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Macworld New York 2002

 

The traditional Steve Jobs Macworld keynote address has become a thing of legend over the past few years. While I'd tried to catch past keynotes via streaming QuickTime, I'd had little success. (Last Macworld I ended up with audio only.)

But this Macworld I would be at the keynote as a member of the media. What would it be like? Would the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field mesmorize me and turn me into a mindless Mac fanantic? (Too late!)

I arrived at the Jacob K. Javits Conference Center (I call it Jacovits for short) a few minute after eight. Steve's speech is at nine, but already there's a crowd the length of the center. When I get closer I realize the line is even longer outside!

Fortunately, us media guys have our own entrance. I was put into a holding area with several hundred other media personnel. The cubical-style walls on four sides reminded me strongly of an animal pen, with the media as the sheep being herded by the Apple shepards. I was stuck in there with the likes of Simon Jary, Editor in Chief of Macworld UK, and Andy Ihnatko, columnist for Macworld. It was pretty cool.

Finally we were led into the auditorium. The media had their own section, to the left of the stage. Camera people were put up front, where they could photograph the proceedings. Near where I sat -- okay, directly in front of where I sat -- was a stand for videographers, so I got a great view of the stage between the legs of tripods and photographers.

The area just in front of the stage was reserved for "Apple VIPs" -- I guess those are people Apple wants to impress. The regular folk, who probably paid big bucks to be at the keynote, get to sit in the back of the auditorium.

While we waited for the show to begin, the sound system blared Beach Boys music: a harmless choice. Shouldn't Apple be thinking different? ;-)

Finally the lights dimmed and the giant main screen behind the stage lit up and the show was on. (Side note: I didn't bring my PowerBook but went with the analog pen-and-paper approach to note-taking and discovered that was difficult in the dark. Fortunately, the light around me from all the laptop screens helped. The guy next to me ran out of battery part-way through and had to finish with paper and pen.)

The show began with clips from Apple's "Switch" commercials. But these were new. The first was a young girl, a student, who talked about writing a term paper on her PC. Suddenly half the paper was gone. The deadpan "PC-ate-my-paper" look she gave as she said this was priceless: it got a big laugh from the audience.

Next was another student, promoting his iPod (without one in sight, of course). That was followed by -- huh? Will Ferrell of Saturday Night Live fame?

Yup. Eating a parfait and talking about switching to Mac. I suspect this was just a spoof for Macworld, but who knows? He finished by saying, "I'm Will Ferrell. Porn actor." That got a big laugh.

Then Steve Jobs came out and we got down to business. I'm sure you've read blow-by-blow accounts of the keynote elsewhere, so won't reiterate info you already know. Instead I'll tell you about what it was like to be in that auditorium.

I was struck by many things. First, Steve Jobs is an amazing communicator. The entire two-hour presentation, complete with slideshow on the screen behind him, video clips, guest speakers, and live demonstrations, was world class. What Steve did is incredibly difficult, but he made it look easy. The presentation was obviously well-planned and probably even rehearsed, but Steve made it seem like he was just talking and coming up with this stuff on the fly.

There were a few gaffs, but Steve handled them easily. Once, returning to his demo computer, he found the cursor frozen. He calmly said, "I'll switch to the backup machine," and the demo went on. While showing off the new iChat software's Rendezvous support, the buddy list kept disappearing (going offline) and he had reopen it several times. Another time, the "junk mail" feature of Jaguar's Mail didn't work when he activated it. "I'm not sure why it's not working," he said glumly, and moved on.

Most of the demos were cool and very impressive. QuickTime 6 looks neat, but there was no mention of the cost. Having Jaguar's new Address Book dial Avie's cell phone was neat, and Steve's comment about Avie being "a weird guy" after hearing the odd ring of his phone got everyone laughing.

Most impressive for me was the iTunes Rendezvous support (sadly not available until next year). For that, Phil simply opened his laptop while Steve's machine was running iTunes. As soon as the Powerbook was awake, Steve's Mac saw it and added its iTunes playlists to Steve's iTunes (they were in a folder called "Phil's iTunes"). Steve could simply select one to play it and iTunes would stream it live over airport. While the song was playing, Phil closed his Powerbook and the song simply stopped playing (a Phil's playlists went away). Very cool. As someone with multiple computers, I want that. Now.

The second striking thing about the presenation was the differences between the audiences. The crowd was essentially split into three groups: media, Apple VIPs, and the general Macworld attendees. When Jobs announced support for a particular technology or discussed something technical, the media would often cheer. But the main crowd loved it whenever Steve made jokes or did cool demos (the media was often tersely skeptic).

For example, the whole cell phone support thing (via iSync) was regarded as ho-hum by most of the crowd (who were probably wondering how much time was left on their cell phone contracts so they could figure out when they can get a new, Bluetooth-compatible phone). But the media loved that (no doubt every one had a company cell phone).

The jokes were cool. The best was during an iChat exchange between Steve and Phil, trying to figure out what restaurant to eat at after the show. Phil suggests Britney Spears' new place, and Jobs types back, "She can cook????"

One big flop was the announcement that iTools will become .Mac and be a paid service (at a whopping $99/year). I'd heard rumors of that before the show and dismissed them as nonsense. "Apple would never shoot themselves in the foot like that," I told someone just last week. Guess I was wrong. From the dead silence and glum looks in the audience, an awful lot of people will be canceling their mac.com email accounts. We'll see, however.

I spoke to a few others after the keynote, to see what people thought. Some felt the keynote was a little off this year, that Steve wasn't as "on" as usual. He seemed fine to me, but I have no comparison. Partly, I wonder if that's because there was no new hardware to announce (I don't count the iMac's bigger screen).

New software is cool. I like iCal and Jaguar sounds awesome. But software, being a digital thing anyone can download or purchase inexpensively, doesn't generate the same awe and excitement of a new piece of hardware that everyone has to see and touch. When Steve announced the LCD iMacs last Macworld, everyone was desperate to see and admire the new design. This Expo there's nothing like that and I suspect that takes a bit of shine off the excitement level of the keynote.

Overall, I was impressed. The new iPod's are sweet (I can't wait to get a remote for mine), and I really want to use iCal calendars on my iPod. I am amazed at all the new software Apple's producing, and I like the direction the company is moving. My favorite quote was the way Jobs concluded the show, saying, "A lot of commpanies are cutting back and laying off thousands of workers. At Apple, we're going to innovate our way out of this economic downturn."

I like it.

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