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Macworld New York 2002

 

We have a few spontaneous but well-chosen words and comments from Applelinks' Kirk Hiner to share with you, among them confirmation of something we felt while watching the keynote: the "big chill" when Jobs announced the end of free Internet services...

"Largely negative reaction to Apple charging for .mac (formerly iTools). It completely silenced the crowd, and even drew gasps from some of the people behind me. They'll add new features (some already in place), but probably not enough to justify the $99 annual price tag. They're almost making you need it, though, so it'll probably be successful. The other new items about which they spoke (iCal, Rendezvous, etc.) had people behind me saying, 'It'll be sad if they charge for this.' Beyond .mac, though, Apple's not charging for any of the new software (save for the $129 Jaguar upgrade, of course, which will be released August 24th)."

We felt that same reaction from our tiny QuickTime window out here in New Mexico. A hundred bucks a year for .mac may or may not make the grade -- in our concluding keynote summary we thought it would -- but the capabilities are tempting, particularly with iSync. (We'll have more to say about that later.) And finally this from Kirk, who will have more observations shortly:

"Oh, big pop (that's wrestling terminology for positive reaction) for spring loaded folders and the other OS X interface enhancements. It's strange, really. The only rections brought forth from the crowd came from software enhancement announcements. Last year, this seemed to anger everyone. Immediate reaction then was negative. This year, the 'oh yeah' announcement of a 17" iMac LCD was positive, and seemed to be enough for everyone. Maybe we've learned not to set our hopes too high?"

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