I ’ve been in tech journalism for 13 years now and have been to more than my part of patronage shows . But this is my first time at Macworld Expo . I knew there was something dissimilar about it as soon as I hit the show storey , but it took me a while to figure out what that something was — it ’s the baby .

Within the first ten minutes , I saw three of them . And I kept image them , stuffed in stroller and Snuglis , hoisted on parents ’ shoulder , and grovel along the level show itself . ( Ick . )

There were loads of bigger kids , too , particularly in the gaming marquee , where dozens of them were meddlesome blasting each other to virtual smithereens in Unreal Tournament . And did I mention the one-time folks ? Lots of senior citizens , many of them couples , entertain hands and walking slowly down the aisles .

You just do n’t see that kind of thing at a microcomputer show .

The yawning cultural crack between the Mac and PC community is a cliche — but like most cliches it ’s true . The Mac communityisdifferent from the PC world — and that deviation was on display all over Expo .

For entrant , Expo is human - scale . Those goliath PC shows I used to wait on ( Comdex , PC Expo ) were , like CES is today , ginormous . It took days to take them in . I was able to traverse most of the level at Macworld Expo in an afternoon , then turn around and bulge all over again .

That size not only name exhibition way more manageable , it puddle it more meaningful . The personal computer shows , at their height , were superfluity of show - bizzy glitz , with vendors contend for attending with miniskirt - musical comedy , faux - boxing match , and some truly awful sorcerous human activity . ( Where do entertainers go when they get abbreviate from sail ship ? They do trade shows in Vegas . )

At Macworld Expo , the show - game factor is turn way down . What music you get is , more often than not , being played by show - leaver themselves try out the latest version of Garageband . The big crowd are watching Photoshop demo rather of clamoring for some guy cable to contrive them a T - shirt .

But mostly everyone ’s talking — client to vendors , customer to customers , vendors to vendors , me to just about anyone who walked by . Over and over , I go steady show - goers — just regular tribe — walk right up and start jabbering at vendors about how to make better products . More than once , when a vendor could n’t respond one of my head , some schmo standing nearby could — correctly , too .

And , like I say , you just do n’t see that kind of thing at a personal computer show .