Yesterday I went to the Apple Shareholders Meeting with my friend Deb, who had never been to one before. As usual with these things, it was pretty uneventful, although it was a Steve Jobs Performance. The most interesting thing that happened to me was the security guards taking away my phone because it has a camera: the Cone of Silence was in full effect. Which is weird, because there was zero news or confidential information.
In the old days, Apple took advantage of the gathering to make major product announcements at these meetings. They awkwardly combined the formal, boring business of a shareholders meeting with the excitement of cool new stuff. Then Apple figured out how to create (or co-create) its own events for new products. That's not just Macworld Expo, but also the Apple //c introduction event in 1984, which included a 6.1 earthquake -- how did Steve arrange that? -- and Apple World Expo in LA in 1987, which featured the Macintosh II intro.
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