January 16, 2008 | posted by Michael Baxter in New Media |

“This morning,” wrote Nassim Nicholas Talen in his book ‘Fooled by Randomness’, “I…asked the hotel concierge how long it takes to go to the airport. ‘40 minutes?’ I asked. ‘About 35,’ he answered. Then I asked the lady at reception if the journey was 20 minutes. ‘No, about 25,’ she answered. I timed the trip: 31 minutes.”

In this anecdote, Mr Taleb, who, by the way, also wrote ‘Black Swan’, a book which has been drawing praise from all quarters of late, was trying to illustrate a point. We are irrationally influenced by irrelevant data.

Now transpose that idea to yesterday’s markets and Apple computers. Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, is corporate America’s resident miracle worker. He is also a dab hand at wowing his audience with presentations. And yesterday was his annual moment. It was his keynote speech at Macworld. Last year he chose the occasion to unveil the iPhone, this time around analysts waited with baited breath.

And for Jobs, a man who holds his audience in thrall, yesterday must have been quite a shock; for while his 90-minute speech was still running, while his audience were oohing and aahing, shares in Apple fell 10 points.

Investors, it appeared, were not impressed.

Mr Jobs chose the occasion to reveal a new stand-alone TV which can download movies and songs from the Internet without reference to a computer. He also waxed lyrical on the imminent launch of a catalogue of 1,000 videos available for download on to PC, Macs or iPhones.

This announcement alone drew rave praise. Fortune magazine, for example, quoted Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenburg as saying, “This could do to Hollywood what the iPod and iTunes did for the music industry.”

The consummate salesman provided further lubricant to the atmosphere of anticipation when he said, “I’m still stunned our engineering team could pull this off,” and promptly revealed an interface mechanism for the Mac which ehoes the iPod’s famous touch-sensitive trackpad.

But, impressive though that line-up was, you havn’t even heard the best bit yet. For Mr Jobs also wowed the audience with thin Air. Only Jobs could do it, but thin Air was the star of yesterday’s spectacular. To be precise, it was a product called Air, and it’s the the world’s thinnest laptop computer – at its thinnest it is just 0.16 inches thick, and at its fattest, 0.76 inches.

So that’s a line up and a half: revolutionary new interface, a genuine attempt to reveal a product and catalogue of videos that could turn Hollywood upside-down in much the same way the company turned the music business upside-down, and a laptop computer you could almost slide under the door.

And shares got a panning. Scour the net, and you wil see a line-up of critics all trying to put their boot in, a proper job, as it were, on Jobs.

Why so much angst from investors and techies, when yesterday’s line-up was so impressive?

Well the answer is simple. It’s the mood. Citibank also chose yesterday to reveal another huge loss. Bad news on Wall Street is piling high, and no amount of thin Air, no matter how fresh, can alleviate it.