So after the excitement of the keynote, the three of us made a quick stop at the company store to pick up a few things for people back at home. After that, we made our way back to San Francisco. We found this Pho place a block from our hotel last night so we decided to hit that up for lunch. Like all Vietnamese food, it was great.

After pho, we finally made our way to Macworld. We were all very excited to see the Macbook Air for the first time. As soon as we entered the expo, we immediately saw the Apple booth and the horde of people huddled around getting their first glimpse. Check out our gallery for pictures of the laptop. Design wise, it’s simply amazing, I love it. It’s thinner than I expected and a lot lighter. We walked around the expo for a few hours, picked up some free stuff – it was a good time.

For dinner tonight, we went to a Thai place right next to our hotel. It was really good. It’s 9:30 and we don’t really have a lot of plans for tonight. I think we’re all pretty worn out from waking up at 5:30 and walking around all day so we might just call it an early night.Tomorrow we’re going to do the shopping thing, probably start off with some stores downtown then hit up Haight street afterwards.

Au Revoir,

-Alan

Sitting here with (from left to right), Jeff, Eric, Rick, Danh, Myself, Sean,  Natalie, Andrew, Charles, Scott, Sade and “Tupac” aka Peter.  

They started playing footage from Moscone, live.  The stage is really well done, large purple X’s adorn the back of the stage, there’s a different logo in the center, sort of like the Leopard OS logo ( with light rays coming from behind) Lots and lots of shots of people with iPhones, Steve Wozniak is in the crowd (Sean made the observation that he looks drunk)  Program starting..new mac vs. pc commercial “new year?”

1. 2007 Recap 

•  Leopard – 5,000,000 sold in first 90 days
• NEW PRODUCT – Time Capsule: Airport Extreme + Hard drive (Wireless backup) 500gb/1tb $299 $499 Coming: February 
• Office 08 shipping
• iPhone – 4 million sold: Maps with location, Webclips, Customize home screens, multiple sms, lyric support (basically 1.13, available today)
• iPod Touch – mails, stocks, maps (20 dollar upgrade for current owners), built into new iPods
• iTunes: itunes movie rentals, every major studio’s support. 30 days to start watching 24 hours to finish. 2.99/3.99 for movies. 
• NEW PRODUCT – Apple TV , no computer needed, rent movies in ***HD*** 3.99/4.99 , can stream pictures/movies from .mac web gallery or flickr (that portion of the demo didn’t go as planned) New Apple TV is a free software update for existing owners. New Price: $229 available in 2 weeks

  4th thing. “there’s something in the air…” Macbook Air – World’s thinnest notebook. .76 inches – .016 inches………

•  fits inside a manilla envelope
• uh, it’s really thin
• 13.3 ” LED with isight
• full size keyboard with ambient light sensor
• large trackbad with multi touch gestures (most similar to iphone’s)
• 80gb hdd or 64 SSD
• 1.6 or 1.8ghz
• 802.11n and bluetooth 2
• no optical drive, superdrive external available for 99
• remote disk in finder – “borrowing another computer’s optical drive”
• 5 hour battery 
• 2gb Standard!
• $1799 (ouch) available in 2 weeks

Battery is dying now, see you guys later. 

So it’s Tuesday, the morning of the Keynote. Today is probably the most anticipated day of the year for some of us Apple nerds. It’s currently 5:50 a.m and Sean and Rick are still semi-asleep, I was able to take a fast shower and get ready pretty fast, so I have some extra time to blog a little.

Where did we leave off…

So after getting new badges at Cupertino and meeting up with everyone for the first time, we headed back to the city to check in. Our hotel is actually very nice and clean, considering we’re in “the tenderloin” area part of town (used to be a rough area). We checked in, got settled in and went to sleep, lol. 

For dinner, our old FV friend, Robert wanted to show us a Spanish Tapas restaurant in The Mission district. We decided to take the BART down there – it was pretty interesting. First of all, the lady at our hotel gave us wrong directions how to get to the the BART station. I know the SF layout a little bit, so I know where Market street is…and she had us walk three blocks deeper into the tenderloin. Once we figured that out, we didn’t know which train to take, so we asked a local. Turns out he gave us the wrong fucking directions and we went on the northbound BART for about 3 stops. We still managed to get there before the other group (Genii ) and dinner was pretty good. I shared a Paella with Ryan from UTC and there was still enough food for another person probably. Paella is a Spanish dish with rice and toppings stirred in a pan with a special technique so the rice gets soft and creamy with bits of crispy areas as well, ours had shrimp, mussels, calamari, chicken – it was great. 

After dinner, I get a phone call from my cousin, Viet from LA. Viet and I are very close, more like brothers than cousins. He asked me where I was and I told him on 22nd and Valencia. He said he’s about 10 minutes away and could pick us up if we wanted to. Wanting to  avoid another public transportation debacle, I happily obliged. The 4 of us had a great time, Viet has lived in SF his whole life and knows it like the back of his hand, he drove us around basically half the city, pointing out key points of interests for us. We later went to some bar on the 22nd floor of a really nice hotel. The views were a magnificent, almost 360 degree view of the city. We had some drinks and had a great time. I especially had a great time since I was able to see Viet, I don’t get to see him that much anymore especially since my return to Apple and Viet starting the whole Firefighter thing, I was very thankful to have gotten to see him. 

So we got back to our hotel and called it an early (12) night, it’s been almost 2 days since any of us have slept in a bed. 

We’re at Town Hall now, so we’ll update once the keynote is over.

-Alan

Early Monday:

So after finally arriving in San Francisco, we were starving, at least I was anyways. We drove by our hotel (The Mark Twain) and decided to find a place to eat since check in isn’t till 3 p.m.

I’ve been to SF plenty of times, from all my visits I’ve learned a few consistently good eateries, one of those is Mel’s Diner on Mission. All three of us had the Steak and Eggs special – it was delicious and filling. 

After downtown SF, we decided to go to Cupertino and get new badges since Rick couldn’t find his and I lost mine since I left Apple the first time. Badge services didn’t start till 2 p.m so Sean and Rick decided to get a quick nap in. The car has a bunch of clothes and luggage all over, add to that, three people sleeping – it’s a pretty weird sight for Apple’s parking lot.  I don’t really fall asleep that easily, but luckily I have my laptop and my iPhone so I’m able to keep occupied.  

 Not too sure what we’re doing tonight, but there’s lots to do and I’m sure it’ll be a good time. 

We’re all looking forward to the keynote tomorrow morning (9 a.m), we’ll probably be watching it from Cupertino at either Cafe Macs or Town Hall.

-Alan 

It takes about 5 hours into our trip for bad luck to strike. Turns out we have a flat tire on Rick’s Scion xA. We were stuck on the two lane 580-W in the middle of NO WHERE, right on top of a bridge named Hospital Creek Bridge. Rick attempted to call AAA but his card was no longer active. As frustrated as we all were, we got out of the car and changed the tire. So now, we’re sitting in the lobby of Dublin Toyota waiting to get the tire fixed. The tire was punctured with a nail and it looks like it’s going to cost ~$150 & 2.5 hours of waiting time to repair it.It’s all good though. We can’t check into our hotel until 3pm anyway. So this just gives us something to do. Stay tuned. 

-Sean