Marco Arment on Apple’s iPad event:

> The lines were so tightly scripted that the presenters often stumbled off-script slightly, and rather than rolling with it naturally, they’d just jump back and awkwardly retry the line.

I made that note too. Cook seemed to be struggling and it felt awkward to watch. The products Apple launched were great, but the problem was the shipping times. It needed to be sooner, that’s what gets nerds excited. “Oh shit, I have to clear my calendar for Friday!”

Instead we now have a lot of time to consider the purchases, to consider the changes — to realize those changes are iterative.

I personally think Apple needs to make these presentations a one man show — where that one person gets to decide how much time each product gets. Where they can cut stupid collaboration demos. And I don’t think that person should be any of the executives that were on stage presenting. It needs to be someone else.

After all, there’s probably a really good reason Ive never presents.

Cook usually does fine, but (like me) he doesn’t project a person that gets excited about things and that makes him a poor MC. Apple needs that cheerleader, that person that doesn’t just show fake excitement, but believes you are crazy if you aren’t excited with them.

Steve Jobs was always good at that. When he spoke of the iPhone and iPad you knew, inherently *knew*, that he was speaking with genuine passion and excitement. Jobs wasn’t trying to convince anyone of his excitement, or to be excited with him because he thought what he was presenting spoke for itself.

The MacBook Pros didn’t need to be presented, nor did iWork being free. Or even the new iWork — they weren’t that great. They could have been just an update on the store website and left at that.

But when you have a team of people presenting, they will all want their babies in the presentation. They worked hard on them, no doubt, but they weren’t the products the press assembled to see.