Welcome to SteveWorld 2000
by Mitch Stone, the Accidental Expert
SAN FRANCISCO. "Steve Rules!" an uncontainable gentleman bellowed from the audience within the first minutes of Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs' keynote presentation at MacWorld Expo 2000.
A grinning Jobs strolled to the edge of the stage, cupping his hand to his ear. "What was that?"
"Steve Rules!" replied a chorus of voices, followed by laughter and applause.
It was that kind of show. Welcome to SteveWorld 2000.
Apple and Steve. Steve and Apple. Over the course of the two and a half years since Jobs' return to Apple, the company has been painstakingly recast in the image of Steve -- and by none other than Steve himself.
The two have become increasingly interchangeable. And never more then at this year's gathering of the Macintosh tribes in agreeable San Francisco, the city where even the panhandlers are required to be polite.
A cheerfully intense Steve Jobs displayed unmistakable personal pleasure in announcing Apple's sales figures for the last three months -- over 1.3 million Macintosh computers, more then in any quarter in the company's history.
Life, it would seem, is good for Apple, and Jobs was in no mood to downplay the company's remarkable turnaround, for which he richly deserves credit.
And rich, ironically, is one thing Jobs has not become as Apple's helmsman -- the holder of but one share of Apple stock, he takes no salary from the company. Just don't ask him why. Steve does not explain such things.
Much of the two-hour plus keynote was occupied by the unveiling of Apple's new Internet strategy. Oddly, one prominent slice of Apple's game plan is a new Internet greeting card site, called iCards.
Why Internet greeting cards, of all things? Because (and this requires a generous application of Steve reasoning), all of those other Internet greeting card sites, "make me ashamed to be a human being."
That's Steve for ugly. Really ugly. Apple's Internet greeting cards, or more accurately, Steve's Internet greeting cards, are slick and stylish. They are Steve.
Late last year, Apple also placed some markers on the future of amateur home movie production, with the roll out of an iMac model configured for connecting to digital video cameras. The system is bundled with Apple's iMovie application, an entry-level video editing package.
Jobs took the opportunity to pound the desktop movie pulpit, previewing three new iMovie television commercials, much to the delight of the highly partisan audience.
But the centerpiece of Jobs' keynote presentation was the introduction of Apple's entirely new Macintosh operating system, OS X (pronounced "ten"). From top to bottom, this operating system is, you guessed it, pure Steve.
At the foundation of OS X is Jobs' very own NextStep operating system, which came into the Apple fold in 1997, along with Steve himself. This month, the long-promised OS X showed its new user interface at SteveWorld 2000. Dubbed Aqua, it is thoroughly, completely and utterly Steve.
Along with a raft of technical advances, Aqua is a tour de force in advanced human engineering. Buttons don't just stare back out at the user, daring them to choose. No, this is Steve we're talking about here -- Steve's buttons pulse gently, inviting, coaxing, a choice.
Icons transform into windows with an animated effect Jobs called "the genie." Cooed Jobs, "It's just magical." And we're meant to see and believe in magic, just as Steve does. Certainly, Aqua's visual imagery verges on the cinematic, and Aqua plays as a personal design statement like no other in computerdom.
Grasping the moment, Jobs trotted out software company executives committed to developing for OS X, none of whom had actually seen Aqua until that very moment. Rob Burgess, CEO of multimedia software developer MacroMedia stammered, "It's just unbelievable. I'm speechless."
Well, speechless is going a bit overboard, but Burgess and the others appeared genuinely astonished by what Jobs had concocted. It's the kind of adulation Steve eats for lunch.
Conspicuously, though, OS X was not for sale at this Expo. In fact, Jobs announced, Apple won't begin selling OS X until summer. By then, Apple will be going head-to-head with Microsoft, and the media din surrounding the introduction of Windows 2000.
As usual, Jobs closed the show with his trademark, "And one last thing" tag line, signifying the really big announcement. After two years, he's dropped "interim" from his CEO title. He's decided to stick around for a while.
Predictably, the crowd hollered and cheered its approval.
Steve rules? Really, now, who could ever have doubted it?
17 January 2000 |
They may be just Internet greeting cards to everybody else, but they're a matter of basic human dignity to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
An Apple minion explains iMovie to the masses at MacWorld 2000 San Francisco. (Photos: Mitch Stone) |
