The Mac Observer's Managing Editor Jeff Gamet spends a lot of time talking, and almost always about tech. Now he's trying his hand (or voice) at a very non-tech presentation at Ignite Denver, although his Mac was instrumental in putting together his talk.

Macworld Expo kicked off today, February 9, marking the fist year Apple won't have any kind of official presence at the conference. The Internet is full of reports that the event is dead in the water thanks to Apple pulling out, but those reports are flat-out wrong because it's really up to the attendees, vendors and IDG whether or not this is the year Macworld Expo dies.

I spent some time at the Mac Computer Expo on Saturday, October 3, talking about a slew of apps that let you do more with your iPhone and iPod touch. If you were there and couldn't write fast enough to keep up with me, or you weren't and want to know what you missed out on, here's the list of apps I mentioned.

Apple hosted a special media event on Wednesday where the iPod lineup was revamped, iTunes 9 was released, iPhone OS 3.1 rolled out, and the iTunes LP was introduced. Once again, the TMO staff kicked it into high gear and offered up live coverage along with some great follow up analysis.

I just love when Apple kicks off a big product launch because there's always all kinds of new things to learn, and I'm always amazed at the cool stuff the TMO staff comes up with to write about. Apple's World Wide Developers Conference event earlier this year is a great example, as is last week's Mac OS X 10.6 roll out.

Safari 4 has been available for a few weeks and the public beta was available for some time before that, so I've had plenty of time to tinker around with the newest version of Apple's Web browser and ultimately do what so many people will probably see as unthinkable: I dumped it. Safari just doesn't cut it for me, so I switched back to my tried-and-true favorite, and no, I'm not talking about Firefox.

I was comparing settings on a new unibody MacBook Pro and matte display MacBook Pro recently, and something caught my eye. Apple made a subtle change in System Preferences that just might be part of a much bigger statement.

After four days at NAB I've noticed that even though Apple wasn't at the event, they certainly had a profound impact on the people that were there. I'm not talking about the Macs that were visible at so many of the booths; I'm talking about all of the iPhones and Apple laptops attendees had.