The Steve bathed in the worship. The audience was more excited than he had ever seen.
"So", he coughed, "A quad-core 64 bit iMac, the new native Windows application support in Leopard, and a 100 gigabyte iPod, for lossless music. But before we go..."
The audience gasped, they knew the next four words and shouted them out. Boy, that had never happened before.
"Just! One! More! Thing!"
What was it about MacWorld this year? Steve gulped, and stepped back, pulling the cloth over a huge CRT-shaped screen.
"Say hello to iPhone."
He had to pause for the gasps. Realising most the audience hadn't heard it, he cleared his throat and tried again.
"This is the new iPhone. It's a 50" monitor. You hang it on your wall. And it has a built in iSight camera that actually sits behind the screen. Microphones that use echo cancellation in conjunction with the speakers. It's an entirely seamless two way video conferencing system. Stand in front of it, the person you're talking to can see you, and you can see them. Wow."
The audience was quiet, mouths wide open.
"We're using advanced mobile phone technology to give it a permanent connection to the rest of the world. And it's powered by the sound of your voice and the ambient light in the room, so you don't have to do anything to keep it running. In fact, once installed, it will sit in your room permanently working, keeping you in constant contact. Full colour bi-directional audio-visual communication. Wow."
The TV switched over to a picture of Jobs himself. A slightly younger version of him in the picture. It looked out of the screen with a knowing smile. And piercing eyes. No matter where in the conference room you looked, those eyes looked back at you.
"Now, a 50" TV would normally cost you thousands of dollars, plus hundreds of dollars a year for cable or satellite service. But the most exciting part of this new technology is the price. Thanks to a deal with the Department of Homeland Security, we will be installing an iPhone in every room of every household in the country. For free. That's right. You'll never be out of sight of an iPhone."
The audience was barely listening any more. They looked at the screen, the eyes of The Steve looking right back at them.
"There are no fiddly controls, no buttons to press or numbers to remember. Every iPhone will be permanently connected back to the Department of Truth at the new iNgsoc office in Culpertino. Our trained staff will keep a watch over you, helping you with your morning exercise, freeing your mind from troubling thoughts, and ensuring your home remains free from subvertion."
The audience was hysterical. Steve smiled triumphantly. This was yet another notch on the stick of unprecedented successes.
He'd never anticipated how well the "PowerPC good, Intel better" switch had gone two years ago; the pause in mid speech where he had railed against Intel and praised IBM, switching unnoticably to the "We are at war with IBM! We have always been at war against IBM! Intel are our friends!"; the reaction to the iPhone was... well, he knew better than most the public's wish for a simpler world where all the important things had been taken care of for them.
It was time to wrap this thing up. To go home, and sip a little Victory Gin in celebration.
