I remember
it like it was yesterday: I was standing there on the streets
of San Francisco, outside the Moscone Center, at 6:00 in
the morning, in literally the coldest weather I'd ever been
in (what do you want, I'm from Florida). I was about to spend
three hours in that nasty, windy mess, in a line that rivaled
anything
I'd ever seen, just so that I could see Steve Jobs deliver
the Keynote address at MacWorld Expo.
Let's back
up about five days. I'd
flown cross-country to San Francisco on the morning of January
1st, 2000, with the then-swirling Y2K paranoia making
my flight uniquely affordable. My flight took off at 9:00
am, and I figured that if all the planes were crashing that
morning due to Y2K date glitches, I'd have heard about it
by that time. The plan worked in the sense that my plane
didn't go down, but when I arrived and I realized just how
cold and windy the Bay Area really was, I kind of wished
my flight had made an emergency landing in...I don't know...somewhere
warm.
By the
time the morning of the Keynote rolled around five days later,
I was frozen stiff, sick, achy, a total mess...and yet somehow
willing to stand for three hours in temperatures I'd only
previously experienced by standing in the walk-in freezer
at my dad's restaurant when I was a kid. To kill time, I
began calling friends back home to tell them where I was
and what
I was doing. Their responses ranged from "huh?" to "why would you do that?" to "you idiot!". I guess you can
tell that none of them were Mac users.
And that's
the beauty of the Macintosh community -- we're so excited
to hear about what's coming next to our platform, that we'll
do things we normally would never do. Since I'm not in a
position to attend the January 2004 MacWorld Expo in San
Francisco in person, I'll probably hunt down a place with
a live satellite feed so that I can watch Steve Jobs' Keynote
address in style.
But wait
a minute -- is Steve really delivering the Keynote this year?
A few years ago,
that would have seemed like a silly question. But
these days, with the demise of MacWorld Expo New York and deteriorating relations
between Apple and MacWorld Expo producer IDG, is anything
a given? Under the "Keynote" listing, the MacWorld
Expo website simply contains the message:
Kind of
late in the game not to have named a Keynote speaker, isn't
it? I'm still holding out hope that IDG will reconsider my
standing offer to deliver the Keynote speech myself, but
at this point I'd settle for hearing that I've come in a
close
second
to
his Steveness. Last year's San Francisco Keynote was fantastic,
featuring everything from the 12 and 17 inch PowerBooks,
to Keynote, to Safari. But Apple has already released iTunes
for Windows and the 20 inch iMac this winter, and rumor has
it that the PowerBook line will see a refurb any day now,
so
what
exactly
would
Steve be announcing this year if he took the stage at Moscone
Center?
Perhaps
nothing. Maybe there are no new products ready to go, and
maybe there's no strategic advantage to pre-announcing any
of the new products that won't be ready until later in 2004.
And if that's the case, I can live with that. It never made
sense that Apple announced so many new products in early
January at MacWorld, two weeks after the Christmas
buying season had concluded. But you know what? Steve needs
to deliver the Keynote at San Francisco this year, perhaps
more than any other year since he's been back at the company.
Through the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, Apple has the
attention of "the outside world" right now like it never
has before. And while the attendees at any given MacWorld
Expo are naturally mostly Mac users, the worldwide attention
that any Stevenote receives from the mainstream media will
certainly reach Mac users and non-Mac users alike. And there's
no reason for Steve to pass up that little freebie.
I don't
care if Steve Jobs gets up there and simply sums up the great
things that Apple has accomplished in the past twelve months,
praises Apple employees everywhere, and then lets Phil Schiller
or Jon Rubenstein (or the janitor at Apple Headquarters,
for that matter) spend the rest of the two hours talking
about their favorite flavor of ice cream. Steve needs to
show his face, one way or the other, so that the media will
acknowledge that Apple still has a presence at MacWorld Expo,
and no, the platform isn't dying. As we all know, there are
plenty of members of the mainstream press who still look
for any excuse to declare that Mac users are on the wane,
and Steve's disappearance from both the east-coast and west-coast
expos would give them just the ammunition they're looking
for. So if nothing else, Steve needs to show up and wave
at the crowd.
But that
just wouldn't be Steve Jobs' style. If he shows up at MacWorld
Expo next month, the Keynote will
likely be another
powerhouse event like last year. Instead of Keynote, perhaps we'll see Apple's
long-awaited entry into the professional word processing
space. Apple could call it "Word to your Mother". Instead
of Safari, maybe we'll get a revolutionary new version of
Sherlock
that
takes
net
tasks
to a while new
level of simplicity...only to have the makers of Watson once
again cry foul and threaten to port their product to OS/2.
Instead of big and little PowerBooks, we just might see the
unveiling
of
a next-generation
iPod
that offers new and intuitive functionality previously only
available on third-party devices that sucked. You just never
know.
Looking
back at that memorable San Francisco Keynote in 2000, the
primary announcements of the day didn't amount to much in
the long term. MacOS X was formally unveiled, but it wouldn't
ship for two more years. The free iTools services that Apple
gave away that day, are no longer free. And Apple's high-profile
investment in Earthlink never went anywhere. But still, it
was so much more fun to see Steve announce this stuff in
person, than to read about it in a ho-hum press release.
And the surrounding attention was enough to land MacOS X
on the cover of Forbes magazine, even if it didn't really
exist yet, which if nothing else told the world that yes,
OS X really was conceived before Windows XP, and yes,
XP really was nothing more than a desperate rip-off attempt
after the fact. Sure, standing in line in the cold for that
Keynote (and spending the week in that same cold) made me
so sick that took seemingly forever to get over it, but that
was all part of the adventure.
None of
the friends I called that morning ever did understand why
I went all the way to the west coast just to see someone
make a speech and attend a few workshops. But then again,
they're all still using Windows, and last I checked, none
of them would come close to describing their computing experience
as "enjoyable". And that's the irony of MacWorld Expo: if
Windows users could be forced to attend the Expo, even once,
they'd walk away understanding what computing is supposed to
be like...and yet, most Windows users would never have enough
faith ahead of time to travel to San Francisco and find out
what they don't know they're missing out on.
But with
Apple currently holding the attention of so many Windows
users, now would be the time that they would actually stop
and pay attention to an article or a broadcast about a major
speech being delivered by Apple's chief. So even though none
of the newfound Windows-using disciples of the iPod and iTunes
are likely to attend MacWorld Expo in January, it's the perfect
opportunity for Steve to reach them and let them know what else they've
been missing out on.
I want
to encourage all readers to join the newly-announced online
Mac User Group at billpalmer.net, which is completely free
to join. The group exists solely through email, newsletters,
and discussion boards, and the only "meetings" are held through
iChat. There are no membership requirements beyond entering
your name and email address into the entry form. If you type
slowly, it'll take you about four seconds to join. The benefits
include discounts, special offers, a monthly newsletter...and
you can take pride in saying that you're a member of a Mac
User Group. For more info, just click
here.
