This is a transcript of our live coverage of the MacWorld 2008 keynote address by Steve Jobs. For continuing coverage of the show itself, stay with PTTBT. We’re very trustworthy.
Early morning: PTTBT’s Erin Barkley has paid a homeless person $5 to keep her place in line outside the Moscone Center overnight and will be providing live coverage of Steve Jobs’ keynote at MacWorld 2008 starting at 8:30PST (11:30EST) when she has finished her morning routine at Starbucks. Check back here for the web’s most insightful liveblogging analysis of the Stevenote, as it happens.
8:05: We’re in line outside Moscone West. There are several hundred people here, all with iPhones and at least half the crowd is wearing mock turtlenecks. One guy with a Dell was just lynched and strung up to a lamp post.
8:08: Someone just hung a “there’s something in the air” poster from the Dell guy’s foot. Ha! Good times!
8:19: Jason Chen from Gizmodo is here. Apparently Richard Blakeley was supposed to cover MacWorld this year, but he’s in jail after discovering TV-B-Gone remotes also shut off pacemakers at a WWII Vets conference over the weekend.
8:24: A bunch of Googlers at the start of the line just announced they’d trade spots with anyone that could solve some stupid-long equation that takes up like seven sheets of paper. They’ve all got stupid grins on their faces.
8:26: A kid back about 200 people in line just called out “42!” and the Googlers all started swearing and picking up their things.
8:36: Jason Calacanis was just singled out by a bomb-sniffing dog and is being dragged from the line by two large men with kevlar vests. I checked Mahalo for an explanation but it was useless.
8:42: We’re about to be let into the hall. Everyone’s being given a little blue pill along with a pair of 3D glasses. Not sure why.
8:49: A trio of Mac fanboys just swooned next to me. Anywhere else, they’d get their asses kicked for that.
8:55: Camera crews are going in. The rest of us are pounding at the doors like Uruk-hai at Helm’s Deep. Some of us look like Uruk-hai, too ([cough]Scoble![/cough])
8:59: I felt a pleasant tingling and a sudden rush of irrational euphoria. Steve must be nearby!
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As in past years, PTTBT will provide live coverage of Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote, next Tuesday Janauary 15. Unlike other pansy-ass outfits, we will provide live, on-the-floor updates without resorting to a low-bandwidth version of our site, because our server is run by ironclad warrior Apache dwarves with magic gloves and an inhuman knowledge of load balancing.
Learn all about the new Mac Tablets in the kind of detail nobody else can match, because they’re too concerned with the facts! We will also have exclusive backstage and post-show coverage thanks to our mole, Jeremy Watson, who is Jobs’ personal grapefruit squeezer.
Be sure to tune in… it’s sure to be the most exciting and informative coverage anywhere on the web!
CNN is reporting that Ron Paul has pulled ahead of John McCain in the New Hampshire primaries, and is expected to win the state’s 1.5 delegates in a landslide: “Returns are in from Gibbler’s Gob – New Hampshire’s most populous city with over 100 residents – and it looks as though Paul will finish the day with 85% of the vote.” Analysts say the turnout can largely be attributed to the recent endorsement of tech maven Kevin Rose, who is very influential in a state so small and cold there is little else to do but browse Digg all day.
John McCain won a key endorsement from the Association American Families Struggling With Bipolar Disorder, after “it became clear Senator McCain also suffers from extreme mood swings that diminish his ability to make rational judgments or maintain a consistent personality over a period of several days.” However, Fox News questions whether the association’s members can be counted on to feel well enough to vote in November.
Hillary Clinton, reeling from a perception that her teary moment at a campaign stop on Monday was fabricated, broke down at coffee shop in New Hampshire Tuesday, where she reportedly “beat her breast, tore her hair, and wept sweet tears of sorrow and fear” at the thought of Barack Obama winning the Democratic nomination. Observers say this latest stunt proves that the recent hiring of a lead Google engineer has indeed improved the perception that Clinton is in fact human, although one analyst suggested her handlers use less Shakespeare in the Hillary 3.1 software in the future.
Shares of Apple fell in mid-morning trading after a computer glitch caused the apple.com website to release the specs of Apple’s next-generation hardware ahead of the MacWorld Expo keynote by CEO Steve Jobs on January 15.
“Obviously, we’re very upset about the mistake and are working hard ensure it never happens again,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of worldwide product marketing and political assassinations. “It’s really embarrassing for me, personally, because I usually take this last week to think of some genius marketing-speak to put in the press release, but on such short notice all I can think of is: ‘The new Mac Pro is the fastest Mac we’ve ever made’, which is utter crap since we obviously wouldn’t release something slower than the previous rev, would we? I need a scotch. Who’s up for some breakfast drinks while I try and think of something better?”
Sources inside Apple tell PTTBT that the announcements for the new Mac Pro and Xserve computers were supposed to be wrapped in Steve Jobs’ powerful Reality Distortion Field to make them more palatable to the masses, but the early announcement has left them exposed for scrutiny and ridicule. Apple engineers have been flooding message boards all morning trying to play up the new machines’ capabilities, but face an uphill battle promoting things like 4TB of internal storage and 32GB of RAM amid a torrent of jeers about single-button mice.
“Someone really dropped the ball on this one,” said tech analyst Germaine Lowenstein, “I expect they’ll be trying to polish off some half-baked products in the next six days so they have something to show at MacWorld, like they did with the Apple TV. I would hate to be in the Apple web department today, when Steve hears about this. Ballmer throws chairs, but Steve throws people. With his mind.”
Indeed, eyewitnesses report seeing four ambulances leaving Apple headquarters Tuesday, though it was not clear if the incident was related to the information leak or simply another culling of employees found to be reading Dan Lyons’ book Option$ at work.
An Apple spokesman said Jobs was unavailable for comment, as he was busy personally re-tiling the walls in the Moscone Center for “maximum karmic energy transference” ahead of “the ritual”.
Music label Sony BMG has unveiled their new “No DRM” initiative, aimed at making access to music as difficult and painful as possible. Rather than wrapping digital files with copy protection as they have in the past, future Sony acts will have their songs released in unencumbered MP3 format from MusicPass.com. However, to ensure their customers maintain “a consistent level of dissatisfaction with the Sony brand”, access to the MP3s will require music lovers to visit brick-and-mortar retail outlets to purchase a “Platinum Music Pass” card, which they will need to snatch out of a barrel of agitated piranhas with their bare hands. Retail giant Best Buy was spared the man-eating fish requirement after Sony lawyers pointed out “you can only subject a person to so many unspeakable horrors before they call it a Geneva Convention violation.”
