Journalists once described writing about the ailing computer firm as the Apple Deathwatch - until, that is, the return of Steve Jobs, writes Karlin Lillington
MY FIRST Macworld was in January 1996, when the annual San Francisco event required a monumental suspension of disbelief that you weren't attending a wake.
Those who have come late to the Apple party - and who only think of the company in terms of the world's most successful music players and online music store, as well as its cool iPhone, whizzy computers and leading brand name - may think I'm making this up. But back in the day, many journalists writing about Apple referred to their job as the Apple Deathwatch and saw Macworld as a way of checking the ailing company's faltering pulse.
Pretty much everyone but the most manic Mac fans assumed Apple, with its slowly falling market share and operational problems, only had a limited run and would either wither away or be bought out (even Apple chief executive Steve Jobs's old friend Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, considered buying it, though what the database maker would have done with a niche hardware arm was not clear).
Back then, a Steveless keynote wasn't a big deal because Jobs was long gone from the company he co-founded.
In 1996, I duly recorded the main Macworld keynote - by James Buckley, then president of Apple's US division - for this newspaper. "We're still here, and there are more Macintoshes out there than ever before," Buckley told his audience. "We still deliver something different and better."
Hardly the stirring stuff of the Jobs keynote we Apple users have loved for the past decade, but within it lay the kernel of Apple's surprising tenacity: Mac users were among the most brand-loyal buyers in the world (earning the sobriquet "the Mac faithful"), and Macs topped the list for trouble-free computing at a time when Windows was clumsy in design and full of glitches.
It was the following year's Macworld that was truly exciting, though. The Mac faithful were already in an expectant state because the company was due to announce plans for a new, overhauled operating system - widely believed to be an existing cutting-edge system from a small company called Be.
We gathered dutifully for Apple's then chief executive, Gil Amelio, assuming we'd be told of Be's acquisition by Apple. Instead, Amelio waited until the tail end of an incredibly long keynote - which included appearances by Jeff Goldblum, Peter Gabriel and Muhammad Ali - to bring Steve Jobs out on stage, announcing the acquisition of Jobs's company NeXT and its operating system.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also came on stage to celebrate Apple's 20th anniversary. The audience almost expired in ecstasy. Best. Apple. Keynote. Ever.
By 1999's Macworld, Amelio was gone in a bit of a Jobsian reverse takeover and the tradition of the "Stevenote" was established, in which Jobs appears in trademark jeans and black polo-neck, weaves what is widely referred to as his "reality distortion field" around new hardware and software, and always closes by adding an exciting "one last thing" product or service.
So compelling was the annual Stevenote that people would queue for it the day before, sleeping on the pavement outside San Francisco's Moscone convention centre.
It was always worth going to Macworld to watch Jobs, one of the business world's master showmen and salesmen, mesmerise the audience.
After every Stevenote, I'd walk out fighting the compulsion to buy immediately his keynote product, without which my life seemed suddenly empty.
Such has been the power of Jobs, who has pretty much played Jesus to a Lazarus-like Apple. No chief executive - especially one earning only an annual, one dollar salary - is as directly important to the success of a company.
For many of us who watched this extraordinary resurrection, the annual Macworld Stevenote will be deeply missed.
