The third floor of the Moscone Center West is typically the most remote location at any conference held there. The foryer, near the escalators, is usually the most populated area: big sponsor banners, maybe a walled off area for attendees to sit at empty, white-cloth-covered tables. Maybe, if the conference is big enough, there are user talks in the modular areas along the south and north lengths of the building. Sometimes the entire floor is relegated to the keynote, and sits unused for all but 1 hour of each day.
Once, during last year’s All Star game, the third floor was kid land for the fans: tykes ran rough-shod after ground balls, and took their chances at throwing strikes acrossa net-backed plate.
When you get right down to it, all three floors of the Moscone West are the same shape, size, and design. It’s only the flooring and the modular walls that set the second and third apart from the always-an-expo-hall first.
But I’ll always have a soft spot for the third floor after today. Because today, on the second to last day of MacWorld San Francisco 2008, the third floor is mine. There is no one here to pitch me. No one trying to look at my badge. No grinning geeks agog at gawkery and gadgets. Though there is a small area for job seekers, sponsored by Dice.com, the rest of this floor is cordoned off, giving me all the space I need to sit and do my daily writing and a few interviews over the phone.
Looking down from here on Howard street below, I’m able to see the crowd crossing the street to the South hall. I can spy the science museum, and the Green Door next to Elan. As I write this, I’ve watched as no less than 17 ghetto-mobiles have parked in front of the fire hydrant outside the Green Door. Mostly Acuras. In one case, the same Acura: white, same year, but different people, switched spots: One left, the other backed in. Pot smokers are obviously too lazy to park 4 spaces down, where there are meters with signs saying “no parking this week.” Obviously, the fire hydrant is a more tasty violation.
So, Moscone West, third floor is decidedly not mine, now. Another intrepid adventurer has just gone by. Riding his bicycle, no less.
Below us, the world of Mac is changing. The war seems to have already been won. The former insanity, dedication, cultification is all done now. Sure, Macs aren’t the most common computers in the world, yet. And maybe they never will be. But the Apple way is winning. The psychoticly powerful force of simplicity and understanding have triumphed, and everyone gets it now.
The faithful have moved on to Linux, a platform much more in need of disciples and love than the Mac. There’s a new generation of Mac lovers now. One that is mostly made up of the creative types and independent thinkers. Oh wait. It was always like that.
But this is another bumper crop. The previous years have seen folks threshed and processed. Time for new blood. The Apple world doesn’t stand still long enough for its most loving of members to grow deep roots. Eventually, they’ll be used up and left on the street. Apple does this to its developers, whom it tends to run out of business by pulling their ideas into the OS. It does this to its users by dropping the old off a cliff, as it did to the floppy, ADB, PowerPC,
