I hate to say it, but I was disappointed with Macworld this year.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Apple TV. I think I am going to buy four of them – one for each TV, and one for the minivan, that can synch at night when it’s in the driveway. All my kiddie videos are going into iTunes, so that my two year old won’t manhandle the DVDs any longer. I see a direct mapping between the success of ripping CDs and iPods with the ripping of DVDs and Apple TVs.

And, please don’t mistake my enthusiasm for the iPhone. It looks gorgeous, and once I can try out the touch screen, I’m very likely to get one.  There has been a lot of concern voiced by some friends of mine that Apple hasn’t opened up the phone for development.  My guess is, they will, at WWDC, but they don’t have it stable enough and/or the build environment ready yet.

The problem was… that was it.

What was missing? No new software!

No iLife ’07. My number one application from both a time and enjoyment factor is iPhoto. Last year, I got to see iPhoto 6 for the first time, and it was fantastic. Made my whole 2006 better.

This year… nothing.

No Leopard booth! No Mac OS X 10.5 to discuss and play with… at least, not that I could find.

I guess I didn’t find the preview of Microsoft Office 2008 that exciting.

Oh well. I will share one new product I found that was better than expected: the new HP Color LaserJet 2605dtn. The price is great ($629). Two paper trays (one for paper, one for labels for PayPal postage printing). 10/100 Ethernet built in. Duplex. Rendering on the printer, not the computer. Fast. Great print quality.

It’s almost perfect, except for the manual paper feed that only takes one sheet at a time. If they fix that, I’ll be on my way to upgrading my 6-year-old laser printer to color.

And note to Apple – I didn’t expect iLife ’07, or iWork or Leopard to make the keynote. But I did want to see them at the show.

See you next year.