Chris Allbritton

“It’s our experience that people want to chat about the news of the day — almost more than anything else,” said AOL spokeswoman Kim McCreery. “We are simply making it easy for people to find new or timely chat areas. That’s what people are seeing on the news, thinking about, reading about and chatting about. ‘React’ simply points people to an area where others are discussing the topic they are interested in.”

If the chat room didn’t exist, would there be an outpouring of members’ “reactions” to the crash? Hard to say, but it looks as if AOL’s crash chat created a vacuum for the emotions of its members, some of whom gamely tried to fill it.

But where’s the line between providing a service and exploiting emotions after a disaster? “My feeling is that it’s OK to connect yourself to trends and events that are going on in the world, but sometimes this strategy is taken too far,” said Mark Pasetsky, director of New Media for Middleberg & Associates, a well-known New York public relations firm. “People need to know the facts, but does there need to be a public forum for discussing a plane crash? I say no.”

It’s only natural then, that the debate would shift this week to the iBook, the new round-edged portable with wireless capabilities, that some say resembles a two-tone toilet seat. Will the clamshell computers, due out in September, be the next insanely great thing — proof that Apple’s here to stay? Or will those bright blueberry and tangerine machines, designed with students in mind, be relegated to the back of the class with the eMate?

On the MacCentral news site, the opinion divide is already evident in posts with subject lines like “iBook YES!!!,” “iBook is a disappointment” and “What is it with all the naysayers?” Critics focus on the weight, 6.7 pounds, and the 32mb RAM, while fans rave about the AirPort, the “nifty technology” that makes the iBook wireless. Using the Net-connected hub, up to 10 iBooks can surf the Web at up to 11 Mbits per second within a 150-foot range. Perfect for the classrooms and dorm rooms Apple is targeting.

“The wireless strategy is brave,” says Martin Reynolds, vice president of the market research firm Dataquest Inc. “But selling the iBook is a bit more of a challenge than the iMac was. Then, there was a lot of demand for a new Apple product. The iBook isn’t quite tapping into that feeling. It’s going to be interesting if they can pull it off.”

To do that, Apple will need more than the sexy iBook ads Steve Jobs screened at Macworld this week; it will need developers creating great new apps for the Mac. Jobs was quick to point out that Apple has registered nearly 4,000 Mac developers. And Microsoft, which made a surprise $150 million investment in Apple last year, announced on Wednesday that it is introducing new streamlined Mac versions of its Internet Explorer browser and Outlook Express e-mail client.

But some developers are wary of the iBook. “Without a 3D card it’s unlikely to catch on with us,” said Doug Zartman, a spokesman for Bungie, the game maker which created the popular Myth and previewed a massively 3D-card dependent game called Halo during Jobs’ Macworld keynote. “We could easily make a copy of Myth for the iBook, but for our 3D stuff, that’s a basic barrier.”

Mica Crosby, a sales rep for educational software maker Computer Curriculum, said her company would “definitely” develop programs to take advantage of the iBook, but voiced concern that schools wouldn’t pick up the new machine right away. “Schools don’t have a lot of money,” she said, “and it’s a question of what they spend their money on — hardware or software.”

Of course, Mac fans who waited in line to toy with an iBook at Macworld were delighted. “It’s great,” said Brad Price, a computer consultant for Leihigh University. “We’re not a real big Mac campus, but this is going to turn some heads,” he said, disappointed only that the September launch date was too late for school adoptions this year.

Andre Veiga, a designer for Provisuale in Brazil was more eloquent in his praise: “I’ve never seen something like this. It’s so beautiful.” And Susan Cody, an assistant art director at Dow Jones, liked the iBook, even while finding it a bit bulky. She discretely opened her purse and pulled out a Toshiba Portege slightly larger than her checkbook. “This is the size it needs to be,” she said. But the wireless options impressed her: “We’ve all had portable phones in the home for what, 10 years?” Maybe it’s time for the iBook.

To further cement Apple’s ties to the entertainment industry, Jobs showed off QuickTime TV to the thousands of Mac fanatics gathered in New York. He also worked in several plugs for Disney, which distributes films produced by his computer animation company, Pixar.

You could have cut the synergy with a knife. Part of the QuickTime TV announcement was the addition of several online streaming channels, including ABC News, ESPN and the Disney Channel — all properties of Disney Corp.

Jobs did wear his geek hat for long enough to demo the new iBook, due out in September. The new machines will come in two splashy colors, blueberry and tangerine, and they’re pretty cheap. The bare-bones iBook will weigh in at 6.6 pounds and cost $1,599; for another $400 iBook users can go wireless — plugging a base station into a regular telephone jack and wandering up to 150 feet from it.

Then Jobs screened a preview for “Toy Story II,” the sequel to Pixar’s out-of-the-park hit, scheduled for Thanksgiving release. “Looks like a good movie,” he said, giving an “ain’t I naughty?” smirk. “I think I’ll see it.”

Jobs’ quirky behavior is a good thing. The computer industry could use more personality. Computers and the Internet may be changing the world and our lives, but why do most of the main characters in this grand play resemble dinner-theatre refugees?

Bill Gates? An evil genius who makes street mimes appealing in comparison. Michael Dell? Solid as a Texas steer. And as boring. But a Jobs keynote at Macworld is one of the more entertaining events in the industry these days, and the consummate showman pulled every trick out of his apparently bottomless hat to enthuse, excite and enflame the crowd with Macintosh mania.

He unveiled new television ads that feature soul music and hint at sexuality. And he took part in a harebrained demo of wireless networking that had Phil Schiller, Apple’s director of worldwide product marketing, jumping off a catwalk while holding an iBook. Software measured Schiller’s acceleration and transmitted it to Jobs’ iBook in real time. For an industry that is more concerned with technology than drama, this was entertainment.

Jobs has understood this since he returned to Apple and engineered its Cinderella story turnaround. (Apple’s share of retail desktop sales reached 6.7 percent in May, double that of a year ago, according to the ZD Infobeads research firm.) Yes, the iBook is cool, if a little goofy looking, resembling a breath mint on steroids even more than the iMac does. And yes, it’s a hot machine with impressive stats. But it won’t be the 300 MHz G3 processor, the 32 Mbytes of RAM, the 56k modem, the built-in Ethernet, not even the low price tag that moves these things out the door.

No. What will sell the iBook is that Jobs understands that consumers want more than megahertz and memory — they want to be entertained.