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January 11, 2002 - DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE


I broke my promise to myself.
Before ambling up to San Francisco's Moscone Center and picking up my badge holder, I vowed that when I write of this experience, I would not buy into the new iMac hype. "Beyond the rumor sites," Apple promised. "Lust factor 10." "Count on being blown away." Whatever. After Time Canada had leaked their cover story on the new machine and attempting to catch bits of Steve Jobs' keynote on Quicktime, I was ready to be underwhelmed by the lamplike new machine. So ready was I to more or less ignore this phenomenon that I had it in my head to go above and beyond the thoughts of the regular show attendee and look for something besides the iMac that's going to shake up the Mac world and computing in general. Unfortunately, I failed. I got sucked into the famed reality distortion field that so many people speak of in regards to Uncle Steve and his products. Rumor had it that Jobs and design honcho Jonathan Ive were roaming the show floor, but I didn't see them anywhere.Yet I still felt the RDF in action. It was emanating from the new iMac itself!

It's an odd-looking beast at first glance. The half-dome base is much larger than you would imagine just from looking at pictures, because it is a fully operational computer you're staring at. the 15" LCD isn't your run of the mill flat-screen. Nay, by virtue of its DVI connection (as opposed to chintzy VGA like most companies provide) it is bright and sharp and clear. 1024x768 resolution be damned, this thing is gorgeous. And it's fast. And.. and.. I could just go on about how beautiful this machine is in person. But it's not really a machine. Touch the swiveling screen once, let it mold to your dimensions, and you realize that this is the cybernetically inspired union of man and machine. It conforms to you. Bends to your will. All because of that damned chrome arm. This is a tactile machine. "Touch me," it says. And you will. "Lust factor ten," indeed.

Beyond the new iMac, really.
Smitten by the iMac, I almost forgot that I was at MWSF on a mission - to discover anything but the new consumer desktop. Alas, the other thing was right in front of me. iPhoto, the new free digital photo software from Apple isn't quite a killer app, but it's one killer application, if you catch my drift. The rumor sites that had last year predicted Adobe's ire at Apple's own stab at an image editing app are laughable, however. The image editing in this program is designed for rank amateurs, as it is irritatingly rudimentary. But lo and behold! One can set iPhoto to edit photos in his/her favorite graphics application. Then what is iPhoto good for? Everything else. Import from your camera? No problem. Add existing scans and image files to the library? Absolutely. Provide you with a number of great options for sharing your photos? Hell yeah. Yes, the interface is a bit clunky. No, the organization isn't perfect. But it's at the stage where iTunes was at version 1.0, which means there's some room for improvement, and once it gets to 1.1 or 2.0, you know this thing is going to be ubiquitous. I was in lust again. It was like falling for sisters or something - I had to tear myself away from the Apple booth. Stat!

Six Degrees of Integration.
Finally away from the gravitational pull of the Apple booth, I managed to make the rounds of the rest of the show floor. Some digital cameras here. A few 3D apps there. OS X versions of just about everything (except the music software I need, dammit). I still wasn't seeing that new thing that intrigued me the way anything out of Infinite Loop. And as we all know, in order to have a healthy Mac industry, we need innovators to come from outside of Apple, as well.

So subtly, almost unwittingly, I was seduced by a new mistress named Creo. I almost didn't notice at first, and most likely, many others didn't (save for the Macworld people who bestowed a best-of-show award upon them). What they had was so low-key, there was no flashiness to it. Yet it could very well be what just about every productive computer user needs: Six Degrees. Basically, it's project management software, but way beyond any tedious crap like MS Project. What it does isn't remarkable - it tracks the contacts, schedules, emails, etc. within any project you may be working on. How it does it, and the simplicity it uses, is the clincher here. Six Degrees organizes everything in a project by providing a symbolic link to whatever it may be you're dealing with - files, messages, contact information. While you may have an index of memos, the originals stay in Entourage or Outlook. The files you are dealing with may all be listed in your project organizer, but they also remain in their original locations. SD is a simple, brilliant organizational tool that doesn't dictate or mess with your workflow - it merely helps it. Somehow I'm not sure if it's going to catch on very quickly - if at all - but any serious project manager working in a Mac environment needs to consider this software. And yes, it's Mac OS X native. Like I'd said before, just nearly everything at this Macworld was geared toward OS X...

A lot to be X-cited about.
The presence of so many OS X-native apps at the show meant one thing: that all the developers are moving forward. (Once again, there's an exception - the people who make the music software that I want. Can I tell you how much I loathe booting into Mac OS 9 to run Reason?) Despite a smaller show floor, fewer vendors, and less inventive marketing, Macworld SF 2002 served as a beacon of hope in our deflated economy. There were an estimated 80,000 attendees - that's almost the capacity of the Rose Bowl, for crying out loud. More than the last COMDEX in Vegas, even. New products were being announced proudly and with no apprehension of the economic climate. The most diverse crowd I had ever seen at any sort of trade show was in attendance, proving that despite all the divisiveness we've felt lately, there is a community here ready to do some serious unifying. And spending. In the face of increasing unemployment, falling values, and potentially crippling government scandal, the Mac faithful and their mercurial leader (there, I used the word!) proved the indomitable spirit of the creative tech junkie. What I saw at MWSF can truly help "spur" the economy. If the Mac, and particularly the "i" version, are representative of the everyman simplicity that they try to embody, then perhaps the tech sector - nay, our economy - can be saved by the labors of some headstrong engineers and designers in Cupertino. There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of us wiling to follow their charge and get things going again. Call me foolish, but I think those geeks might be trying to start a revolution... again.

Special thanks to Vince Huynh for accompanying me to the show and David Nabi for providing me with a pass.

UPDATE 01.17.02: Apparently, some other yo-yo in Dallas who actually gets paid to write his opinions agrees with me. Check it out!