The SoHo Case

On August 18, 2002, customers arriving at the new Apple Soho Store in Manhattan—home of the Million Dollar Glass Staircase, special ordered by Steve Jobs for his largest retail outfit to date—were regretfully turned away as sad Mac Geniuses handed out Jaguar promotional flyers.  According to witnesses, several police were in the store, and some portions of the floor were closed off by a police line.  Details surrounding the event are vague, and Apple SoHo staff have been ordered silent about the ordeal, but the general concensus is that the store was robbed.  No one knows what was taken, except for the store managers.  I would have gone and rubbernecked myself, but it isn't nice to stop and stair.

Jaguar in a Pink Cadillac

Baby, if you want to experience the benefits of Jaguar , you've got to pay! $129 for Mac OS X 10.2, $29.99 for QuickTime Pro 6, $19.99 for QuickTime 6 MPEG-2 Playback, and $99 per year for .mac services. By the time you're through, you won't have much money left, but you'll have the security of a world class, fur coat clad, Pimp of the Stable, Jaguar. "Where's my money, bitch?"

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.