MacWorld 2007 Keynote pt 1: Deadly Designs

The story of my MacWorld keynote experience starts off not with a trip to San Fransisco, but a trip to Starbucks to snag some wifi.

First Maybe I should review Starbucks in Rochester, MN.

I had planed all week to take a two hour lunch (I'm that much of a Mac fanatic). I thought it would be a good idea to walk to my local Starbucks and grab some coffee while I was waiting. I had planned to pull up the live blog from Macrumors.com and follow along (seriously Apple, why not just do it streaming live on the web again?).

I got to Starbucks about 15 minutes before the keynote was scheduled to start. The line was extra large. I waited for about 10 minutes when I finally progressed far enough to see that their credit card machine was refusing to work, probably because it just learned that Starbucks does not give benefits to machines. I looked at my cell phone (B.I. - Before iPhone) and bolted from the line.

I ran to the nearest table, full of bubbling excitement and whipped open my MacBook Pro. Ahh, the sweet Apple boot up tone, the lovely OSX desktop...and no wifi? I looked up to see a sign staring at me saying that they had pulled the wifi from Starbucks. CRAP!

I packed up and dashed out determined to find a place with some decent wifi and a decent credit card machine.

Seriously Starbucks...what's going on? In Utah you were a fun place full of life and people with interesting tattoos and piercings. In Rochester you see your grandma working at Starbucks. Very disturbing indeed. (Even more disturbing if you visualize your grandma with a lip ring and spiked hair).

Caribou Coffee to the Rescue

Finally I found a Caribou Coffee. Caribou is a great coffee house here in the Midwest. The people are friendly and really understand what they are doing. It's like Starbucks used to be before Midwestern grandmas started working in them.

I was able to obtain a vanilla late and a seat in record time.

Finally I could get to the keynote.

*Jamie's saga continues as soon as he stops staring at the apple website......