Contrary to reports of disappointing attendance figures, it turns out that this summer's MacWorld Expo was actually attended by 5.8 million people. And contrary to the reports that the Expo had been moved to the Boston Convention Center, it actually did take place this year in Manhattan after all. And San Francisco. And Palo Alto. And just down the street here in Orlando. And, for that matter, at seventy-five other mall locations across the country, including three in the greater Boston area. And instead of lasting a mere four days, MacWorld Expo has been running non-stop all summer...and all year round. Yeah, you've figured out what I'm talking about by now.
Through five consecutive years of attending MacWorld Expo in New York, I always managed to leave the Javits Center at once blown away by the whole experience and rather disappointed by the fact that I couldn't take everything and stuff it in my suitcase and take it home with me. No, I'm not talking metaphorically about taking the experience home with me, I'm talking about not being able to cram the metric ton of free pens and crap that I picked up on the expo floor into my bulging suitcase (it took me until the third year to figure out to take an extra, empty suitcase with me). But I also very much would have liked to have taken the experience home with me, and to share it, and to show my Windows-using acquaintances (and for that matter, some of my Mac-using acquaintances) what the magic of this platform of ours is really all about. But stories, and even pictures and video, never could quite manage to convey the totality of what's really been going on here with the Mac platform over the past five or six years. To understand MacWorld, you simply had to be there.
But it turns out that these days, one can actually attend a version of MacWorld Expo without even needing a plane ticket. And in some cases, without even intending to do so, as evidenced by casual mall-goers who somehow manage to find themselves inside of an Apple Store, suddenly totally overwhelmed by the realization that not only is the Mac still around, it's miles ahead of anything they're used to using. Think about the most attractive aspects of a typical MacWorld: the opportunity to play around freely with the newest and coolest products, the opportunity to see live demonstrations of various Apple and third-party software and hardware, the chance to converse with the Mac users surrounding you, and the chance to pick the brains of the Apple employees on-hand. It turns out that all of this expo-like stuff happens, albeit on a condensed scale, in dozens of Apple Stores, all day, every day. About all that's missing, really, is the opportunity to go around gathering free pens.
Well, that and the Steve Jobs keynote address, of course. But most Windows users are barely even aware that Steve is back at Apple, let alone ready to line up around the block to see him speak. So the fact that Apple's CEO isn't standing there in the back of every Apple Store at all times, ready to make a speech any time someone walks in, isn't really a big deal. But then again, I've long thought that perhaps Apple could borrow some "Hall of Presidents" technology and equip every store with an animatronic Steve Jobs that could give Keynotes every hour on the hour (I mean, if we're going to wow 'em then let's really wow 'em, right?). But then again, that might creep them out in a way that the thought of using a one-button mouse never could.
I once had it in my head that Apple ought to just take MacWorld Expo on the road, setting it up in one different major metropolitan area after another, in order to help get the word out. But that would have been prohibitively expensive, and when it came down to it, would still have given Apple a presence for only four days a year in any given city. And on top of it all, most of the Windows-using public wouldn't have been likely to attend a convention dedicated to a platform that they thought they had no interest in, even if it were taking place in their own backyard. But with the mall stores, Apple has managed to position itself right where all the Windows users are hanging out anyway. And convincing them to expose themselves to Apple technology now only requires convincing them to walk through the Apple Store's always-open front door, as they walk past it while they're wasting an afternoon at the local shopping mall.
We all know that demand for Apple's digital music offerings is so strong that it's nearly out of control -- even most Windows users are aware of Apple's iPod/iTunes successes by now. But what most Windows users (and many Mac users, for that matter) don't seem to quite yet realize is that, according to yesterday's financial disclosures, Apple sold about sixteen percent more Macintosh computers in April-May-June of 2004, than it did in that same three-month period in 2003. If that's not hard evidence that the Mac platform is growing healthily, then I don't know what is. I've heard from, and read about, so many people who have recently switched to the Mac platform, that I knew it simply had to manifest itself numerically sooner or later. And now it finally has.
Healthy doses of credit for the surge in Macintosh sales have to go to the iPod/iTunes for Windows experiment, the increase in viruses and security issues on the Windows platform, and the lingering effects of the Switch campaign (see, I told you they were just waiting until they were ready for a new computer, before switching). But no matter how you go about spreading around the credit, at least some of it has to go to the fact MacWorld Expo now takes place simultaneously in seventy-five different highly-accessible locations, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. And whereas this week's event in Boston drew a mere ten or twenty thousand people, the "new" MacWorld has attracted more than five million.
Now, if we could just do something about the free pens...
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