I've been thinking about what to write for this summary of the NZMac.com 2004 year for some time. I had convinced myself that I'd be writing an article about what a quiet year it was. But then I looked back.

Thanks to the great Apple History site, flicking through issues of NZ Macguide and the pages of this site and forum, I realised that 2004 wasn't as quiet a year for Apple (or for me for that matter) that I had been telling myself. It was just a long, long year...with a noticeable breather in the middle when Apple admitted delays in a new iMac (that finally came out as the new iMac G5) but there were certainly as many interesting events as we had seen in previous years.

Well I've just got back from the eXpo Conference for Macintosh Computer Users in Auckland and on the flight back to Palmerston North, two simple thoughts ran through my head...

• Good on you Peter Mellow!!
• Where the heck were you Renaissance?
  

For those unfamiliar with who Renaissance is, you'd probably (and incorrectly) refer to them as Apple New Zealand. In fact, there isn't an Apple Computer New Zealand, but Renaissance is referred to as "Renaissance Ltd, Apple Computer Division".

In short, they are the distributor of Apple Computers in New Zealand, represent Apple in this country and are responsible for supporting and encouraging the Mac user base within New Zealand...although those last two roles are something that I've just bestowed on them. Renaissance might argue that these two jobs are not part of their official role, but I'd respectfully disagree.

I had no intention of writing a piece about the Apple Roadshow, other than the report that you see on elsewhere. But having taken a days leave from work to travel down to Wellington and having had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people that knew about the site, the two questions I seem to have been asked the most have been "What did you think?" and "Was the trip worth it?". So here goes...

A show of hands near the beginning of the Wellington presentation revealed that there were very few people in the audience who weren't using Macs. While it was great to see those few hands go up (and I welcome PC and other users to the presentations) it meant that in many respects, it was a case of preaching to the converted. In that respect, I'd suggest the presentations need a bit of tweaking.

So what can be done? Well, there's two approaches, which I guess again look at what and who Apple are trying to cater for. I think their response to that would be that they are trying to cater for everyone. In many respects, PC users weren't there because although I saw an ad for the Roadshow in the Dominion the day before (did it appear any other time?) the ad didn't really do enough to let PC users into what they might see and why we wanted them there. And did the presentation really provide enough encouragement for them to Switch? I'm not sure. It certainly touched on some areas (the number of apps available under OSX, the fact that you can connect via SMB to a PC) but was that enough?