brian@ut-sally.UUCP (Brian Powell) (10/22/86)
Well, I went to the MacWorld Expo in Dallas this last weekend. I had
not been to any of the previous Expos (i.e., MacWorld Expo/Far East or
MacWorld Expo/Far West.) I must admit to being quite disappointed in the
Dallas show.
First, let me say that I only went Saturday. (It was a Thursday through
Saturday show.) I missed only the Thursday and Friday conferences; one day
was more than enough to see the exhibits.
I was most disappointed with the small number of exhibitors. I can't
provide a _complete_ list of who was there and who was "not there but should
have been." Perhaps someone else was more thorough than I and can supply such
a list.
The big things were CAD, games, and big screens.
Special commendations go to:
* Silicon Beach, for their game introduced at the show: Dark Castle.
I especially liked the 8-year-old kid who sat down and accrued
25,000 points to beat the old high score by 24,000+ points.
* Monogram, for having a large, professional-looking booth, and being
helpful. (Yes, they do intend to update Forecast to work with the
new tax laws.)
Other commendations, (mainly just for being there) include:
* Altsys (Fontographer and FONTastic)
* Ashton-Tate (dBase Mac)
* Apple (just for having the biggest booth; there weren't any Apple
products shown.)
* A.P.D.A. (very helpful.)
* CE Software (MockPackage, etc.)
* LetraSet (Page layout programs, and a nice booth.)
* Vermont Microsystems (nice color monitors)
* Levco ("performance enhancements", e.g., 68020-based)
* Dynamac (portable mac)
* Colby (another portable mac)
There were a respectable number of hard disk makers, game producers, and big
screen producers.
Notable omissions include:
* Anybody with a programming language:
Megamax showed up. I didn't get a chance to ask them about
their future. They seemed most proud of their Mac-to-gs
development tools.
Coral Software also showed up. They have a Logo that looked good.
They also mentioned Coral Lisp. It's supposed to be a COMPLETE
CommonLisp implementation. They said it was 80% finished, but
they sure acted like they were not committed to the project. I
think they were hoping someone would pay them to not complete
the product.
That's It. No TML; No Think; No Consulair; No Manx; No Microsoft.
Not even MGlobal (of MacMumps fame) (from Houston) showed up.
This reminds me: I heard that MPW is about to be released in
final form. There will be a big jump in price. ($100->$295?)
* Anybody with a music-related product:
MacNifty showed off Studio Session, and SMU and Loyola(?) had
exhibits showing how they used music software in their schools.
No ConcertWare; No Mark of the Unicorn; No Hayden; Nobody with
a MIDI adaptor.
* Anybody with page layout software:
(I don't know any manufacturers) No Pagemaker, etc. Where's the
Desktop publishing craze? There were some high-quality output
devices shown, though. (need 2450 dots per inch?)
* Booksellers:
No Addison-Wesley; No Hayden/Apple Press.
Conferences:
I didn't get to go to many of these, but the ones I went to were boring
and unplanned. Dennis Brothers was supposed to talk about "Machine Language
Programming". He cancelled at apparently the last minute. The replacement
speaker (the person who wrote MockPackage, etc. I regret I don't remember his
name right now) was quite disorganized. (Though he did a good job for short
notice.) It turned into an aborted question/ answer session. The other big
flop was the talk on education. There were supposed to be two sessions (K-12
and Universities). They were combined into one session (Universities.
Apparently the K-12 speaker(s) cancelled.) Nothing of much interest came up.
The big highlight: All the free apples to eat.
======
Brian H. Powell brian@sally.utexas.edu
The University of brian@ut-sally.UUCP
Texas at Austin cs.powell@r20.utexas.eduhoward@amdahl.UUCP (Howard C. Simonson) (10/24/86)
My observations on your observations:
1. They're really pushing the limit, Boston/Dallas/San Francisco wise.
Two a year- far east/far west is plenty from most user points of view.
( Though geographically, a pain for some. Which Expo do most users in
North Dakota go to? Now there's a question. Or better yet, is anyone
in North Dakota? Must be, I saw a funny signature line from there
the other day. )
2. The Dallas show is a staging area, a dry-run if you will, for the BIG
show in S.F.. A chance to test run and get your act together. The
"major players" you mentioned as missing have been to a few shows and
have their act together. They're just sitting back and waiting for
January. A show that I'm sure makes a good return on investment.
--
I have no technical challenges, Howard C. Simonson
just political ones. ...{dragon,hplabs,ihnp4,nsc}!amdahl!howard
[ Opinion? What opinion!? I think you have the wrong guy... ]