Eye On MacWorld Expo

By: Larry Magid
Topics: Tech Talk

Now that the Consumer Electronics Show is over, the tech world turns its attention to San Francisco and the MacWorld Expo. As he does every year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will kick off the event with his keynote address Tuesday morning. The room will be full of three constituencies: Apple employees, press and Apple aficionados. Some of those aficionados will be there with press passes because they're also bloggers.

I'm not 100% sure what Steve Jobs will say but the two prevailing rumor include an ultra-light notebook Mac, possibly using flash memory to store data instead of a hard disk as well as an announcement that it will be possible to rent movies to watch on iTunes and on iPods. Apple now lets you purchase movies but a lot of people prefer to rent instead for, say $3.99. Reports have it that the movies wil expire after 24 hours which would be a shame. I'd like to be able to keep them for at least a week or just be restricted in say, watching them twice. Sometimes I like to watch movies on a flight but don't have time to finish it until the flight home, typically a day or two later. There is some speculation that Jobs will announce a faster "3G" version of the iPhone. The CES of AT&T has already said it is coming in 2008, but we don't yet know when and for how much.

Whatever Job announces, one thing is for sure – everyone but the mainstream press will be cheering. Every time Jobs speaks there are cheers. Cheers when he enters the room, cheers when he announces new products and cheers when he leaves the stage. When the announcements are major – like last year when he introduced the iPhone – the cheers will be loud and sustained but even if he announces something rather pedestrian, there will be cheers nonetheless.

Contrast this to Microsoft CEO Bill Gates who mostly gets polite applause, regardless of what he announces.

There are a number of reasons Jobs' enthusiastic reception. One is the man himself. Steve Jobs is enormously charismatic. You don't notice is so much in a one-on-one situation but when he speaks to a crowd, he has the ability to make even little things seem big. Another is his company's track record at actually delivering products that people love. Charisma can generate a certain amount of enthusiasm, but to sustain it you have to deliver and Apple has delivered many times over from the introduction of its initial Macintosh back in 1984– the first popular computer with a graphical user interface to the iPod, to the complete overhaul of the Macintosh operating system, to the conversion of the Macs to the Intel architecture and, of course, the iPhone. This is a company that knows how to please a crowd and Steve Jobs is its number one cheerleader.

That's not to say that Apple always hits a home run. Some of its products have been "me-too" and others, like the Apple TV, have met with limited success.

I'll be at Moscone Center for the Jobs keynote. I probably won't be cheering but I'll be listening, taking notes and filing podcasts and report. When Jobs speak, people listen.