Well, so much for heady optimism. Those of you who donned your rose-colored (or is that Strawberry-flavored?) glasses and peered through them looking for the best of all possible worlds-- i.e. new iMacs at NECC-- may be facing some mild disappointment today. This was, after all, the date of Uncle Steve's keynote address at the National Educational Computing Conference 2001. What's that? You missed it? Well, if you were hoping for some big Stevenote-sized announcements of massive import to Mac users the world over, then trust us: actually, you didn't miss a thing.

Not that it came as any particular shock to us, mind you, but there were no new iMacs joining Steve onstage this morning. Slightly more surprising, however, is the fact that there were no new anythings unveiled; at the very least, we expected a rebranded and updated version of PowerSchool, the student information package that Apple bought in a mad splurge back in March. We figured, if nothing else, that Steve would finally reveal what Apple is planning to do with that not-so-mysterious ISCHOOL.COM domain name that Apple snagged back in January. But noooooo.

Instead, Steve's dog and pony show was all about Apple's "commitment to students, teachers, and administrators," and focused exclusively on existing technologies. On the student side, he talked up AirPort-enabled iBooks, for example, which our glorious CEO calls "the future" of the computer-aided classroom. (According to Steve, at least, Apple is number one in education notebook sales, as well as in wireless connectivity.) Teachers, on the other hand, should be drooling all over Apple's "digital hub" strategy, which allows them to use devices like digital cameras and DV camcorders together with iTools, iMovie, and iDVD to make learning fun and effective. For administrators, there's PowerSchool-- yes, the same old PowerSchool-- to make "real-time, centralized, Web-based" student information tracking... um... well, fun and effective.

And that was it, technologically speaking. Ah, well; more for Macworld Expo, right? In a way, we're glad that nothing earthshattering happened at NECC, because we would have missed it completely. The alleged "live webcast" was completely and utterly broken, as far as we could make out (maybe they should have used QuickTime instead of Real), so instead of basking in His Steveness's digitized and compressed glory, we relied on MacNN to get us the goods instead. But at the Expo, you can bet your sweet bippies we're going to be live, in person, and as close to the stage as possible, not only to bathe in Steve's life-sustaining Reality Distortion Field, but also to get a good glimpse of the new iMac-- which had better show up at the Javits Center then, or we're gonna have to bust some heads.