MWSF - Beleaguered? Tell That To The 90,000+ That Hit MACWORLD

by , 7:00 AM EST, January 17th, 2001

Don't tell the Mac community that their favorite computer maker is "beleaguered." Last week's MACWORLD Expo in San Francisco saw 93,000 visitors making it the largest Mac gathering ever. Not only was traffic to the show high, nearly a quarter of a million people tuned in to watch the video stream of Steve Jobs Tuesday morning keynote speech. According to IDG:

IDG World Expo and Apple today announced that a record of over 93,000 people attended the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco last week, making it the largest gathering of Mac fans in the U.S. ever.

``The record crowd underscores the Mac's incredible appeal among consumers and professionals,'' said Charlie Greco, president and CEO of IDG World Expo, organizers of the event. ``We're thrilled to see tens of thousands of new and long-standing Mac fans alike flock to Macworld to see innovative new products like Apple's new Titanium PowerBook G4 and Apple's stunning new iTunes and iDVD software applications.''

In addition to the show's record attendance, more than a quarter million people tuned into the live QuickTime stream of the Macworld keynote delivered by Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. During the keynote, Jobs unveiled the new Titanium PowerBook¨ G4; a new Power Mac G4 line featuring the revolutionary combination CD-RW/DVD-R SuperDrive for reading and writing both CDs and DVDs; iTunes, the world's best and easiest to use ``jukebox'' software; iDVD, a revolutionary new application that lets consumers quickly and easily create professional looking DVDs; and DVD Studio Pro, the first full-featured DVD authoring tool for under $1,000.

The keynote was streamed over Apple's QuickTime TV network, which delivers broadcast quality and high levels of reliability and includes Apple's QuickTime 4 player. The state-of-the-art QuickTime 4 player for Macintosh and Windows users worldwide is available free at www.apple.com/quicktime.

You can find more information about last week's MACWORLD Expo in The Mac Observer's MWSF 2000 Special Report.

The Mac Observer Spin:

The numbers are slightly misleading, as last summer's MACWORLD Expo in New York City lasted for only three full days, and the San Francisco show went for four days. However, the numbers are nothing to take lightly, and it is good to see the Mac community rallying around Apple rather than declaring them dead.

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