Apple’s Gravity
Apple barely had to advertise. Every other tech company was dumping money into campaigns, and Apple just pinned a countdown on their homepage. Macworld was coming, and anyone paying attention was already weeks deep in speculation.
The rumor mill was predictable. Grainy photos of alleged prototypes would surface online—usually obviously fake—but people analyzed them anyway. New OS versions, iPhone whispers, something called iTV. Every possibility dissected, debated, picked apart for weeks leading up to the event.
What’s interesting is that Apple barely had to feed any of it. The fans did the work. There was something cult-like about how people treated the keynote, waiting for the one more thing
moment when Jobs would announce something that reframed everything. Apple had engineered a system where they didn’t need marketing—the devotion was self-sustaining.
Those Macworld seasons had a particular energy. The speculation, the leaks, the livestream refresh. It felt like a cultural moment, not just a sales pitch. Apple made you feel like you were discovering something rather than being sold to, which is maybe why people cared so much about it. A lot of that specific kind of tech religion has moved on now, different platforms and different hype cycles. But you could feel it then—something that people actually wanted to be part of.