Wow, so how 'bout that keynote, huh? Yesterday it was all we could do to broadcast our raw notes on the event before collapsing into a fetal position and whimpering the word "mommy" for two hours straight while twitching. Seeing as the keynote is always the end-all and be-all of Expo drama fodder, and we've spent most of our time since then hobnobbing with the faithful viewers who stopped by to say hi and buy a t-shirt (well, that's not entirely true-- we also spent some time hearing more than we'd ever care to know about various Hollywood personalities' porn preferences), we felt a wrap-up was in order.

First of all, we'd like to mention that this was the AtAT staff's first time attending the keynote as "media" instead of as regular showgoers. As it turns out, what this elevated status got us was the chance to wait in a shorter line, the ability to move inside and wait in an enclosed "holding area" prior to the show, and access to free bad coffee. As far as better seats are concerned, well, consider another one of our naïve illusions shattered into sharp little pieces of bitter defeat. As it turns out, press people in general are apparently inconsiderate scum; who knew? After waiting patiently in line for a couple of hours, once the Expo staff started to lead us in, the line quickly degenerated into a massive mob; we'd have been better off showing up right at 8:30, because the way everyone behaved, the last ones to arrive were the first ones into the conference hall. We wound up sitting in seats that would have been labeled "OBSTRUCTED VIEW" if we had been there to see, say, Def Leppard.

Anyway, after that disappointing experience, we got to move on to the next disappointing experience-- which was, of course, the keynote itself. Perhaps it was the fact that we could only catch an occasional glimpse of Steve when he happened to wander all the way stage right, but whatever the reason, we just weren't feeling the Reality Distortion Field yesterday. While it was nice to discover that our scrying abilities with goat guts and randomly-drawn Scrabble tiles were pretty close to dead-on accurate, there just wasn't much substance there about which to get overwhelmed. Or even just plain whelmed. Yes, we'd even go so far as to say that we were underwhelmed. Sad, isn't it?

So, that was the keynote; slightly faster iMacs, the return of Snow, faster Power Macs with a new front panel (yes, those "spy photos" were real, just with translucent drive bay covers instead of the final opaque ones), and for the "big surprise," we got... iDVD 2. Sort of. It's not actually done yet-- just like Mac OS X 10.1, and those LCD iMacs everyone is talking about. But iDVD 2 is due in September. So is 10.1. We've also heard the mythical LCD iMacs are likely to surface right around then as well-- and gee, doesn't the current PowerBook promo end in September as well? Think of it this way: Apple isn't two months behind cranking out all this cool new gear; the Expo just arrived two months early. And now we've all got September to look forward to...