Greeted to the kind of reception guaranteed not to appear out of the ordinary at country music star Garth Brooks’ free concert in New York’s Central Park today, some MacWorld Expo attendees who had to watch Steve Jobs’ keynote on video screens in a hotel adjoining the main event hall suggested the organizers would have done better to stage the event on the close-by Boston Common. Doors to the keynote held in the 1,000-seat Castle at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel were shut not long after 7am, some two hours before Jobs took the stage. At least 1,000 others packed overspill halls in the hotel proper. The audience – some in tears such is the emotion Apple manages to stir – listened stunned as Jobs announced the company’s pact made down in Devil Gate Drive. They didn’t appear particularly enamored by the choice of Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison to serve on the new board: I hope that wasn’t booing I heard, said Jobs. It was. Loudest jeering was reserved for the decision to make Internet Explorer the default browser on Macintosh and Bill Gates’ live appearance by satellite.
