Schillermania!

By all indications, Phil Schiller is set to deliver an earth-shattering Macworld Keynote Tuesday morning, the likes of which have never been seen. We’re predicting complete annihilation.

We’re going to miss Phil’s typical supporting appearances, but we figure after his Keynote is done it will be pretty clear why Apple is canceling future Macworld appearances: there will be no topping this Schill-note.

Least we forget, this is not Phil’s first time hosting a Macworld Keynote. He also presented the Keynote at Macworld Paris in the summer of 2004, where he introduced the new iMac G5 with it’s new vertical all-in-one design that continues to evolve today.

Update: We aren’t the only ones predicting a massive Schiller “tour-de-force”.

Dude, Phil was on fire yesterday at the WWDC Keynote! While the Keynote itself may have been a little tame, I knew we were in store for a great Schiller show when John Hodgman’s PC character claimed to be Phil.

In the humorous opening video in the style of the rest of the “I’m a Mac” ads, PC Guy at first posed as Steve Jobs but then thought better of it when confronted and claimed to be Phil Schiller. I don’t know, it was funny when they did it.

But the real meat came 54 minutes later. After the Keynote had been rolling along without much life or energy, Phil popped on iChat AV as Steve’s only buddy. For the next several minutes it was pure Schiller hi-jinx as Phil demoed the many cool new features coming soon to Leopard’s video chat. First he showed the new iChat Theater, but he really hammed it up for the fun special effects. Schiller hanging upside down arms waving and then sipping coffee! Star Wars hologram Phil! But he saved the best for last, pulling a Conan O’Brien mouth cutout, first with George Washington and then with Steve Ballmer. It killed, plus it brought a lot of energy back to the Keynote.

Go Phil!

John Siracusa (love that guy as long as he’s not talking about the freaking spacial finder) has posted his latest Keynote Bingo card. This year’s WWDC Keynote Bingo is pretty weak though. Maybe he got tired of no one winning, but I think there are way too many softies in there.

Firstly, the top row is almost a guaranteed Bingo!, which really takes the sails out of even reading the rest. I mean,
B) Steve has just promised .Mac improvements at the D conference.
I) Bertrand only comes out at WWDC and he’s in charge of freaking software, which might be interesting to developers!
N) The Leopard secrets can’t stay hidden forever, and since their existence was revealed this time last year, it makes sense that they will be enumerated this year. Oh yeah, and a feature complete Beta was also announced as coming at WWDC. Come on!
G) This one’s the least guaranteed by my way of seeing things, but the only reason I can explain why iLife ’08 missed it’s recently routine introduction in January is because it has Leopard specific features and/or is bundled with Leopard. I say iLife will be the vehicle that shows off all the new Leopard features the best and provides an example to developers of how best to take advantage.
O) Of course Leopard will be the star, WWDC is about showing off things to developers. They already have 8 core Mac Pros, so what else is left but all the latest APIs and other development magic coming real soon with 10.5?

I won’t go into the rest of the chart, but here’s a graphic indicating my opinion of the relative likely hood of the predictions. Four more notes:
1) It’s sure a lot easier to comment on other’s predictions than make your own.
2) I’m pretty pissed that there is no mention of Schiller. Is it just too obvious that he will be on hand to demonstrate the new iChat features? If “Boom” is there, “Schiller iChat” should be too.
3) I don’t know what illuminous refers to.
4) I guess we’ll see soon enough what the truth will be.

UPDATE: Argh! So wrong again! I can’t believe I fell for it again, I’ve never been good at predicting Apple’s moves, only at loving and understanding them after the fact.

It’s a little too early for Schiller-mania to jump into the MacWorld speculation game, but we were just talking about the iPhone when thoughts turned to Schiller.

If Apple did introduce a phone, who would announce it? Surely something this big needs Steve to tell the world about it, but how would it be presented? You can’t just hold a phone in your hand and talk about it. You have to show it’s cool design, nice buttons, and awesome interface. You have to call someone with it.

Who do you call? You call Phil Schiller!

We’ve seen in his many iChat AV appearances that he is the ideal candidate for this. Maybe you even use iChat AV to show the call to Phil via iPhone. That would be sweet.

Hopefully Phil isn’t too wrapped up in the Keynote planning to think of a better name than iPhone.

At a Special Event held by Apple in the California Theater in San Jose, Steve Jobs held court and introduced new iMacs, new iPods, and new features of iTunes.

While demonstrating the new iMac G5′s built in iSight camera, Steve called on his main man Phil Schiller for the iChat AV video conferencing demonstration, as usual. Phil has a special affinity for this demo, have participated in every demonstration to date.

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We admit, we had high hopes for Phil during the MacWorld Keynote, and he was magic as usual! Schiller not only reprised his role as one of 3 remote video chatters, he also demoed the brand new Pages with wit and charm.

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With the MacWorld Keynote only a week away, the rumor mill is really ramping up, coming up with tons of new bombs that Schiller may drop on us all.While an appearance as one of 3 remote video chatters would be considered a dissappointing Schiller snub, others speculate that Phil may to called upon to do so much as introduce the rumored new iWork Office Suite. An expert demo of the new Apps seems like just Phil’s gig, but Keynote is kinda Steve’s baby, so I’m not exactly sure how the cards will fall.

After last fall’s stellar Paris MacWorld and iMac G5 introduction, it seems like Schiller could do anything, so I expect he will make his presence felt in many separate appearances.

What Schiller-maniacs are really holding out for though, is some of media interviews Phil will surely be dishing out after the keynote. These may yield hours of Schiller footage, so keep on the lookout online and have your Tivos set to stun. Don’t forget to share your photos from the floor either, only if you can get one of Phil of course.

Add this site to the list of Schiller’s many victims! His massive charisma is too much to handle even for those who seek it out!

We had almost recovered from banging our heads falling over after Phil’s appearance at MacWorld, when he nailed us with another dose. When Schiller popped up on iChat AV at WWDC I almost shit my pants! Man that was awesome!!

Like Icarus this website strove to bathe in the glory of Phil Schiller, and the wings of our update schedule were roasted by the sun of Phil’s marketing intensity. We couldn’t handle the Schill, basically.

We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, and a lot about Phil Schiller since we’ve started though. And we know now that it may not be possible to contain within the boundaries of mere HTML and javascript the boundless good of Phil Schiller.

That’s why were getting back to basics at schillermania.com; back to our founding vision for what the website could be. That’s right; a bland site where you can buy Phill Schiller fan gear!

The store already exists, click here if you don’t believe it, but there is nothing for sale yet. Not to worry, the first round of products are right around the corner. Expect a Schiller T-shirt first, then two Schillermania posters. After that, who knows? Let us know if you have any requests for merchandise.

Thanks to Crazy Apple Rumors for the link, the check is in the mail.