Steve Jobs launches the iPod Nano. Photograph: Lou Dematteis/Reuters
The line at which corporate presentation becomes a ritual is not crossed too often but Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, is now safely over the other side. His addresses are events in their own right - bookended by the chatter of new product speculation on the net and the point at the close of the speech when Jobs utters the words "one more thing". This is where he unveils a product Apple devotees will usually hail for its revolutionary brilliance. Sometimes that even turns out to be the case.
And so it surely will be this time around when the annual Macworld conference and expo hits its high point in San Francisco. A Washington Post report has the strange mix of business and folklore about right: "As predictably as Santa Claus on Christmas morning, Apple founder Steve Jobs will bring us something new today." For the more maniacal Mac fans, Jobs is indeed the Father Christmas of northern California, albeit one who charges for his offerings and wears a black turtleneck with faded jeans.
Reports on sites such as Apple Insider, Mac Rumours and Think Secret (sued by Apple in 2005 for revealing the Mac Mini and iPod Shuffle ahead of the keynote) try to answer that all-important question: what will he bring? The majority of forecasts centre on a revamped laptop line using Intel processors, a new piece of software called iWeb (no one is sure what it is, but a link appeared all too briefly on the Apple website) and a huge flat-screen television with a computer built in. If that is Jobs's big announcement, expect lots of reports enthusing about media convergence in the living room. One that already is, observes that the new products at Macworld are "always a generation ahead of the competition, even if Apple didn't invent the product category".
The other area Apple leads in is marketing, which is as important a part of the keynote experience as the products. A real-life story from one of Jobs's little helpers in last week's Technology Guardian details the hundreds of hours of work behind the "sophisticated blend of sales pitch, product demonstration and corporate cheerleading, with a dash of religious revival thrown in". Put like that, it begins to sound less rather like consumer electronics than a political rally. It makes you wonder what Jobs would be doing if he was not selling computers.
