Dave Winer only told you half the story when he said I said that CES was boring. It was boring. Why? Cause I read about all the cool stuff on Engadget before I saw it in person — even my cool “find” the Celestron SkyScout was covered on Engadget two weeks before CES. Tradeshows are really pretty boring for the most part. You walk up and down the aisles, occassionally seeing something interesting. You walk over, and get pitched. Then they try to give you stuff. I have a rule, that I told Patrick “I don’t take anything from anyone.” Why? Cause then you have to carry it around.
MacWorld is even more boring. Why? It’s like one big booth surrounded by lots of small ones. The Samsung booth at CES was three times the size of the biggest booth here and Samsung wasn’t the biggest booth at CES. The scale at CES is something you simply can’t explain on a blog. The scale here at MacWorld can be explained by “it all fits in the Moscone Center.”
Somethings don’t change between CES or MacWorld, though, the Microsoft booth was packed here too (although I could get in and talk with employees, which totally was different from CES). The booths here at MacWorld are a LOT smaller and a LOT less crowded than at CES. Another difference? I got a parking space right across the street. At CES I had to wait in a one-hour taxi line just to get to the show.
Another difference? We saw almost the entire show floor here in a few hours. At CES? You can’t even see 1/10 the show in the same amount of time (and I never saw the entire CES, despite walking around it for three hours).
Another difference? You had to pay to get into MacWorld. Damn. $45. CES was free (and had a LOT more to see).
