Watch Steve pull a rabbit out of his hat! (again?)

Okay, like every other mac geek out there, I was off watching the keynote. I didn’t know (exactly) what was going on — any advantage I have over the rest of you comes from two things: years of watching Apple doing this and watching the rumor boards and getting a feel for what leaks to believe and what not to.

not that I talk about that, of course. That would be wrong. But yes, Apple people read the rumor boards, too. Some for comic value… At Apple, the pre-keynote electricity was palpable. People were stoked. The feeling was this wasn’t just another keynote…

Man how much fun was today? I’ve heard rumors of what the FPS is for that high-end box under Quake. i won’t mention it, but the number was scary (and we all know what the REAL system benchmark is, right?).

In previous lives, I had some involvment with hardware. I know enough to be dangerous. I’ve debugged micro-code a bit, and I’ve done some instruction analysis. But I sat and listened to IBM describe the 970, and the jaw dropped. 130 nanometer process? 9 angstrom data channels? 215 step instruction prefect? This is a first generation product?

and then the system wrapped around it? Drool city.

there have been a few products at Apple in my time that generated serious geek lust. the IIsi (a great package at the time). The first time I got my hands on a IIfx. The duo (probably my favorite computer ever until the TiBook). The first generation USB/firewire boxes. The iMac. The TiBook. And now, the G5.

Panther? Haven’t touched it yet (or panther-server). Will soon. But I love Expose, I love the data vault.

With iSight, Apple sticks it’s hands into the Voice over IP market, much to the dismay of folks trying to build their own Voice over IP. Now, IM/video and IM/audio won’t talk to someone on a phone like vonage, but both of you can get AIM accounts instead… So why go to the extra cost? For lots of folks, they don’t need to…

The new mail changes are pretty nice — the safari HTML renderer is awesome. I think there’s a lot of joy left to add to Mail, though. too, but it’s a good tool going great.

Yes, I’m biased, but you know what? it’s days like todays that have made all of the other, not so good days at Apple the last decade or so worth it…

Now, to go track down some CD’s…

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