live.
Today marks the sixth anniversary of the first post (also on a Saturday, incidentally) on macosxhints.com. Little did I know back then that the site would change my career, tossing six years of business education to the side to become a full-time webmaster and writer. For helping make that happen, I would just like to say Thank You to the macosxints.com community -- you are truly an exceptional group!
I really don't have much more to say other than that -- and that I'm looking forward to continuing to work on the site and related Macworld projects in the future. I'd also like to say thanks to Macworld, for making my career change possible and for wanting to help make macosxhints.com even better. Thanks to Macworld, we gave away nine iPods this summer (and plan to offer more contests in the future). We're also in the midst of planning some substantial site upgrades relative to searching, categorization, and other user-centric features, so stay tuned...
My tenure here is over; Rob will be home soon, getting ready to start another week of hints. He'll be back in the saddle on Monday, starting his 7th year of hints!
Starting tomorrow and continuing through Friday, November 3rd, the site will once again be in the capable hands of Macworld contributor and author Kirk McElhearn, who performed the same duties during my absence after the birth of my daughter this spring.
This time, I'm off for my first-ever Geek Cruise, MacMania V. I'll be teaching four sessions (on iWork, my favorite OS X tips, useful and cool applications with Dan Frakes, and an intro to open source apps), as well as participating in various panel discussions most evenings. I'm looking forward to it (now that I have my slides done!), though I haven't been on a cruise ship since I was about 10 or so (yes, we'll be taking lots of sea sickness medication with us!). It should be a good time, and it's always nice to be able to meet some of the people who read the site and/or magazine.
In the interim, I'm confident the site's in good hands, and thanks again to Kirk for helping out!