The one lesson we have learned above all else from New York Comic-Con 2009 is to go find that funny little cable that came with our computer that we had no idea what to do with! Our two panels yesterday went awesomely but would have been enhanced by our slide selections…had we only known that that funny little cable was our gateway to the world of AV, things would have been so different.

Not that the Javits tech folks weren’t helpful. They actually pulled out BAGS full of Mac connector cables…however, none of them fit the modern popular Macs. It seemed all of those had been given away already.

Or, as one of them said as I moaned over the loss, “Yep, a lot of people forget that cable once…but they never forget it again.”

1 COMMENT

  1. Part of the problem is that Apple keeps changing what connectors they’re putting on their hardware. With a PC, the choices are all standard connectors: VGA, DVI or maybe nowaways HDMI. On Macs, I’ve seen at least seven or eight different connectors in my life, and all of them are exclusively used by Apple computers, not by anyone else.

    This is one of the reason why IT departments and computer techs get massively annoyed by your choice of computer.

  2. Let’s see, over the past 20 years I’ve seen mini DisplayPort, micro DVI, mini DVI, DVI, ADC, mini VGA, VGA, and Ye Olde Apple Video. Of those, DVI and VGA are widely used by other manufacturers. ADC and Apple Video were never used on laptops. At least DisplayPort is expected to become ubiquitous on Macs pretty soon, and is likely to stick around for a while.

  3. The Javits tech people were incredible angels who, right before our “Twisted Journeys: The Goblin King” reading on Kids Day, went way out of their way to fetch a VGA adaptor for my MacBook. Then they set up an additional speaker to make sure I could hear the reader and keep up with which page she was on and display the right one on the big screen. (Twisted Journeys is a graphic novel where the reader decides which way the story goes, so there was much perambulating hither and thither through the pages.) If the tech folks are the same bunch next year, I’m giving them a big box of cookies.

    So, er, uhm, I guess I had your VGA cable. Sorry about that. A few dozen little kids thank you profusely.

  4. Likefunbutnot — it was a bit of a shocker for me. Apple is almost always interchangeable from generation to generation. This is the first thing that I found was such a mess!

    And to be honest, the first time its happened in 14+ years of Mac usage.

  5. I’ve had to deal with video projectors and computers on a pretty frequent basis in my job, and the “missing the Apple-to-VGA connector” thing happens to me about 9 out of 10 times. I never understood why they don’t just ghave VGA connectors. Apple must make a nice supplementary income from all the people running into the Apple Store 20 minutes before their presentation to buy an adaptor!