What seems to happen though, is the file is moved from iTunes to the device, rather than just copying it over. When I got home and wanted to watch the end of the movie on my computer (rats…because Apple TV hasn’t been updated yet to support rentals…), I saw that my iPhone sync was copying the 1.8 GB file from the iPhone back to iTunes.

Presumably, in the future, when you want to finish watching it on an Apple TV or other device, you’d have to copy it over yet one more time. I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t just keep the master rental file in iTunes for the full rental time, and copy it out to devices (rather than move), and retrieve the state (watched/complete, or semi-watched) and timestamp of where the viewer left off.

Okay…reading back the above is confusing myself.

Of course, there are really only two likely normal use cases of iTunes Rentals. 1) You rent the movie in iTunes and watch it on your computer completely or sync it to a device and watch it completely. 2) You rent it on your Apple TV and watch it completely there.

Still the use case I’m describing (that just happened to me) can’t be too uncommon: You rent a movie in iTunes and sync to a iPhone/iPod and partially watch it. You get home and want to finish watching it on your Apple TV.

So, the way iTunes handles rentals transfers, I will have moved my ~2 GB file 4 times. Once when you download it, another when you sync it, again when you re-sync it back to iTunes and finally synced out to your Apple TV.

Whew.

Am I over thinking this? Or does it seem that just leaving it in iTunes all the time to begin with fixes a little bit of the wait?

Ambrosia is soon to release a really great-looking game called Aquaria that was described as an “ethereal action/adventure underwater fantasy game.” A guy not employed by Ambrosia had logged so many hours on their demo this week that they let him show me the game. It looked gorgeous. You play as a mermaid trying to reunite her people, who are scattered across what looks like a vast system of underwater caves. Can’t wait to play this game. Ambrosia is also putting out Multiwinia, a sequel to Darwinia, later this year.

Feral is the London-based company that brought the totally awesome Lego Star Wars II over to the Mac. They’ve also just release Tomb Raider Anniversary, a Mac version of the original Tomb Raider game. They’ve got top secret titles coming out this year that are going to be quite huge, they assure me.

Freeverse was demoing their yet-to-be-released title Neon Tango, which is pretty much Geometry Wars but with a boundary wall around the field of play that you can use to smite your foes with some sweet ricochet action. They were also demoing Hordes of Orcs, a tower defense game that was recently updated (you can download the update for free if you already own the game). Both were really simple to play and a lot of fun.

Of course Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has been available on the Mac for quite some time. They showed up with a demo that I did not touch because I didn’t have 17 hours to spare.

And last but not least:

DanLabGames was demoing a really fun game called Wacky Mini Golf. The title says it all with this one. I especially liked the fact that you play as a picture frame with arms and legs, because you can use your iSight camera to snap a picture of yourself to put in the frame.

Judging by Macworld 08, there will be no shortage of fun games to play on the Mac in 2008.

Here’s a round-up of the things that I learned from attending Macworld this year:

- Macs really are more reliable. Everyone that I talked to confirmed that they felt their Mac notebook was more reliable than a PC. My PC gave out on me halfway through the week with virus problems that took about two hours to fix. Because I use my notebook as my main computer, I need reliability. That’s the number one reason that I’m making the switch.

- I can go light but I probably don’t want the MacBook Air. I’m totally interested in the new notebook but I’m not convinced it’s the one that I want to spend my money on. I think if I was in a position to have a travel laptop and a second one for home, then I’d probably consider it. But because I’ve got only one computer doing everything for me, this new one isn’t the one for me. Still, I do think it points to a great direction that Apple is going in.

- The John Lennon Tour Bus is totally cool. I don’t know how I didn’t know about this thing since it’s been around for a decade but I didn’t. It’s a cool project that provides some great education and is definitely something that I’m interested in supporting.

- There are more accessories than gadgets that I’m interested in. I love gadgets. I’m probably going to get an iPod Touch this coming week (although I’ve heard some great arguments as to why I should just go ahead and get an iPhone instead so even though I thought I was settled on this, I’m not one hundred percent sure yet.) Nevertheless, I try to keep the number of gadgets that I buy down to a mininum because I try to be thrifty with my money. As a result, I’ve gotten in the habit of being able to overlook most toys. But apparently accessories still catch my eye because I was totally drawn to the booths offering different laptop bags and sleeves.

- Technology is making multi-taskers out of all of us. This was a theme of nearly every presentation that I went to throughout the conference. It’s not Apple-specific but it was something that was really interesting to think about. I’ve always been a multi-tasker myself but many of the people I know aren’t so it’s fascinating to see that younger folks are heading this direction.

- Macs are good for gaming. This was one thing that was really new news to me and I think is fairly new to a lot of people. Macs just don’t seem to have the association with gaming that PCs have. However, after hanging out at the MacGames Pavilion and attending the presentation on how to make my own games for Mac, I’m fully convinced that I could have a well-rounded gaming experience with only a Mac computer.

All of these things were important to learn but the most important thing that I really came to realize this week was that there is truly a community built around Macs. Mac users are passionate about their choice. They’re interested in new technologies that are being released and they’re interested in sharing that passion with others. Everyone that I spoke with this week was more than happy to provide me with information and opinions about technology in general and Apple products in particular. This sense of community is something that I think is good for the industry … and it’s something that I want to be a bigger part of. So, it’s official, my immersion in the world of Mac led to a conversion.

The biggest Green Tech news out of Macworld 08 is the MacBook Air’s environmental progress report. In his keynote presentation, Steve Jobs not only laid out the MacBook Air’s greenness but also signaled a major commitment to ensuring all of Apple’s future products are as environmentally sustainable as possible.

Here’s a few more companies that are highlighting their own environmental progress:

Continually vying with Apple for the title of Greenest Computer Manufacturer (and often winning) is Hewlett-Packard. The HP booth is chock full of environmentally focused marketing. Several of the company’s printers, for instance, bear placards touting their environmentally friendly features, such as their mercury-free scanner lamps, non-painted surfaces, and reduced packaging.

Adam Smith, who works in the environmental group of HP’s corporate marketing team, was kind enough to talk with me at length about HP’s commitment to sustainable computing as a nearby iMac displayed a short video about the company’s recycling process. Right next to the iMac was a see-through case that had shredded plastic and metal components, in separate compartments of course, to show how the recycling process breaks the materials down. Smith says that HP refurbishes and resells as many old computers as it can, which is good policy because reusing a computer is the best way to recycle it.

Those computers and printers that HP can’t refurbish are shredded into little bits and then sorted so that the parts the company can recycle are turned back into computers. But even the parts HP can’t recycle are not necessarily at the end of their life: they may have a future life as a park bench, roof tiles, or even sneaker soles.

Canon has launched an initiative called “Generation Green” that is focused on making their printers more “Eco-Friendly.” Hardware recycling, refurbishing programs, use of recycled plastics, and printing their manuals on recycled paper are a few of the things the company is doing to make their products more green.

The giant “Generation Green” poster they had in their booth also highlighted the “Eco Standards” Canon is designing their products to comply with (including ENERGY STAR and the RoHS standards), and the “Eco-Conscious” features of its printers, such as 2-sided printing, Ink/Toner saving modes, and LEDs that contain no mercury. Canon’s Selphy line of photo printers were especially compact and economical, and printed good-looking photos.

Xerox makes printers that use solid ink, which cuts way down on the amount of waste from ink and toner cartridges. According to the company, there is 157 pounds of waste from cartridges for every 100,000 pages printed by the typical color laser printer, while their solid ink produces only about 5 pounds of waste. (That’s a lump of solid ink on top of the printer below.)

Even accessory makers are going green. Targus has a whole line of EcoSmart bags made of polyester and plastic that are 100% recyclable. This means nickel-free hardware and no PVC, which Targus uses in the feaux-leather material many of their bags are made of (including the one I was lugging around the Expo).

Green Edge makes iPod accessories that aren’t made of anything special, but they are packaged in 100% recycled cardboard and the company claims to make donations that offset the carbon emissions of their manufacturing process. Printed with soy ink on Green Edge’s packaging is information to educate the masses about what global warming is doing to the planet. Not sure this makes too much difference, but at least their heart is in the right place.

Better Energy Systems’ Solio solar charging devices harvest the sun’s energy to recharge your iPod or mobile phone. All of their solar chargers take about 8 to 10 hours in the sun to fully charge, but are “hybrids” that can be plugged into the wall as well. The new H1000 will cost you about $90 and carries enough of a charge to fully juice up a Razr phone twice.

I stopped by the “FileMaker Pavilion” to catch a presentation on their new personal database software, Bento. Looks like a really handy program to me, as it integrates with iCal and Address Book and lets you organize all of your contacts and events in a clean and easy to use interface – in fact, the woman who gave the presentation insisted there was “near zero learning curve” to Bento.

Based on the HyperCard application program, TileStack is designed to provide a user-friendly way for making interactive web apps without learning a programming language. Its creators are planning to eventually make TileStacks capable of being run as widgets on your iPhone or desktop or as Facebook apps, and are currently accepting email solicitations for their Beta program.

Intego makes a whole bunch of security and privacy software for the Mac and had this towering castle booth at the Expo.

The Peachpit Theatre was graced by many of its authors, a noble cast of players indeed. Here you see Bert Monroy discussing “Photoshop Studio: Digital Painting.”

As Kathryn mentioned, the Electronic Frontier Foundation was at the Expo, fighting the good fight.

Software Bisque takes actual space photography and creates absolutely, stunningly beautiful 3D environments for you to explore. They call it “an immersive and interactive three-dimensional planetarium style solar system simulator.” I liked the big telescope.

Skullcandy’s headphones sport such cool designs, they’re almost legitimate accessories.

There was so much to do and see this week, I didn’t even get a chance to take a nap in one of the sleeping pods Pzizz had been kind enough to set up for us.

Teague said that a teenager in 1987 would have been unlikely to have a home computer, especially one with Internet and that a personal mobile phone for teens then was possible but highly unlikely. (He also noted that they’d be using a Walkman for music and playing a Nintendo Game System for fun.) Then he argued that today it’s a necessity for kids to have a computer with Internet access at home and that it’s almost a necessity for them to have a cell phone. (He also pointed out that they all have iPods and that they’ve got a choice between three different game systems, all of which are about as complex as their computer would have been in 1987).

His definition of necessity for making this argument was that more than 60-70% of their peer age group has one. He said that when a supermajority of your peers has a tool of communication, you become essentially incapable of proper communication with them in the way that communication is defined for your group. (Well, I paraphrased that a little, but that’s essentially what he was saying, I think.)

By this definition, it makes sense to me that he was saying these things are necessities. But in a general context, do I think that’s true? I do believe that a home computer with Internet access is a necessity for a majority of kids in a Western World today. (Teague did note that he was speaking about Western countries, but he didn’t differentiate between urban and rural teens and I believe that the argument could be made that teens in some rural areas don’t currently meet the minimum standard for the term “necessity” to be applicable. I don’t have the numbers on that handy, though, so I could be wrong.) Although I believe that his definition probably accurately describes the cell phone as necessity for teens, I’m not sure that I think it’s truly a necessity. I believe that teens today could appropriately communicate with their peers through IM and social networking sites without the use of their cell phones and not be “out of the communication loop”. But of course the underlying assumption for that is that I believe the home computer and high speed Internet to be “necessities”.

So I asked some other people what they thought about the issue and found that it’s something that people didn’t agree on. (In fact, there was something of a heated debate going around the lunch table today.) Everyone did seem to agree that Teague’s definition of “necessity” and the point that he was making seemed essentially to make sense. However, the whole topic took off on another tangent about whether this stuff is really necessary for teens. To me, it’s just a given that a teen in America today who is going to move forward in life is going to require Internet access at home. But I was surprised to find that even at a tech conference there are people who disagree with that. Based on the conversation, I’d even say there were some budding Luddites in the room today!

What do you think - is technology like in-home Internet a necessity for teens today?

A few of the things that people have said they want to do today:

- Play games. Apparently not everyone has been over at the MacGames Paviliion wasting all of their time like I was. Several people I talked with this morning said they wanted to make it over there to test out some of the games that they’ve been hearing about all week.

- Get signed up with EFF. One person mentioned that she hadn’t become a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation yet so she was going to stop by the booth in West Hall and get some more information. They’re giving away T-shirts if you donate a certain amount of money and they’ve also got free literature on things like blogger’s copyrights.

- Take a stroll along Mac Developer Blvd. Also over in West Hall is this area which one guy said he’d seen passing through but hadn’t spent any time in yet. He’s hoping to get over there today and get some new information on some mobile technology stuff that he had questions about.

It sounds like almost everyone spent a good chunk of time in South Hall this week and wants to get over to West Hall today to see the exhibits that they missed out on there. I’m on the opposite side of that spectrum. Having spent most of the week in West Hall, I’m going to check out South Hall to see what I’ve missed over there.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 is a pretty fun game, as golf games go. I don’t really like golf games myself, but I do think that the golf game that comes with Wii Sports is a lot of fun: it’s easy to play and you don’t have to use a power meter to control your swing. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 is fairly similar. I picked it up quickly and was scoring triple bogies in no time. The best part was that you use the mouse to swing your golf club. Not as natural as swinging the Wiimote, but still pretty fun.

Battlefield 2142 is set in a futuristic landscape where “a new ice age has thrown the world into a panic.” This first-person shooter (FPS) allows you to choose sides from two superpowers that are dukeing it out for supremacy. The controls are all similar to other FPS games you might be used to – WASD to move, right-click to zoom – so picking this game up and getting into it is easy.

My favorite was Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. This is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that lets you build up a base of operations and deploy foot soldiers to the field to try and outmatch your enemy, whether that enemy is your computer or another player. These types of games can be complicated to learn because there is a lot to know, but Command & Conquer 3 is fairly easy to play, fast-paced, and a lot of fun. Controls were similar to playing on a PC, but with one slight drawback: the single button mouse that comes with a Mac can be slightly wonky when it comes to left-clicking versus right-clicking, and accidentally right-clicking on a newly created unit erases it. That’s pretty annoying. Otherwise, a very exciting title for the Mac.

The web arm of The Washington Post is one of the most innovative news organs out there. Rob Curley is head of the “skunkworks” team that conceives and builds the newspaper’s creative web presence. He gave a presentation on Thursday at Macworld in which he described himself and his team as “Mac nerds from Kansas trying to save a dying industry from the Internet.” He sees that salvation coming from local and even hyper-local news delivered through a variety of inventive web tools.

OnBeing profiles ordinary people and allows their local community to blog about each video. This creates a unique opportunity for dialogue among people living in the D.C. area. This isn’t exactly news in the traditional sense. It is an entirely novel way for people to be informed about the community they live in. They aren’t just reading the news, they’re creating and experiencing the news.

The site LoudounExtra.com is the newspaper’s first hyper-local news site. The site runs Loudoun County, VA’s local and breaking news, high school sports coverage, and the like; stuff The Washington Post won’t even run, like 16 car break-ins all occurring in one part of town on the same night. But the site also has so many clever features for allowing users to create and participate in the news that I couldn’t even begin to describe all of them, so I’ll just name a couple.

The searchable community calendar on the site is probably the most useful. It lists everything going on in Loudoun County, VA, a part of the Washington Metropolitan Area, and allows users to click on an event and have it sent to their iCal, or they can schedule email reminders and even have text messages sent to them prior to the event. No event is too small, either: Rob specifically mentioned that even things like 3rd grade plays are listed.

People’s photos, videos, and blogs are uploaded directly to the site from Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr, and it gets placed right alongside the content produced by WaPo staff. They’ve given recording devices to many local churches and allow them to upload Sunday services as what they call “Godcasts.” They’ve created a Facebook newstracker app and a widget for your desktop that will automatically alert you when your favorite store is having a sale. It’s really a site worth checking out even if you aren’t interested in the local news from Loudoun County.

And all of this is created on Macs. Rob says of their offices: “It looks like an Apple store threw up in there.”

I’m going to start with Aspyr. You may remember from my last post on Mac games at the Expo that they specialize in porting games from the PC to the Mac. They’ve got a huge year coming up, as their new releases are all big gaming franchises being made available for the first time on the Mac.

I checked out a presentation by Aspyr about their 2008 releases, and it was pretty exciting. For one thing, one of the booth guys demoed some Guitar Hero III for us; he played Dragon Force’s “Through the Fire and Flames” on the hardest level, and damn did that guy rip. This is one of the biggest titles in gaming right now, so having it on the Mac is a pretty big deal. If the Mac version has decent sales, it could notify more developers that there is an under-served market for games on the platform. There’s a very good reason why Aspyr won a Best of Show at Macworld 2008 for this this game.

I saw a trailer for The Sims 2 Bon Voyage, which is also already on sale. According to the presentation, the Sims games are the best-selling game franchise for the Mac. If you’re a Sims player and you’ve always wanted to take your avatar on vacation, now’s your chance. The trailer showed people camping in the wilderness, staying in a rustic cabin, and plenty more.

Later in the year Aspyr will be releasing even more big-name titles to the Mac platform:

Allegedly only about a month away from release, Neverwinter Nights 2 looks like a killer new role-playing game (RPG) for the Mac. They showed a cinematic trailer for the game – meaning everything we saw was CGI as opposed to actual renders from Neverwinter Nights 2 itself. It consisted mainly of a very cool-looking wizard guy shooting a gnarly fireball at some kind of monster, who was equally cool looking.

Enemy Territory Quake Wars is slated for release some time in March. The trailer was all renders straight out of this first-person shooter (FPS) game. The textures and the physics all looked great as helicopters flew around, things exploded, and mayhem generally ensued. According to the guy conducting the presentation: “If you’re into FPS games, there’s nothing like playing online, blowing some dude away who’s playing on a PC, and telling him: That’s right, I’m on a Mac.”

Aspyr just announced Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare this week. They’re planning on releasing it some time around May or June, according to an employee at their booth. The trailer was also impressive-looking renders straight out of the game. The guy repeated his “That’s right, I’m on a Mac” line. It was funnier the first time but man, it’s pretty much funny every time.