Krazy Ken: This is a big one. Steve Jobs walks on stage and tells the world how Apple is going to get healthy again. And he ends the event with a mega bombshell announcement with a lot of booing and cheering from the audience. We'll talk about all that and more today on Apple Keynote Chronicles. Krazy Ken: Apple Keynote Chronicles is made possible by our awesome friends at Linode. Simplify your infrastructure, and cut your Cloud bills in half with Linode's Linux virtual machines. Hey, we like things simple here, right? So, to keep it easy, if it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode. Krazy Ken: Hey, guys, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome. My name is Krazy Ken, and welcome back to Apple Keynote Chronicles. And of course, I'm joined here today by my helpless test subject, Brad. Brad, thanks for being my co-host today. Brad: I can't wait to do this. Every time, it's so exciting revisiting these. It's a pleasure. Krazy Ken: And I am really excited today because this is personally one of my favorite Steve notes ever. Actually, it's one of the shortest ones, but it's a pretty historic one. This is a pivotal part in the Apple plotline, if you will. So, we like to do this show every other Monday, so we can make your Monday a fun day, but if you're actually listening to us immediately when this episode came out, we're only a few hours away from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. And we're about to see some big new stuff being released from Apple. But hey, that's the present. Because this is Apple Keynote Chronicles, we live in the past, so we're going to talk about the Macworld 1997 Keynote, which was in Boston. Krazy Ken: And before we jump in, I just want to correct one thing. We kind of jumped the gun on the Think Different Media Event that we talked about in a past episode, and we talked about it in the same episode where we covered the January 1997 Macworld. We had the dates all correct, but we presented the episodes in the wrong order because truthfully, WWDC 1997 and Macworld Boston, the one we're covering today, happened before the Think Different Media Event, so I just wanted to clear that up. Krazy Ken: Thanks to Sage from youtube.com/sagefuncom. I'm now using noteskey.com as my general timeline, which is a lot more accurate than the last website I was using to plan these episodes and it's also a lot more visual. So, if you want to see a cool visual timeline of Apple's keynotes, go check out noteskey.com. So, I just wanted to correct the chronology because Chronicles is in our name, so we kind of have to get that right, but anyway, moving on. Krazy Ken: So, this keynote is a big one. This is a huge plot point in the Steve Jobs Apple story. So, we're in Boston, Macworld 1997. Steve Jobs was about to take the stage and word was spreading about his deeper involvement in Apple. If you haven't heard the past episodes, I highly encourage you to listen to them, but just for a little bit of context, at this time, Apple was maybe three months away from insolvency. They were in a bad place, and they were not making money here. And Gil Amelio was the CEO at the time. And let's just say, things could have been better. Apple was in a lot of trouble at this time. Krazy Ken: In July, Apple's stock grew from $13 a share to $20 a share and the hype was growing as Macworld drew near. So, just picture this, more than 5000 people show up hours early, packed in the Castle Hall of the Park Plaza Hotel. All these people are just getting together to watch Steve Jobs talk. So, at the beginning of the Keynote, Colin Crawford comes out on stage. He's the President and CEO of Mac publications and he talks about how it's kind of been an emotional roller coaster, right? And he posts a few things on the screen. He's on stage. There's this big screen behind him and he talks about this one quote that I think Red Herring said. It was in June 1997. The headline or the quote was, "Gil Amelio, please resign." So, there were some applause on that one. And again, he was the CEO of Apple at that time, but not a lot of people approved of that. Krazy Ken: Another headline or a quote from Business Week was, "Is Apple mincemeat?" And there was definitely some booing in the audience from that. And Collin specifically said that Gil Amelio wasn't happy with the media coverage. But the response to that was, Apple would be in bigger trouble if the media just straight up stopped caring. So, it's kind of like that cliché of "All press is good press," right? Even though people were saying these negative things about Apple, at least they cared. It's so much better than getting no media coverage at all. Brad: They had a passionate fan base. That's something that- Krazy Ken: Totally. Brad: I got a little more context where I had been reading Becoming Steve Jobs and going through a bit of the history. The last recording that we did, I was kind of asking like, "What is the perception of Apple at this time?" Krazy Ken: I remember that, yeah. Brad: I got a lot more of an idea of what was going on back then. And yeah, I mean, they had a passionate fan base. And it kind of reminded me of my grandma ran a print shop in Phoenix, Arizona growing up and there was a Mac guy or a guy who had a little Mac store next to her. And I remember seeing the Mac and being like, "Wow, this guy's really passionate." And he had all the magazines and things there, just in a way that you didn't see like people caring about other computers in that way. Krazy Ken: Yeah. And I've noticed that even that way now there's absolutely people that like their brand, but you don't see a bunch of bio pics being made about Michael Dell, right? I mean, I haven't seen any. I'm sure there's documentaries and stuff on him because he's crazy successful. Brad: Sure. Krazy Ken: But he doesn't create the same kind of, I don't want to say cult following, but let's just say pop culture reaction that someone like Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk would create. Brad: Yeah, he's a boring billionaire. That's the recap. Krazy Ken: Michael Dell don't hate us. Brad: The interesting thing was, though, that they did still have that passionate audience. They didn't know Steve Jobs had been gone for such a long time and it's still, I still don't have the full answer because I wasn't actively using MACs back then, I was too young. But it seems like the creatives were still around and the professionals. And those people were passionate about it and they proselytize to others still, but it did seem in this period that that could only hold out for so long. Krazy Ken: Right. And I think that is one of the things that helped Apple continue here. And they do mention this kind of stuff in the next couple of keynotes, we'll be talking about. Steve Jobs specifically mentions the number of users. He says it's like 20 to 25 million, which yes, Apple is in trouble at this time. But they can turn it around, 20 to 25 million users is still a lot of people. They can totally make something work from that. And you're right, a lot of passion and loyalty remain. Krazy Ken: In fact, Colin said similar words, if not the exact same words when he was on stage, saying that people want the MAC market to be successful, so then, I thought this was interesting, he shows a slide of a PowerBook, a Power Mac, and an eMate 300, one of the Newtons. For those who don't know, Steve Jobs kind of just killed that off, but that hasn't happened yet, but it happens pretty soon. So then, Colin says, "To start us off in the right direction is an individual who really needs little introduction." He shows that first Macworld cover where Steve is on the counter with the three MACs there. Krazy Ken: And there's people standing, there's people pumping fists and sharing and yelling, "Steve, Steve, Steve." And Steve Jobs walks out on stage, not really in the turtleneck stage yet, but he still looks really good. So, he comes out, and he puts on the screen, "Status report." So, he's like, "All right, we're going to talk about how we're going to get Apple healthy again." And I like that he mentioned that Apple is executing wonderfully on many of the wrong things. Yeah, their focus was kind of allover and they were spreading themselves a little bit thin, in my opinion. But he did see that there were good people there.