Nemo’s Notes from Underground v2007.01 — “Mr. Prequel” ?

Nemo’s “Notes from Underground” v2007.01

Mr. Prequel?

San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center has an impressive, spacious pair of lobby areas, one each for North Hall and South Hall. All conference and expo facilities are 50 feet below, under street level, down a looonnng escalator or stairway.

These “notes from underground” will help you get a feeling of the alternative universe that is Macworld Conference and Expo during the second week of January, 2007.

But first we need to travel by air from sleepy Tucson, Arizona via bustling Los Angeles to San Francisco International Airport, on Monday late morning and early afternoon. It’s a beautiful day for airline travel, without any dust storms or blizzards in the area.

With an hour to go before departure, I notice a young man in his late 20s seated at the opposite end of my waiting lounge. He’s stocky build, with thick, wavy, dark hair, and a slight stubble on his unshaven face. He unfolds a premium set of over-ear Sony headphones, plugs its cable into his iPod, and begins to leaf through a small stack of photocopied documents.

He’s wearing a black tshirt with small white writing saying “completely remastered” on the front and “The new iPod nano” on its back. I can’t help but notice, as I stroll nearby, the screen shots of a Keynote presentation that fill his pages. He probably works at our local Tucson Apple Retail store, and is preparing for doing demos for attendees at tomorrow’s long bank of tables exhibiting Apple’s latest gear.

Then he opens a small package of snacks, and pops some pieces into his mouth, tapping his toes and nodding his head in time to the inaudible beat pouring from his iPod. He reaches into his jacket pocket to grab his mobile phone and check for messages. Not too many, I presume, as he taps out a quick text message before putting his phone away.

Easing into view behind him, I see a page with an iTunes music window, and another with the iTunes store’s offering of movies. He flips to a page with large lettering, “Full length movies,” followed by “new DVD quality with 640 x 480,” plus “Feature film only no DVD extras.” Then comes a price grid showing $9.95-and-up costs, depending upon when you order and purchase your movies. Another sheet contains a quantity of iPods, saying “Old Favorites & New Challenges,” that will be revealed by His Steveness around 9:44 a.m. tomorrow, more or less.

Is this our Stevenote prequel? Quite possibly. Aficionados are in a hurry to know what Apple is giving birth to in 2007, and normal users can wait until late Tuesday or early Wednesday to find out.

Now in Los Angeles, Mr. Prequel has a quick McDonald’s burger and drink before catching a flight ahead of mine from LAX to SFO. I munch on my sandwich of homemade bread smothered with lemon curd, almond butter, and manchego sheep’s milk cheese. Unlike Bill Palmer, I don’t have access to free Internet at Los Angeles airport, so I calmly compose these notes hours before I’ll be able to post them.

We here at MyMac.com appreciate you visiting our site for your Macworld Expo and year-round coverage of personal computer and technology news. We are proud of our columns, reviews, essays, podcasts, blogs, and everything else. As Tim, our energetic publisher says, we’re serious about what we do but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. If you learn something new and have a little chuckle in the process, tell a friend.

“Until the next time,” as David Cohen ends his Fenestration segments on the weekly MyMac.com Podcast.

[Nemo, now in San Francisco with David Weeks, having met Guy in person but missing Bakari by a few minutes.]