For the Mac obsessed, January means MacWorld San Francisco, the largest Macintosh-only show in the world.
We decided to join the over 100,000 yearly visitors to this Macintosh Extravaganza, and wander the show floor looking for stories. Here are various tasty little news morsels from the show floor at MacWorld SF 2000. And just to warn you, we've interspersed some terrible puns because we're sick that way.
Leading up to MacWorld SF 2000, there was quite a large amount of speculation going on about what Interim CEO Steve Jobs was going to announce. The rumors ranged from Apple announcing systems with dual processors or using the ATI Rage Fury MAXX to unveiling a new ultra-light PowerBook. After stoking the fiery pro-Mac passion of his audience with statistics on how well Apple is doing, Jobs went on to explain Apple's home movie focus, Internet strategy and to announce OS X.
The first killer app for the Mac platform, the first use of the Mac that made it hugely successful, was desktop publishing. Apple now believes that desktop movie making will be the next killer app. Using a recent iMac with a built-in FireWire port, the included iMovie software and a digital video camera, you can create and edit high-quality home movies without any special training or, as far as we can tell, difficulty.
Jobs showed an "iMovie" made by the head of Apple's iMovie group, in which insanely cute children romped around to sappy music. The "ahhhhs" and "ohhhhs" were widespread. Apple believes that people will rush to buy an inexpensive, easy and powerful solution to edit their home videos. If the response of the keynote audience even remotely resembles what the reaction of the general public will be, Apple may be making itself a large and profitable market.