“Steve Jobs must be the ultimate corporate showman. Whatever else you might say about him – and as I am sharing a city (San Francisco) with the world’s leading Apple nuts here for Macworld, I’m keeping it complimentary – he knows how to play an audience. His key note at the Moscone Centre was one part political party convention speech, one part rock concert and one part evangelical church service,” Ben Hunt writes for The Financial Times.
“There were product announcements, cool new adverts, an extraordinary special appearance by Paul Otellini, the chief executive of Intel, and demonstrations of some genuinely great-looking new software),” Hunt writes. “There was also – in complete contrast to Bill Gates at Consumer Electronics Show last week – a great deal of charisma and even evidence of a well-developed sense of humour (some of which was even self-deprecatory). Of particular note on this front was a demonstration of Apple’s new podcast-composition software in which Mr Jobs recorded his spoof Super Secret Apple Rumours cast in which he revealed the next iPod: ‘An 8lb giant with a 10 inch screen.'”
“And boy did the faithful lap it up. One early moment of note was the announcement of an FM radio accessory for iPods, a fairly simple piece of technology. Or so you might have believed, but such was the collective intake of breath when a working shot of said accessory flashed up on screen you’d have thought he’d revealed the bones of Jesus on stage,” Hunt writes. “But all of this is a major part of the Apple story. There is undeniable street credibility in the simple act of pulling out a Mac computer on a train or in the airport lounge, instant accessibility to an exclusive club of tech elitists. For all of Dell’s flexible pricing and Microsoft’s market dominance, they can never hope to attain this. It’s born in part, of course, in fabulous design. In part in great software and another part in market-defining products.”
Full article here.
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aboot time apple get the recognition they long deserved
Maybe that’s why there were only three of us at DellWorld last fall.
In response to the headline – nope. Never in a million years.
It was a good read. I can never get enough of all the wonderful things coming from AAPL these days.
This guy obviously doesn’t get it. I mean does he have his head up his ass. I mean is this what passes for journalism these days. I mean since when does every pinhead get a tech column. I mean…what? He didn’t say anything bad about Apple…
nevermind.
MDN’s majic word: indeed…
“And boy did the faithful lap it up. One early moment of note was the announcement of an FM radio accessory for iPods, a fairly simple piece of technology. Or so you might have believed, but such was the collective intake of breath when a working shot of said accessory flashed up on screen you’d have thought he’d revealed the bones of Jesus on stage,” Hunt writes.
what mr. hunt doesn’t get is that all the iPod-killer-also-rans think that if they added FM radio, nobody would buy an iPod!
what Apple demonstrates here is that they can alter the game in an instant… and do it seamless!
the way the FM radio is integrated is wonderful… just like most add-ons for the iPod.
the audience did understand this and that’s why they cheer… not because the iPod now can play FM radio..
lap it up mr. hunt!
It wasn’t the FM dongle that had the crowd excited, it was the cool retro analog GUI on the iPod’s screen. It was cool!
Funny, how the worm has turned.
Just a few years ago before SJ came back from his exile to once again take over the helm of Apple we the ol’ school “faithful” were “zealots” and “freaks”. Now AAPL is making everybody and his grandmother money and we’re “cool” and “tech elitists”.
Whatever.
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KenC,
Exactly! If you watch the keynote, you’ll see that the audience gets jazzed about the FM tuning interface that flashes up on the screen.
Whatever.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”raspberry” style=”border:0;” /> <—-So cute. hehehe
one can dress up a pig in a tuxedo but, at the end of the day, you’ve still got nothing more than a pig in a suit. gates and dell are dull, nasty little twerps; Local Leader Steve J is da bomb!
Seems like “revealing the bones of Jesus on stage” would be more akin to the unveiling of the Intel-powered Macs — that is, heresy