Apple Expo Paris 2008: the full report

It has some flash storage so you can use it as a sneakernet, a built-in battery that lets you juice up your iPod or iPhone in a pinch – and Jobs knows the iPhone needs it – or you can just connect your iPhone or other iPod to your Mac or PC.

Iomega was showing off the MacBook Air-styled hard disk that it unveiled a couple of days ago, and in a market where the only visible differentiating factor for hard disk is the enclosure, it may well sell like hotcakes.

Some of the familiar laptop bag manufacturers had some new wares – including a rather lovely leather line-up from Crumpler and some very pretty bags from Tucano – but the one we want to highlight is from a French company called Sweetcover.

The bag's little more than a flat surface folded in half with handles, but the styling – and this may just be the Gitanes smoke going to our head in Paris – just about pulled off 'chic', and there are sizes for everything from EeePC-style netbooks upwards.

Virtualisation

Software-wise, there wasn't much happening, though the two releases we did pick up on look really exciting. VMware has launched version two of its Windows-on-a-Mac virtualisation solution, Fusion, and for us at least the must-have feature is support for multiple monitors. It looks like a cracking product, and we can't wait to put it through its paces.

We also caught up with the boys from Realmac Software in Brighton to see their new project, a screenshot-taking and -cataloguing application called Little Snapper; it shows that company's commitment to polished, beautifully-executed applications.

It's difficult to know how to characterise this year's show. Though the queue before it opened wasn't as long or formed as early as we've seen in years past, it certainly wasn't dead on the floor.

And while the venue itself is relatively small - and is dwarfed by shows such as IFA and CES - it's filled with some interesting stuff. Apple may not have been there, but everyone else was, and there was the same feeling of bullish optimism among industry and public alike that has been the hallmark of the last few years.

Apple's star shows no sign of waning, which makes it all the more puzzling that it itself was a no-show.