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Let's All Take a Nice, Deep, Breath Who turned out the lights?! Great
timing (NOT!) But things are different this year. I can't remember any Expo that had less of a buzz leading up to it. The show organizers are churning out the usual press releases about this being the biggest Expo ever, but you could fool me, I'll tell you that. There will be some no-shows among familiar vendors' names, though everyone has a plausible explanation for these, and then there's the general publicity chill that's quite obvious on the Internet, at least (more on that later). The 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the living room that no one is talking about just happens to be the economy, of course. As I write this on Monday morning, the Dow Jones is giving a very good impression of the fat lady singing at the Met. With prices so low, watch out for some very devious moves on the part of major players with cash to invest. I wouldn't be surprised if we all woke up soon and found that the telecommunications landscape had changed overnight. Just read this bizarre tale of financial intrigue posted at USA Today last week, and that was before the most recent plunges. But can anyone imagine a worse week for Apple to be having a trade show? This is like marrying your daughter off in Afghanistan. All
quiet on the World Wide Web Go ask anyone you meet and find out if they're excited about Macworld Expo. Unless they're a particular breed of Macintosh enthusiast like many of you reading this now, they won't even know what you're talking about -- and this would be the case in any given year. I've never read about the Expo in my local newspaper. I've never heard it mentioned on the radio. I've never seen it covered on TV. Granted, these things have probably occurred before, just not in my experience. The only place I have ever gotten a sense of impending excitement about the twice-yearly Apple trade show is on the Internet. So if the Mac Web isn't jumping up and down, well... If Apple doesn't have a lot of new hardware to wow us with, then maybe a quiet Expo is a pretty good thing, and throwing a blanket over the usual chatterboxes might be just fine, from one particular point of view. It all makes a kind of sense to me this year, is all I'm saying. There are reasons enough to get excited over a new operating system revision (and I'm sure our man Steve will do his best to get the audience chanting "Jaguar! Jaguar! Jaguar!"), though most of us want something we can hold in our hands or set down on our desks to play with. Just the fact that Apple is holding its own in a brutal economic environment ought to be reason enough for comfort, if not ecstatic joy and jubilation. Whatever happens, you'll find you're at the right place to read about it here at Applelinks. We'll have people on the scene as well as tuning in to the keynote speech, and yours truly will be posting instant summaries of what's going on, so long as Qwest and Kit Carson Electrical Co-operative do their part. See you on the other side! Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr finds he has to wait around like everybody else and wonders where his private limo is. The new GRACK! Update mailing list is now operational. To receive your own weekly notice of new column postings, just CLICK HERE and send a blank email. (Current year's columns just below)
"GRACK!" is © copyright 2002, John H. Farr, all rights reserved
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