- Wired News' Leander Kahney says just about every Steve Jobs keynote speech for the last 10 years has "effortlessly" sucked the audience into the Jobs "reality distortion field," a state of "suspended disbelief that makes even mundane products seem like miracles of technology".

But that didn't happen yesterday when Jobs used the 90-minute presentation to introduce a new desktop Mac and preview Leopard, the next Apple O/S.

"Mundane product details were revealed for what they were - mundane product details," says Kahney.

But the San Jose Mercury News thought it was a "cat walk for geeks" as Jobs introd Leopard, also announcing the completion of Apple's "makeover" of its computers to Intel chips with the unveiling of the new Mac Pro desktop for "creative professionals".

"With each detail, the throng of 4,200 predominantly software engineers attending Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco gasped and whooped," says the story.

"Cameras flashed as Jobs "commanded the blue-hued stage".

Apparently, Jobs also let loose at Microsoft's long-delayed Vista, "which Apple claims closely resembles its current Tiger operating system," with conference banners carying the mesdssage, Hasta la vista, Vista.

Will California governor Arnold Schwarzenneger sue Jobs for copyright violation of his famous Terminator phrase? Unlikely.

Meanwhile, Apple executives, “made sure to point out how Microsoft's upcoming Vista operating system copies a number of features already found in Mac OS X,” says The Register.

"With Leopard, which is set to arrive in the spring of next year, Apple should extend its lead over Microsoft,” it says going on, “The company today showed off an application called Time Machine that will handle automatic data backups and restores. Leopard will also include full native 64-bit software support, anti-phising tools in Mail and Safari, an automatic firewall, new parental controls with time limits and remote administration, a faster version of the Spotlight search tool (which puts things such as Google Desktop to shame), and a refined version of Boot Camp.

“With Leopard coming out and the Intel shift complete, Apple will be under more pressure than ever to show that it can take back some meaningful market share from Microsoft and the PC crowd. A lot of the performance and price knocks against Apple have been lessened via the Intel makeover. And it's pretty clear that Microsoft remains in catchup mode on the operating system front, even after Vista ships.”

The Register write-up also included several historical footnotes which were particularly poignant considering Intel is now inside Apple.

Intel co-founder Bob Noyce, who died in 1990, was one of the first investors in Apple used to ket Jobs sleep on his couch, says the story. “As Noyce's wife Ann Bowers recalls in Leslie Berlin's biography on Noyce The Man Behind the Microchip, 'Steve would regularly appear at our house on his motorcycle',” it goes on. “Soon he and Bob were disappearing into the basement, talking about projects."

Noyce treated Jobs "like a kid, but not in a patronizing way, and he'd, “let him come and go, crash in the corner. We would feed him and bring him along to events and to ski in Aspen."

But back to Leopard, "The sneak preview of Leopard was underwhelming," adds Kahney. "For what seemed an interminable time, Jobs and Co. showed off one yawn after another. There's no way I can get excited about virtual desktops or a new service that turns highlighted text into a 'to do' item. Oooo.

"Granted, the system as a whole looks slick, and Jobs said he was keeping some new features 'top secret' to stop Microsoft from copying them. But the sneak peek just confirmed what we already know: OS X is so mature and polished, major system upgrades are more about tweaks than big new functions. (Yeah, I know there's a lot of technical wizardry under the hood, but that's for the geeks).

"The audience reacted like cinema-goers determined to have a good time at a bad movie, forcing cheers at unlikely points. When wild, over-the-top applause broke out for speed gains in new servers, the reporter sitting next to me burst out laughing. 'This is like a Monty Python sketch,' she said, incredulous."

Also See:
Wired News - Has Steve Jobs Lost His Magic?, August 8, 2006
San Jose Mercury News - Jobs unveils new operating system Leopard to rival Microsoft's Vista, August 8,m 2006
The Register - Apple goes all Intel all the time, August 7, 2006