Last week, I spent a couple of days to the Apple Expo in Paris. The Apple Expo is said to be the biggest Apple show in Europe but as many other show in Europe (like ECTS) I was quite dissapointed.

The Apple Expo is not an event for geeks and it has nothing to compare with the WWDC. There was not a single news from Apple and Steve Jobs didn’t even show up, except in back stage.

Most of the booth here were dedicated to professional products running on Macs. The most interesting were from the the “classic” companies: Adobe, Apple, Sony or Microsoft. Concerning Apple, the expo was first dedicated to the iPod nano and the suite of tools for MacOS X — .Mac, iLife, iWork and the pro applications. All the presentations and demos were targetted to a novice audience, there was not a damn thing for developers or advanced users.

Microsoft and Sony took the opportunity to show their big products: the Xbox 360 and the new Walkman MP3. The Sony’s Walkman is very disappointing and in my opinion they don’t have a chance against the iPod nano. I still wonder how a company like Sony can produce such crappy devices.

Avoid It

I don’t think I’ll show up next time to the Apple Expo, I’d rather save money to go to WWDC. Be sure to check the photos I took during my visit.