Report from the MacWorld Trenches

[Jerry Daniels]

Mark,

Many thanks for the report. I hope you and yours are doing well in this 
new (high definition video) year.

I, too, (based on last year's show) was concerned with apple becoming 
the iPod company.

I listened to the entire Keynote via the web (I am not there, of 
course) to get to the bottom of my concerns, if nothing else.

A couple of observations:

1. Being a Mac guy from the "old days" I got accustomed to the MacWorld 
Expos being a sort of "gathering of the faithful"--developers, users, 
vendors, speakers, etc.

2. Even back in the old days, it only took me a couple of shows (and 
laying out the money for a booth) to determine that MacWorld was not 
the place to try and explain the subtlety of anything. It's for 
slogging your goods. IMHO, it's no place for a developer or a tool 
company, really.

3. The World WIde Developer's conference was the place to go if you 
wanted to understand the latest tools and toolbox(es) available to a 
developer. I believe it still is. Whether there is a place for non-XCMD 
creating Rev programmers at WWDC, that remains to be seen.

4. The PRICING on Mac Mini and iPod shuffle signal something extremely 
good to me. Perhaps Steve has finally gotten his medication just right, 
because he's making a move to become a real computer company and not 
just a boutique.

5. The Apple Stores all over the world are also another sign of really 
capitalizing on what makes Apple a great innovator. He's finally 
turning that innovation and obsessive-compulsive disorder into 
stockholder benefits. It was interesting that he thanked the family and 
spouses of the Apple engineers for driving everyone so hard. His near 
miss with cancer may also be sobering our CEO up a bit.

It may seem on the surface -like: "Honey, I shrunk the show." I am 
beginning to believe that Apple is starting to steer the ship in the 
right direction.

As an enthusiastic Mac user (and a grudging WinXP user)I feel like 
we're finally riding the horse in the direction it's going, rather than 
sitting on it backwards.

Just my thoughts...

Jerry

On Jan 12, 2005, at 2:05 AM, Mark Wieder wrote:

> The show seemed pretty evenly divided between iPods and computers. I
> find this mildly disturbing. I'm glad Apple has found a revenue stream
> and all that, but it seems that they're getting into the mold of the
> company that makes uber-cool multimedia devices and, oh, yes, also
> incidentally makes computers.