Do you ever find yourself wondering about the glamorous life of an Apple liveblogger? Do you imagine yourself as me, jet-setting across the country to bask in Apple CEO Tim Cook's presence while he presents the next product in Apple's lineup: a time traveling iPad that acts as a particle reactor on the side and can make your coffee in the morning?
If so, you're in luck (and if not, you're uh, not in luck). The number of requests I receive from Ars readers and Twitter followers about what my daily life is like when I go to San Francisco has increased steadily over the years, so I made an attempt to document my activities as I traveled to cover the March 7 Apple event in which the company unveiled its third-generation iPad and Apple TV. So if your curiosity has been getting the better of you, have a seat and prepare yourself for a day (or three) in the life of yours truly when I'm covering Apple events.
The journey begins
Two hours before my flight time out of Chicago, I hop on the CTA blue line and head towards O'Hare. In the middle of the day on a Tuesday, the crowd heading to O'Hare is usually a mixture of pilots, attendants, other travelers with ginormous suitcases blocking the train's aisles, and other O'Hare workers. Since I'm only going for a whirlwind 24 or 36 hours (depending on the event), I pack light: I usually live out of a single bag for the entire time I'm traveling, which is great for expediting check-in, and not so great for my shoulders.
Here at Ars, we proudly fly coach. After watching passengers try to cram their Djibouti-sized suitcases into the overhead bins to no avail (thanks baggage fees!), we finally take off. Thanks to the increasing popularity of WiFi on the plane, I no longer have to deal with the anger and frustration of being forced to do relaxing activities for the next 4.5 hours such as listen to my This American Life queue or read a book—instead, I get to work for as long as my MacBook Air battery will last. That'll be $12.95 please.
A San Francisco treat
A dead MacBook Air battery and several hours later and we land in San Francisco. It's now late afternoon there and I have to head into the city by hopping on the BART and awkwardly avoiding eye contact with those people sitting in the seats facing mine until I get to Powell Street—also known as Tourist Lane.
As I walk up the hill to my hotel, I'm accosted by groups of tourists asking me for directions to the Apple Store. It's just down the street, so I send them in the right direction and continue on my way.
I check into my hotel—Hotel Stratford this time around—and I'm informed that my cheapest-possible-room strategy has worked out in my favor, because I've been upgraded to "the family suite." The check-in guy chuckles as he says this, but I don't ask questions and head up to my room to dump my stuff that I've been hauling around all day.
It turns out the "family suite" is a room that has not one, not two, but three separate queen-sized beds spread across two rooms and a hallway. There are even two sinks and two closets! It's unfortunate that I won't have the opportunity to make use of this room for, uh, more "exciting" purposes, as my Do Not Disturb sign clearly indicates I should be doing:
Instead, I take advantage of my upgrade by using one bed as a giant table to store my bag and all its contents, the other bed to store my dirty clothes, and the room furthest away from the street for sleep. Despite this, the noise of Powell Street permeates all of space and time, and I have to bust out the earplugs and prepare for a busy morning ahead.
"iPad Day"
After a fitful night of sleep, I get up and check in with my coworkers at Ars before getting ready to head out. The walk up Market Street is pretty typical, filled with GDC conference-goers mixed with tourists confused about where everyone is going. I turn off from the GDC crowd and make my way over to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts so I can check in with the Apple PR crew and rub elbows with acquaintances from other publications that I somehow see more often than most of my real-life friends.
We chat over Apple-supplied coffee and bagels while everyone asks the same questions we always ask before these things start: when did you fly in? When are you flying out? Where are you staying? What are you up to tonight? Eventually they let us in, but only if we pass the critical eyes of the team of security guards at the front door. If they can't see the press badge you picked up when you checked in, get ready to be taken out by an Apple-branded sniper rifle. (Just kidding, there are no snipers. Probably.)
We settle into the main presentation hall and begin our ritualistic setting-up of computers, cameras, and 3G cards. This time around—and honestly, most times—I sit next to the Macworld team who is somehow blessed with about four times as many seats at this event than Ars. They are very kind and adopt me like a lost puppy even though I'm about to whoop them in liveblogging speed.
Except that for us (and almost everyone there), our liveblogging software couldn't hold up and died repeatedly throughout the event, so I didn't get as much of a chance to whoop everyone as I usually do. Sad, but at least I get to sit back and actually use my brain for once to pay attention to the event. Usually, the words being said on stage go into my ears and out my fingers without any human processing involved, and the only things I "see"—aside from my computer screen, that is—are the pretty colors being filtered through my camera lens.
The event ends and Apple is telling us to head across the way to the briefing room where we'll be able to ask only the simplest questions of the staff on hand:
Here the press is jockeying for space at the briefing tables and Apple PR people scattered throughout the room are acting as iPad police in case any reporter might dare placing an iPad 2 on the table next to a third-generation iPad. Outside isn't much better—once you leave (and you have to before you can begin to work again, or else you'll get a scolding from a bouncer), there's a team of other media people who weren't allowed into the event. They're armed with video cameras and ready to jump on anyone—anyone—who has been so lucky as to lay a finger on one of the new products. I shoo away several of them as I sit down on a park bench to put together my hands-on post—sorry guys, I'm on deadline.
Eventually I head back to my hotel to try and find lunch and partake in a series of post-mortem phone calls with various members of the Ars staff. In fact, phone calls make up the majority of the rest of the day—see, I knew you were here for the glamor!—so we'll just skip to the going home part now.
Homeward bound
After putting in a few hours of work in the morning from the hotel, we're back at the BART station! It's time to head to SFO and GTFO—by this time in the trip, I have clearly contracted SARS and have begun excreting mucous from every possible place as my head pounds from yet another night with no sleep. Goodbye, family suite! It's time to head back to sweet home Chicago.
They board the plane early—much to my chagrin, I might add, as I'm again trying to squeeze in a little more work while waiting in the terminal. Upon boarding, we immediately begin waiting on a crew member who is mysteriously missing. (I sure hope he enjoyed his night out last night.) Almost an hour after the scheduled takeoff time, we are finally ready to go. And by "go," I mean I'm about to pay another $12.95 and work another few hours in the luxury of coach class. Good thing the person in front of me put his seat back!
By the time we get into Chicago, it's something like 8:30pm, which is actually about four hours earlier than when I usually land after I return home from Apple events. By this time, I've popped so much Exedrin that my liver is confused about what's been going on this whole trip and wondering why we didn't have more fun.
Yep, it's time for the CTA again, except now everyone on the train looks like a zombie.
Just kidding—that's only what the CTA looks like in my fantasies, or during Christmastime. This is what my train-mates really looked like:
I get off the train at my designated stop and begin walking home in the dark. A six-foot-tall, 210-pound man dressed in black begins running in my direction as I haul my stuff home and I begin to wonder whether I'm going to have to whip out my MacBook Air and use its edge as a defense tool. The man begins to swerve in my direction as he gets closer and I'm pretty sure at this point that I might not see another Apple liveblog. It turns out the man is former Ars Tech Director Clint Ecker coming to ensure that some other dark clothed assailant doesn't get to me first—my heart returns to a normal rate sometime the next morning—and I make my way home to overdose on NyQuil and hang out on the couch.
I fall asleep there, waking up at 6:45am on Friday morning when my iPhone alarm goes off. Back to the daily grind!
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