Junk Filter

When Steve Jobs attempted to demonstrate how the new Mac OS X 10.2 Mail app's Junk Mail Filter could automatically move spam to the trash, the audience waited patiently as the increasingly aggravated CEO struggled with menu options and preferences before giving up.  "It will work when 10.2 ships", Jobs assured us.  Which is more than we can say for the poor sap who prepared the demo.

.avie

Macworld NY 2002 Keynote Address attendees were enthusiastic about most of Jobs's announcements. QuickTime 6, iTunes, Jaguar, Junk Mail Filter, and many more products elicited positive response from the audience.  But when Jobs got around to announcing the discontinuation of free iTools, to be replaced with the $100/year .mac service, audience participation dragged to a halt.  Amidst the silence, one could hear clapping from a joyful Avie Tevanian, head of Apple’s Software Engineering group and former VP of Engineering at NeXT.  He was either excited about the products or his bonus.  Or the fact that he gets a free .mac account anyway.

.smac

I suppose Steve Jobs was caught between a rock and a hard place when it came time for him to announce that iTools , now called .mac, would no longer be a free service.  What better way to drop the bomb than to remind everyone how much the competition sucks!  With a slight of tongue, Jobs explained that Yahoo! had started charging for POP e-mail accounts, and that all the other Internet disk services have gone out of business.  To rev us up even more, Jobs mentioned how Microsoft's .NET service is all .wet.  But was it enough to evoke a positive response from the audience?  Well, let's just say I heard more crickets than usual.

17"

Several owners of the 15" flat panel iMac have reported that their displays have become loose and tilt slightly to one side.  Will a 17" flat panel iMac display eventually tilt like a pinball machine?  Stop by the new Apple Store in SoHo, NYC every week with a ruler and level, and report back to this forum.