itw20e

Garth Montgomery

Happiness is a warm Macworld

September 2000

iTgraphics

Submitted for Most Entertaining category

Occasionally The Raker gets a break from the daily grind of reporting from the local field and is invited by vendors to travel abroad. This time the assignment was to Manhattan, New York, where we were among the privileged hundreds of international press to attend Macworld.

Despite the fact that Woody Allen is currently in exile in Britain, there is never really a bad time to visit the Big Apple. Besides, the new World Wrestling Federation theme restaurant that proudly trumpets the slogan "There Goes The Neighborhood" on a steroid-sized façade - dead in the centre of Times Square - more than makes up for a Woody-free zone. But The Raker wasn't there purely for pleasure. We were there to prostrate before the genius of The Great One - Apple CEO Steve Jobs, as he prepared another paradigm-shifting keynote speech.

"Is this your first Macworld?" became the standard question by Apple disciples and executives. "Ahhh, yes it is," we confessed each time, as though we hadn't lived till we'd witnessed a live product announcement from Apple.

"Well, then prepare to be blown away" was the repeated mantra. So, dressed in our favourite anti-ballistic combat fatigues, we trooped off to the Jacob K. Javits Centre. One cult member of the Apple executive told us that there is nothing quite like the chaos of a Macworld opening.

"People are literally running and jumping over chairs to get in to the auditorium to hear Steve speak. "Last year I had to video the spectacle just to prove it. I've never seen a similar crowd reaction as I have at a Macworld. Macworld totally rocks." Ahhh-ha. At this point The Raker backed away slowly without sudden movement. Nobody wants to upset these zealots.

As The Great One's keynote neared, the press were herded into our privileged seats at the side of the auditorium. Anyone who's sat through the sensational telemovie The Pirates of Silicon Valley, starring Anthony Michael Hall as the cunning business geek Bill Gates, and Noah Wyle as the cultured but meglamaniacal Steve Jobs, knows that The Great One considers himself and Apple to be connoisseurs of high brow arts and culture. Fittingly, we were treated to the cerebral sounds of some opera while we waited for The Great One to grace the stage. Sadly the screeching sounds fell on deaf ears with The Raker's cultural barometer firmly set to 'Trash' at all times.

We took our seats at the announcement that they were preparing to open the doors and relieve the heaving masses who'd queued for hours. Our faithful carer executive stood excitedly with his mini DV recorder to capture the expected bullrush, which would later enthrall his friends and family. I can see them all now reaching for their prescription psychotropics when he pulls out the latest Macworld home video - "I did it all in iMovie."

But when the doors finally opened, and people merely shuffled-in and sensibly took their seats, it was hard not to feel for this deluded sycophant. It was as if overnight the Apple community had grown up. There were no wacky geeks brandishing body graffiti for The Great One. Nary a cardboard sign with witty Apple slogans professing the coolness of The Great One. No trekkies, no ferals - nada. Just a bunch of self-conscious, middle-aged hipsters strolling to take a seat.

The lights dimmed and a civilised cheer from the crowd acknowledged that the show was about to begin. When Apple's holiness finally walked on stage he received a polite standing ovation just for waving to the crowd. There was no need for extreme crowd control measures here. The water cannons could be disconnected. The tactical response group could relax. This crowd was controlled, mature. In fact, nobody here even looked as though they once raised the flag of Apple's famed skull and cross bones when the company, and its disciples, were the renegade pirates of a stodgy industry.

Even Bill got kooky at a recent developers conference by dressing like Austin Powers. Linus Torvalds wore devil's horns at a Linux world keynote. The Raker couldn't help but think that the fire had been extinguished from Apple's belly. Sure there were new iMac colours, a G4 cube which, while looking pretty cool, was just a derivative of The Great One's next cube. But what clinched it for The Raker that Apple-ites were now the blind followers they once scorned, was the crowd pop Steve got when he produced a new mouse and keyboard. There was a time when Apple-ites would have trashed and burned down a Macworld if they'd been forced to endure a cramped keyboard and puck mouse for two years. Now they cheered as though an optical mouse was innovative, and a standard-size keyboard was a gift. It's the price of mindless indoctrination.

The price of being manipulated for a false cause. Perhaps all those free wheelin' Mac radicals of the eighties are now just content to have a middle-aged autocrat with a god-complex dictating to them what is cool.

Whatever the case might be with Apple sagging in its twilight years, one thing was crystal clear; Apple has officially graduated to become a mature, fiscally responsible IT vendor. Its events are sophisticated, its developers sensible. I guess the pirate flag is now neatly folded in a glass case on display at the Cupertino headquarters.

Garth Montgomery

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