It’s the last MacWorld Expo in the 20^th Century, and MacNow Magazine has all the info you could want, including exclusive photos and first-hand coverage.

Tuesday, July 20, 1999
MacWorld Expo Town Hall Meeting:

More than 1,000 MacWorld Expo attendees filed into the Jacob Javits Center for this first-day event.

Paul Kent, MacWorld Expo Chairperson and founder of Mactivity, Inc., took the stage and warmed up the Mac crowd and introduced:

• David Pogue, who did his infamous “Song & Fun” opener titled “I just called to say I bought you!” (a Microsoft parody sung to the tune of Stevie Wonder’s “I just called to say I love you!”) along with several other parody-based songs.

• Bob “Dr. Mac” Levitus, author and columnist for various publications, who followed David with an impromptu market research poll by show of hands. He asked how many people in the audience “…like the round mouse?” Four people raised their hands! The Doctor then asked, “How many of you in the audience are here at MacWorld Expo for the first time?” About a third of the audience raised their hands. He then asked how many people “…own iMacs?” About twenty percent of the audience raised their hands. Bob continued for a few more minutes with fun comments and anecdotes.

• Andy Ihnatko, the 42^nd most-beloved computer columnist in America, took the stage and spoke about the “Box of Potential,” also known as the Macintosh. Andy stated that he was sent one of the FRS Radios, and with his love of “perverted technology,” promptly adapted the radio to his Mac. Andy also said about Mac users: “We love arrogance, in a good way.”

Adam Engst of TidBits was up next with “Apple’s Internet Report Card.”
Adam gave Apple the following grades:

A	for Internet support in the Mac Operating System. He was impressed by the HTML-based engine in the HELP menu.
B	for Internet clients, meaning Web browsers, e-mail programs, etc. He liked QuickTime and stated, “It’s taking over.”
C–	for Internet servers. He slammed Apple for not pushing AppleShare IP as a viable Internet server application.
A	for Web presence, stating Apple has a clean and easier-to-use interface on their Web site, and info is easier to find now. He also noted that Apple’s use of WebObjects makes commerce at Apple’s site simple and fairly straightforward.
C	for community and user groups
Incomplete	for MacOS X Server, since it’s in its first version.

Paul Kent then introduced Steve Wilhite, Apple’s new Vice President of Marketing Communication, who worked for Volkswagen and is now responsible for Apple’s brand. Since the Apple Computer, Inc. brand is one of the ten most recognized brands in the world, his job is no small endeavor. He talked a bit about his long love of Macintoshes and his long standing devotion to Apple.

Paul then turned the stage over to Kanwal Sharma, manager of the AppleMasters program. Sharma introduced several AppleMasters and the producers of some of their favorite programs:

• Artist Paul Davis introduced John Dalton, the creator of Studio Artist 1.0 ($295.00 list price). Dalton also created Deck, the music software.

  
  
  Paul Davis with John Dalton, showing off Studio Artist 1.0

• Michael Backes, who has worked with the likes of Michael Crichton (also an AppleMaster!), showed off Flight of the Cube, “…a new software engine for animation that offers the possibility of rich interactive games,” and Atomic Power’s Psunami 1.0, an Adobe After Effects 4.0 plug-in which allows artists to “…synthesize the behavior of water that one sees in the real world.”

  
  
  Michael Backes shows off Psunami 1.0 in real-time.

• Musician David Mash touted Opcode’s Vision DSP and Arboretum Systems’ software products.

  
  
  David Mash shows how well Vision DSP works for him.

• Jim Ludtke gave the audience a peak at his TV cartoon Tube Dwellers and showed off Electric Image’s Electric Image 2.9.

  
  
  Jim Ludtke gives us a backstage view of Tube Dwellers.

This ended another fine AppleMasters presentation and ended another MacWorld Expo East Coast Town Meeting.

Wednesday, July 21, 1999
Keynote:

“More than 5,500 attendees, press and Apple VIPs stood in line for as long as four and a half hours, waiting with anticipation of what Steve Jobs is about to say, do and announce, which set a record for attendance at any MacWorld keynote event in San Francisco or New York,” said Show Director Nicole Deraney of IDG Expo Management Co. (The show in total had 46,119 people in attendance, much better than last year’s New York MacWorld.)

The crowd was allowed to file into the Keynote at around 8:55 am ET. The house lights dimmed, stage lights went up, and out came the current iCEO, Steve Jobs…

No, wait! That’s not Steve Jobs. He’s too young to be Steve. Could it be…? Is it…? Why, yes! It’s Noah Wyle, from the acclaimed made-for-TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, based on a book by Steve Wozniak, in which Noah plays Steve Jobs, and even more famous from his days on NBC’s ER. Steve Jobs walked out a minute later and jokingly razzed Noah, stating: “You didn’t get it right! First you have to walk over here and open the water, then you talk to the audience!” It was an interesting start to what would prove to be an interesting Keynote.

After that, Steve Jobs was all business, recapping some of the WWDC highlights, such as Apple Computer, Inc. posting $203 million in profits. This is the seventh straight quarter of profitability for Apple, making Apple healthy and strong again (but we at MacNow Magazine and our faithful readers already knew this! ;-> ).

Steve told the audience that there have been over ten million downloads of QuickTime 4.0, and that the Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace movie trailer has had 400+ Terabytes of download! He went on to introduce QuickTime TV in association with Akamai Technologies and their worldwide network of 900+ servers that will offer streaming content from ABC, ESPN, Rolling Stone, VH1 and Disney, along with other “channels” to be added as time goes on.

Apple’s iCEO went on to mention that even Weird Al Yankovic’s “The Saga Begins,” a Star Wars parody, was in QuickTime streaming format. He mentioned that QuickTime allows Flash Interactive content to be viewed and linked to QuickTime media, and as an example of this he went to Disney’s ToyStory 2 area in QuickTime TV. He also noted that QTTV is Mac- and Windows-based.

Mr. Jobs then went on to discuss the Mac OS (Operating System) strategy and showed a beta version of Mac OS 9, which includes Sherlock 2.0 and 49 other improvements to the operating system and is slated for an October 1999 release at US$99.00.

Next, Jobs took a drink of bottled water, took a deep breath and then unveiled the new iBook. Steve said the “…iBook is the ‘iMac to go’ for both home and school,” and “…iBook was designed right from the start to use Apple’s revolutionary new AirPort wireless networking for cable-free Internet access.”

These new consumer-level PowerBooks have a 12.1" screen, 300MHz G3 processor, 512KB L2 Backside cache, 32MB SDRAM, 24X CD-ROM drive, 56K V.90 modem, USB ports, 10/100base-T Ethernet port, full-size keyboard, a built in handle and a case made of the same material as the iMac, with protective and colorful rubber all around, as well as a six-hour battery life. The power cord comes in a round self-retracting case and the iBook can use the optional AirPort Card and Base Station for wireless networking. The AirPort Base Station connects up to ten iBooks to an Ethernet network from as far away as 150 feet (45m). The iBook starts at US$1,599.00 from the Apple Store and Authorized Resellers and will be available in September (you can pre-order now). At this time the iBook comes in two colors, Tangerine and Blueberry, and comes bundled with:

Mac OS 8.6 AppleWorks Palm Desktop Organizer Internet Explorer Microsoft Outlook Express Netscape Communicator AOL 4.0 EarthLink TotalAccess EdView Internet Safety Kit, Family Edition The World Book Encyclopedia Adobe Acrobat Reader FAXstf Nanosaur Bugdom QuickTime 4

A Tangerine iBook on display.

To prove his point about the iBook being an “on the go machine,” Steve had Phil Schiller jump from a scaffold onto an air bag with an iBook in his arms. Attached to it was ImagiWorks’ ImagiProbe, a device that senses movement, to prove that the iBook equipped with the AirPort works and works well. I wonder if this demo stemmed from Steve Jobs telling Phil Schiller to jump, and Phil replying, “How high?” ;->

Steve Jobs then introduced the Co-Founder of Bungie, John Jones, who demonstrated a new game utilizing OpenGL called Halo (code named BLAM for those who are into that). It was awesome, and can not be described in writing! He showed some real-time rendered scenes from the game and mentioned Bungie’s new, soon to be released action game Oni. (Bungie was in the gaming pavilion, selling their new “Mac Action Sack,” a compilation of six of Bungie’s greatest games for only US $19.95!)

Finally, Steve introduced W.S. “Ozzie” Osborne, general manager of IBM Speech Systems, who introduced ViaVoice for the Mac! Mr. Osborne said, “Our work with Apple underscores IBM’s initiative to bring its award-winning speech recognition technology to today’s most popular operating platforms, such as the Macintosh. … With ViaVoice for Macintosh, consumers will benefit from IBM’s easy-to-use conversational interface and the user-friendly Macintosh platform.” I had a chance to see a demo of this new software, which is not yet scheduled to ship, and it was very good. It comes with headphones and a microphone in iMac and Blue & White colors, and was a joy to watch. I wanted the beta!

Thursday, July 22 & Friday, July 23, 1999:
The Show Floor:

With over 360 vendors showing their goods on the floor, 5,000 new Macintosh based products in the last year, and sales figures never before heard of in the computer industry, it was the best MacWorld Expo East Coast ever.

At this MacWorld there was one thing that became very apparent: Macintosh gaming is back and here to stay, with Bungie Software, Blizzard Entertainment, Ambrosia Software, Aspyr Media, FreeVerse, MacSoft, Green Dragon Creations, LogicWare and several other game manufacturers all showing new or soon to be released games at the show.

Adobe Systems, Inc., Quark, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, EPSON, Canon USA, Inc., Filemaker, Inc., IBM, Apple and many other hardware and software manufacturers were on hand to exhibit new peripherals and software products for home, business, leisure fun, education, science and almost any other area a Macintosh computer serves. It is quite apparent that the Mac and Apple Computer, Inc. are no longer the laughing stock they were once portrayed as in the major media. I even spoke with a reporter from Bloomberg News, and he had nothing but good to say about Apple and Macintosh, even though he admitted to being from the Dark Side.

Show Wrap-Up:

MacWorld Expo, New York City, 1999 will be remembered as the Expo that finally launched the fourth product in Apple’s four tier product scheme, the iBook. It will also be the last MacWorld Expo of the 20^th Century — you know, right before all those PCs and AS400 machines go boom, while we all iBook, iMac, G3 and even Mac Classic our way into the 21^st Century unscathed. Apple’s sales are up, vendors are either recommitting to the Mac or are pledging their support, games are abounding, speech recognition is just around the corner from IBM, MacSpeech and Dragon Systems. There are hundreds of peripherals and thousands of software products now available. And there is QuickTime, our cross platform savior.

All in all, this was the best MacWorld Expo I have ever attended, and let’s not forget all the excellent conferences and learning sessions that took place at the Expo (thanks for organizing such a great event, Paul Kent and IDG Expos).

The only negative thing I have to say about this year’s Expo is the way IDG Expos and the Jacob Javits Center security staff handled the Keynote hall exit. It reminded me of that fateful Who concert tragedy, where eleven fans got crushed to death. The Expo staff only opened two doors for over 5,500 people to exit to the Expo floor. Fortunately no one was hurt, but do a better job in the future on this one, please.

Special Thanks:

Ilene Hoffman — I had a wonderful time at the Web Designer’s and Writer’s Deli Extravaganza held at Katz’s Deli. Excellent corned beef sandwiches, BTW. Thanks to all who attended, it was a pleasure meeting all of you (you know who you are ;-> ).

Bill Brokaw Advertising, Inc. — for taking a chance.

Colleen, aka Sheila — just thank you for all these years, and putting up with my pilgrimages.

WilliamLH <reviewer@mymac2u.com>
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This article is Copyright © 1999 WilliamLH. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.