This is the way the pipe dream ends-- not with a bang, but a... well, not so much a whimper, really, but more a sort of wheezy, strangulated hissing type of sound. Sort of a cross between someone letting the air out of all four of your tires and the sound you'd make if you found out that your girlfriend just left you for the guy who ran over your dog. Yes, sports fans, the Gregnote is over, and if, against all available evidence to the contrary, you were still holding out hope for some big ol' hardware announcements today, you're probably weeping gently into the tattered remains of your overoptimism right about now. Because according to MacMinute, we got zilch. Zippo. So much nothing that we could open an entire franchise of drive-thru NothingBurger™ restaurants coast to coast and immediately expand the menu to include NothingFries™, NothingNuggets™ and Captain Nothing's Crunchy-on-the-Outside, Tender-and-Flaky-on-the-Inside Filet-O-Nothing™. In other words, we got squat.

Sort of. Reportedly Joz "gave a recap of this morning's news on Soundtrack and Final Cut Pro as well as other recent Apple announcements, including Mac OS X 10.3 'Panther' and the Power Mac G5." For those of you who, like us, were in some sort of coma during the last Final Cut Pro version upgrade and therefore have no idea what Soundtrack is, it's apparently a nifty little module that allows musicians as well as mere mortals to cobble together royalty-free background music from a library of "over 4,000 instrument loops and sound effects covering a wide variety of instruments and genres." The news today is that starting next month, you won't have to shell out a grand just to get your mitts on Soundtrack; it's going to be available as a $299 standalone application as well. (As for the Final Cut Pro news, well, that's enough plot fodder for an entire scene of its own. Stay tuned.)

Overall, though, WIRED describes Joz's performance as "tepid" (hey, c'mon, consider his material, guys-- if he'd had something to work with more compelling than, say, the Apple keynote equivalent of the script for Corky Romano, he'd probably have been a star), though apparently the conferencegoers aren't letting a few little things like no Steve, no Stevenote, no new hardware (the G5 is already last month's news, after all), no world peace, and no beverages available for under eight bucks ruin an otherwise good time. Low attendance be hanged; the Mac fans who are there are reportedly making the best out of an otherwise non-event, and the smaller crowds must be encouraging a greater sense of closeness and community. Heck, in a couple more days, everyone will probably be so close they'll all be toasting marshmallows together over the smoldering wreckage of a Javits Center refreshment stand. "Kumbaya" will figure heavily.

So what's the moral, here, kiddies? Well, we suppose one interpretation might be that when life hands you lemons, you can always make lemonade. And a slightly less insipid take on the whole thing might be that you should never ever ever get your hopes up about anything ever again, because disappointment is the soul's slow and silent killer that will eventually leave you crushed and broken beneath the weight of the world's harsh realities. Our chosen interpretation, however, is that we're glad we stayed home and watched TiVo instead.