News for Monday, 18 September 2006

The fiery buzz of the Apple Expo in Paris was finally extinguished by the geysers of Champagne bottles being opened by knackered exhibitors.
While it'll take a few days to know the exact figures, it already seems that attendance was close to last year's, which is kind of a disappointment given the unprecedented amount of pre-booking.
This is probably related to the lack of significant announcement preceding the exhibition, and to the fact that the Keynote was only broadcast on Tuesday evening, and far from Paris.
While we understand the delaying of the Keynote because of the 9/11 commemorations, its broadcasting in London instead of Paris was quite hard to swallow. It had an obviously negative impact on both the Apple Expo itself and its coverage in Europe. Was Apple shunning the Apple Expo? Well, not exactly: the whole Apple Europe team, headed by Pascal Cagni, was in the exhibition just the day after!
Another clumsy move on Apple's side was to invite many major companies, investors and professionals to the EBC, another event also held in Paris, place d'Iéna.
We do not understand Apple's will to draw some of the attention away from the Apple Expo. We could also rant about the total lack of advertising campaign but... well you already got the picture.
In spite of the exhibition and the Apple stand itself both being smaller than they used to, this Apple Expo was still a nice place to visit. However those who'd only come to make good deals must have been disappointed. The only big deals were on software, as was the case for Intego's products. Retailers were few (an ongoing trend) and discounts less and less appealing. The FNAC's exclusivity on the new iPod nanos (FNAC is a kind of Virgin store) did not help either. But let us not dwell upon distribution channels: those who wanted a new nano could buy it and this is what counts.
The mood was iPod: fun and... gleefully noisy, sometimes having Apple representatives raise their voice in order to be heard.
And now, ladies and gentlemen... (French accent, drumrolls, fine mustaches, lurid women holding their breath), "Le Stand du Pommier": thanks to those of you who came to greet us at the "Appletree", showing your interest with ever more hi-tech questions. Many potential switchers called in to be told that yes, they were doing the right move :) Many an older Macfan we told that yes, buying a MacIntel can be a wise decision :) The buzz was at its highest when we opened the guts of a Mac Mini and sacrif... er, surgically removed its CoreMono CPU and replaced it with a CoreDuo. Well, indeed it was so popular that we are planning to hold many more such performances next year. Yeah, I said "next year", because contrarily to what some pessimists say, you can safely bet your Mac that there will be an Apple Expo next year in Paris.
So see you there in 2007!

Bootcamp is currently incompatible with the new iMac Core2Duo 24'', Thomas told us from Germany. This incompatibility can be related to that met by the MacPro owners who have tried to plug it to a 23'' display. During Windows' installation, the unsupported display remains desperately black. Find out more here (in German).
For sure, Apple should solve this quickly... For sure? Well, maybe not indeed. People who have ordered a 24'' iMac last week just got an email warning them that delivery - which was to be completed within 5 days - would suffer a 3 weeks delay. The longer the better, they say...
[Update]Other accounts from readers (thanks Thomasz) lead us to believe that this 'incompatibility' might not be the rule indeed. More to come on that topic in the coming days.