Macworld: Notes from (probably) the Last Keynote Ever

I guess if I wanted to spin it, I could argue that Apple staff was much better at crowd control Tuesday than in previous years. Otherwise, I might have been asking, "Where was the crowd?"

Over the last decade of "Stevenotes," attendees have simply grown accustomed to Mac cultists camping out literally all night in front of Moscone Center, so they could be first in the door when it finally opened and Steve Jobs made his product pronouncements. During those years, a festival atmosphere ruled. I would arrive around 6AM to see the line already snaking three-quarters of the way around an entire city block, four people or more thick.

Tuesday was a much more subdued environment. No long lines, no festival atmosphere, and certainly no overnight campers. When I arrived at 7:30AM, there were two small waiting areas in front of Moscone, one for the Platinum Pass folks, and one for Media. Each held only a handful of people. When the lines got too long, the groups would be escorted to larger, segregated waiting areas inside, on the ground floor. The only groups I saw were Platinums, Media, and VIPs, whom media folk outnumbered 4 to 1. I couldn't see where they were staging the "general" audience, but it certainly wasn't anywhere in sight.

Given Apple's announcements of recent weeks, expectations were low, at least in the estimation of colleagues I spoke with while waiting. They fell even further when Apple, at the last minute, canceled all private press briefings, including one that a colleague and I had tried to schedule for six weeks. That made us wonder whether there wouldn't be anything presented worth a private briefing.

Notwithstanding, the auditorium ended up fairly full. But unlike any other Keynote I've witnessed, there were empty seats, just not as many as some of us feared. Latecomers, in fact, could walk right in and find a spot, something unheard of previously.

When Phil Schiller took the stage, he was greeted enthusiastically by the crowd. He may not have been "Steve," but it was still "Apple," which says a lot about this group. The very first words from his mouth expressed gratitude for everyone still showing their support, enthusiasm, and energy. Then he got right to work, showing off Apple's latest offerings.

He began with images of their new stores in Beijing (seen at right), Munich, and Sydney, following with the stat that all the 250+ Apple stores combined received 3.4 million visitors every week, the equivalent of 100 Macworlds (take what you will from that). Mac itself saw 9.7 million units sold in 2008, he said, achieving double the industry's growth rate.

Schiller's experience working with Jobs seemed to give him a lot of confidence and, when it was his turn to own the stage, he turned out to be even more of a hands-on presenter than Jobs himself. While Steve would often defer to others to demo key components, Schiller took the reins himself for the entire show, except when he asked Randy Ubillos, iMovie's software architect, to demo that product. He was in control the entire time and hit all his marks, never missing a beat.

While the consensus was that he did a good "workmanlike job," like a pitch one might make at a large corporate meeting, it was no Steve Jobs keynote. The main reason wasn't Schiller, though, but the limited material he had to work with: two application suite upgrades, a new MacBook, and DRM-free iTunes downloads. Nothing disruptive or world-changing.

These products were expected, and they didn't disappoint in and of themselves. But as one wag sarcastically put it: "Well, they didn't announce a warp drive, invisibility cloak or immortality potion today, so I guess the event was a dud, right?"

Next up: A more detailed take on the new products Apple announced.

—Thomas A. Olson