Stardate 20010719.1256 (On Screen): Jobs' keynote address (that used to say "keynot address" as a typo, and I damned near left it that way) at MacWorld New York is now history, and apparently the reason that USS Clueless's subspace crystal ball was able to work was that the Reality Distortion Field was on the fritz. The crowd was definitely not wowed this time; and words like "underwhelmed" are being used. Some examples:
"Yesterday it was all we could do to broadcast our raw notes on the event before collapsing into a fetal position and whimpering the word 'mommy' for two hours straight while twitching." -- As the Apple Turns
"This was hardly worth the wait." -- MacNet
"The crowd looked on in nonplussed silence as the dynamic executive proudly announced new, completely uncompelling desktop computer models to replace the aging iMac and Power Macintosh G4 lines." -- Bite.org
"I'm still watching the keynote as I write this, and Steve is still bitching about the huge megahertz myth. True, it's a myth, but myth's only go so far. Just because a couple of Mac optimized apps beat a Pentium 4 doesn't mean they'll do too well against an AMD. AMD 1.4 ghz chips have been shown to soundly beat a 1.8 ghz Pentium 4." -- MacMonkey (Indeed! -- The Captain)
"The very modestly evolutionary "new" iMac and Power Macintosh G4 systems seem very underwhelming to me." -- a comment at MacCentral
"The rest of the keynote saw a master showman struggling to hold his audience." -- Mac Edition
And that's what Mac fans are saying, let alone heretics like me -- or the stock market, where AAPL has dropped 17% as I write this from close Monday (before the financials and the keynote) to now.
The point of this post? No amount of muttering "Megahertz Myth" is going to change the fundamental fact that Apple can't compete on the basis of price and speed, because of economy of scale. (Shooting the Macloners may have given Apple a short term boost in sales, but it also convinced Moto that it wasn't worth investing in high speed PPCs. The legendary G4 speed-stall was a direct result of Jobs' decision to kill the cloner licenses.) And how about, just once, a really comprehensive speed comparison, done by an independent testing group, who reveals the configuration details of the systems and provides information about the tests which are done, and makes it so that the tests are not slanted to specifically play to the strengths of one system and the weaknesses of another, and which includes an optimally configured 1.4 GHz Athlon? Let alone a dualie 1.4? (It won't happen; Apple would lose.) (discuss)
Update: Wired refers to it as a "miserable keynote".
