Needless to day, 6:00 came and went with me prettymuch in the shower. But I made it over to Javits by 7:00, and got a decent place in line, and met up a bunch of nice folks from all over Mac-land...

<aside>
Line-friends are kinda like plane-friends... you'll talk about prettymuch anything and everything... but once the doors open for the keynote, all bets are off and it's every geek for himself. Maybe a wave across the show floor later, but that�s it... usually. I've also met a couple guys in line that I've stayed in touch with (/me waves to the Brain Trust)...
</aside>

Opening music for the Stevenote was all Beach Boys. It was fun to see that a LOT of people were singing along as they flashed up on the big screen before the show. <mini-asisde>The tech crew always warms up by shooting crowd shots of interesting people, or dull people doing interesting things, I guess.</mini-aside>

I've been to my share of Stevenotes over the year, and I'd describe this one as fairly sedate. Steve talked a lot about Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2, Due August 24th - WOOHOO!), and he and Phil "DemoDoll" Schiller showed off lotsa ginchy unix-y goodness.

The New Steve and Phil Demo Show

Apple intro'd a bunch of cool-ish new iApps including iCal scheduling software and iSync for keeping addresses and calendars synchronized between computers, iPods, CellPhones, and apparently, PalmOS devices, though His Steveness didn't demo that part.

<aside level=2>
I wasn't wrong in my prediction that Apple was going to come out with the iPad PDA. They just did it virtually, for the time being, by creating all the iApps needed to make Mac OS X a personal data powerhouse. Creating a handheld or webpad form factor device is now a mere follow-on...
</aside>

New iPods... and accessories and oh, yea, one more 'little' thing: Windows versions of iPods... Too bad for these guys:

XPlay = X-Product?

Lots of changes on the service formerly known as mac.com, today rebranded as ".mac" - including, unfortunately, charges.

<opinion>
This may well suck for those of us who have 4 mac.com accounts. But I suppose it's fair for Apple to recoup some of those R&D charges... But how about a limited account, like free email only, for people who don't want all the fru-fru stuff, and have popularized several different mac.com addresses...
</opinion>

Oh, and just "ONE MORE THING"... the 17" iMac finally made it. A new high-end model with a mini-cinema display, 1440x900...

Tasty Wide-ness

There's great blow-by blow coverage of the show on MacCentral, and my photos from the Stevenote are at MacCenter .

My full Apple Booth Gallery is here:
http://www.maccenter.com/news/2002/MWNY/Galleries/0717.2.applebooth/index.html

And here's my one more thing, in traditional Steve Style�:

MacGenius and Tubes Rock!

Tonight: Went to see Blue Man Group. What a great mix of music, humor, tech and overall wierdness! PLUS a Mac reference and an AYBABTU reference spotted! A definite fun must-see!

Tomorrow: Scouring the show for Geek Glee and Demo Dolls...

=bd

I'm not sure I understand the Jaguar wild animal theme. It seems a tad incongruous with their usual clean, classic approach to their image which aqua complimented so very well. I find the spotty background on apple.com's jaguaresque interface hard to read because of the text sitting on light and dark splotches. Lots to make fun of anyway.

I'm very surprised that Apple would stoop to the old "bait and switch" with iTools! I don't think it's fair to have told everyone this was a free service, then, when everyone's comfortably using itools they slap them with a charge. It's just not ethical business. I can understand perhaps coming up with a "deluxe" version and charging for the extra features, but not cleaning off everyone's disc if they don't cough up the cash! It's just makes them look like terrible meanies since they'll be shaking the piggy banks of little kids, young families, and seniors.

quote:

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Originally posted by Nitrozac:
I find the spotty background on apple.com's jaguaresque interface hard to read because of the text sitting on light and dark splotches. Lots to make fun of anyway.

---

OK- is it just me or do you expect the tagline for the new OS to be
"Preferred by Pimps" or something to that effect?

When his Steveness introduced the new look, I thought I heard some snickering in the audience which quickly died away when Steve didn't laugh with them.

Seen the Apple website? Looks like they are redecorating with a rendered texture theme for the main navigational controls, so I assume the OS-Pimp look is just a smaller part of a larger change in the marketing arena.

Captain_Napalm and brother Rock!

quote:

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Originally posted by Nitrozac:
This is great coverage of the expo! Thanks Digital Bill!

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Thanks! I'm having fun being here, and doing this!

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nitrozac:
I'm not sure I understand the Jaguar wild animal theme. It seems a tad incongruous with their usual clean, classic approach to their image which aqua complimented so very well. I find the spotty background on apple.com's jaguaresque interface hard to read because of the text sitting on light and dark splotches. Lots to make fun of anyway.

---

Well, all the OS X builds have been named after cats, I think. Seems 10.1 was Cheetah, IIRC...

Why they're bring it in as the public face, I can only guess... maybe has something to do with differentiating from the somewhat Aqua-like Windows XP?

=bd