They had a little VIP line with a delicate white chain set up in the middle of the store. (Which, as Apple stores usually are, was packed. What are all those people doing in there? How many visits does it take to buy a computer or iPhone?) You move quickly through the line and an employee hands you your DVD case, shakes your hand, says “congratulations.” Another employee handles the receipt and puts a little payment confirmation sticker on the case that says “Lucky You”. And the door employee (who introduced herself by name as I entered) repeats the congratulations on the way out.

Compulsive and obsessive are signs of mental imbalance, right? Is that what Steve Jobs means by “insanely great?” But it’s also very effective marketing because it makes customers feel smart and special.

Should I have called my clients and said “my computer died, so I won’t be able to read any emails you send me till I get a new one”? Um, no. I have webmail for my email so I can check it from any public computer with web access by going to http://webmail.otismaxwell.com . Halfway through 2009, not being able to exchange email with your clients is simply not OK.

Should I have warned those same clients that “since I’ll have to check email on my iPhone till I get a new computer, I won’t be able to download your attachments like the marked up deck or PDF”? Unless they have iPhones themselves, your clients will think this excuse is ridiculous which actually it is. (Steve, are you listening?)

This is why you need a backup account on gmail or yahoo. If you can’t get attachments at your primary email, ask them to forward to your alternate. Awkward, but better than blowing a deadline… or losing a client.

* With the new generation of Mac laptops we seem to have bid farewell to the Black Mac, a laptop which cost $300 more primarily because it had a matte black finish. I only know one person who bought one, a consultant to publishers in South America. He called on a VIP who said, “S__, you say you respect me yet you show up with a white MacBook!” The next visit, S__ had a black one.

• Camera needs exposure control and flash. Movies would also be nice.
• Flash player for Safari.
• Global: cut-and-paste between applications.
• Global: a bigger keyboard when you turn the phone on its side, like there now is in Safari.
• Audio directions for the Google Maps directions.

Sadly, in person trade shows are getting harder to justify when it’s so easy to just get information online and see demos on YouTube. Comdex was my favorite show but it took a hiatus after 9/11 and never came back. Networld/Interop kept shrinking to smaller and smaller spaces at the Las Vegas Convention Center and eventually moved to the Mandalay… still cool t-shirts, though. And now Apple announces it is pulling out of the Macworld show held annually in San Francisco in January.

Macworld was always an odd duck to me, being a Mac user. Back in the 90s when a guy nicknamed “Der Diesel” ran the company, it was mainly a place to pick up software bargains. (This was before online commerce.) There’s very little sold on the floor in recent years and it has a very cultish feel, with a huge Apple temple that occupies about a third of the space and thousands of people lined up to try the newest laptop or music device which they could just as easily find out about in an Apple store. The sponsor, IDG, says the show will go on without Apple but no way. Stick a fork in it, it’s done.

Meanwhile, I am off to the Consumer Electronics Show in a couple weeks which though down a bit from its peak, has prospered by absorbing castoffs from other shows. Now you can see many of the more businesslike IT vendors alongside the robots, gamers and giant screen TVs.

In fact, it used to be thus with earlier generations of Mac laptops… until the return of Steve Jobs. He recognized that it’s more important to present the brand to those who have not yet purchased than to current users. THEY see the logo right-side-up now. And it’s maybe a bonus to those who want to be cool that there is no question we are using an Apple rather than some other kind of inverted fruit.

I recently heard an interesting story from an Apple design engineer who happened to be working the night Steve returned to Apple, in 1997. (It was a Sunday.) They showed him a work in progress called the Nancy, an all-in-one computer. They explained how it was a network device in development. No it’s not, said Steve. This is our new consumer PC.

And so was born the iMac….