Crackworld

As much as I want to ignore Macworld, I can’t. I’m sure I’ll be trolling the sites and hitting refresh a lot tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even fire up an IRC client and lurk. I can’t afford anything Steve will be showing, but I’ll still feel like a kid on Christmas morning.

I remember being at the keynote in the mid-90s where Kai Krause, Herbie Hancock, Todd Rundgren, Graham Nash and Douglas Adams (did I forget anybody??) held court in a roundtable that was pretty mindblowing. No new products, just talk about technology and how to make a difference. I’ll never forget the guy in the audience calling everybody to repentance and admonishing us to look at our local schools and get involved. He received the biggest applause. He may have started speaking in tongues. I was too busy trying to figure out how I was going to justify purchasing a 28.8 ethernet modem that allowed fax sharing and cost $2,000 to the company that sent me.

I was at Seybold when Jobs busted out the G4 and the Cinema Display. That’s the only time I’ve heard Jobs speak, but it was pretty cool. The reality distortion field cleared the first 70 rows of chairs, easy.

Whether or not Apple’s suit is for real, as a geek, I have to give them bumps/ups/props for staking their business on innovation. Or at least finally having a runaway hit based on innovation (Yes, I know the iPod doesn’t play the new audio codec your nephew wrote that totally kicks ass over AAC, Ogg and MP3 but you and your little brainiac nephew aren’t the target for the iPod, so get over yourselves). Like Mr. Gruber talks about, I don’t think, in this instance, that Apple intentionally leaked news of a sub-$500 machine.

I’m going to bet that whatever is announced tomorrow, 30% of those who care will be fairly stoked, 40% will be pissed and think that Apple got the pricing wrong and 30% will be disappointed because the show didn’t live up to the hype.

However, you have to give Apple respect for rocking out with their proverbial proceduring tools out.