The nerd has landed

Writing this in a hotel room in San Francisco, where the 2008 Macworld Expo is underway. Ah, San Francisco. I will admit I was a bit worried about the state of the crazies, panhandlers, and bums in this fair city—had they disappeared since last I was here?

It turns out my fears were completely unfounded—if anything, there are more of the aforementioned than I can remember seeing before, making the daily walk to the Moscone an interesting exercise in Practical Ignoring and Staring Into Middle Distance. Speaking of daily walk, I’m ensconced in the Hotel Adagio on Geary Street. It’s a nice place where everybody calls me “sir” and the Moscone is about a 15-minute walk away. Of course, I dropped $26 on breakfast this morning, so they’d better call me “sir.” (Tomorrow’s breakfast will be ingested somewhere else.)

Ah, yes, nothing like the smell of exhaust, piss, and weed in the morning to remind you you’re in San Francisco.

After attending my first and last Stevenote at last year’s WWDC I decided to be smart and sleep in, eat a leisurely and overpriced breakfast, then go back to the hotel room and load up the live blogging from the Keynote in Safari and sip some coffee. Then, after the keynote ended, it was time to head down to the Moscone.

Met a lot of draggy-looking Mac nerds shuffling off to find food on the way to the Moscone. Getting up early and standing in line can be a bit wearying, it seems.

And yes, this is me being smug…

The Expo was packed to the rafters, and fortunately there was more of a variety among the exhibitors than I had feared—the iPod cases, iPod docks, and iPod earbuds were all there, but were mercifully in the minority. Apple’s setup, as one would imagine, absolutely dominated the showroom floor. Can’t blame Apple for a lack of sense about visual appeal.

All in all, a nice, mellow day. Tomorrow should be much more hectic.

Oh, and yeah, as a card-carrying Apple nerd, I should probably mention something about the announcements at the keynote: Played (briefly—holy jeebus the crowds) with a MacBook Air. Nice rig. As I’m not a road warrior, though, I’m not really in the target audience. iPhone and iPod Touch, nice updates. The winner for me is the Apple TV—I’m buying one as soon as the $229 model hits the stores.

Time Capsule has a nice name and could be a good product for some people, but it’s beyond lame the functionality of the device can’t be achieved with an Airport Extreme N and a USB drive. Seriously strange and disappointing.

Onward and upward.