And as always it's San Francisco. This is also the twelfth edition of the N.E.Mac ["any Mac"] Best of Show awards...

Those who have been to San Francisco for any reason will recognize the image above as the Moscone Center -- home of Macworld Expo. In the fog, common to the area, I know it looks like the show is held on an isolated island but that's just an illusion.

Keynote
With the iHardware -- iMacs and iBooks -- moving gracefully into middle age, what would the big news be... afterall, Steve Jobs always has a "and by the way" tidbit or two to announce.

In addition to the business blue editions of the iHardware, Steve previewed OS X -- that's the Macintosh Operating System version 10 that will follow OS 9 -- he got OS X out the barn and took it for a ride around the auditorium. It is, to give it a Hollywood pitch description, Kai's PowerTools meets Toy Story. It's mouseover responsive and with the use of animations and has lots of "white space" under the 3D drop shadows -- very nice guide for Mac user. The keynote demo was then on view over at the Apple area on the show floor for the duration. Also on display was the new four thousand dollar, twenty-two inch Cinema Display.

I always enjoy the "who, what, when, where, and wow" portion of the keynote where the iCEO ['i' now stands for Internet, not interim] spins the number of users and plays out the good news in fact and figure fashion... we Mac fanatics love that stuff. And, as Fortune magazine put it, Job -- and therefore Apple -- "wins by design"... over and over again.

Last, but not least, Steve showed off Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 for the Macintosh. Now, initially as is the Macworld Expo tradition, Microsoft products are greeted with a smattering of hissing and booing. But out on the show floor this is a pretty cool browser and it's literally becoming the only Internet browser out there.

Pensare Diverso

That's "Think Different" in Italian. Looming, just like fog over the Golden Gate Bridge, was the second season of HBO's The Sopranos. All over SF were kiosks featuring the connected boys and girls of New Jersey, while on at the show, 85,000 Mac heads bought up everything in sight to the point where vendors were sending home for more of everything so as to have stuff to sell!

For the Mac user these days being "connected" more and more means having a Mac-like handheld device. What Apple's Newton wasn't Palm and Handspring's handhelds are: they fit in your hand; and go in your pocket, but they're much like the Mac... well, they're Family.

In addition to the 12th edition of the N.E. Mac ["any Mac"] Best of Show Awards you can see more images from Macworld Expo/SF 2000.

And now...

Macworld Expo/SF 2000 Best of Show winners >>>

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