Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a wave of new Apple products at yesterday's MacWorld Expo keynote. They included higher-capacity, smaller-form, and Windows-compatible iPods, a new 17-inch-LCD iMac, and a number of OS X applications.
I was at Job's first keynote after returning to Apple, at the 1997 Boston expo. That was the one where he scored a coup by having Bill Gates teleconference in. To those in the room, it was like having Darth Vader pop up on the screen during a meeting of the Rebel Alliance. Still, it gave no clue to the amount of turnaround Jobs would produce at Apple. I don't think there's any corporate CEO of late whose amazing arrogance and personality is matched by raw strength in product development. I can't think of any other company that has ever released in one year the number of well-designed, innovative products that Apple regularly debuts at the MacWorld expo keynote.
(For those of you who didn't catch the title reference, Insanely Great is a book about the early days of Apple computer and the design of the Macintosh computer. )
