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I write for you today, good reader, from San Francisco, home of hippies, fog and persistent begging. But I'm not here for the weak dollar and giant portions of pancakes; no, I've just witnessed Steve Jobs' legendary keynote speech, hereinafter referred to as 'Stevenote', so that we can fit in with the hardcore geek mafia.

Any Mac user worth their Core 2 Duo has some idea of what to expect from a Stevenote; Saint Jobs strutting about in front of a screen filled with impressive stats, a couple of neat software upgrades and a 'one more thing' that changes the face of technology and makes grown men whoop and clap like performing seals.

I had been warned about the media frenzy, of course, by veterans of campaigns gone by; the pushing and shoving for the best seats, the mind-warping reality distortion field, the hysteria. But I wasn't entirely prepared.

We had been instructed to be at the Moscone Centre by 7am. No problem for the jetlagged Europeans, all of whom, including myself, looked as though they had suffered catastrophic melatonin depletion and would never sleep again. Herded into a vague queuing system, the excitement began to build. People with walkie-talkies shouted at each other, film crews ran up and down the line, and burly security blokes in baby-blue 'keynote' shirts checked our passes in a way that made me feel I could be wrestled to the ground with a Taser pointed at my coccyx at any moment.

Two hours of milling about, ingesting refined sugar and spotting Gizmodo bloggers and Uncle Walt Mossberg meant excitement was fever pitch as the doors

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finally opened. Chaos reigned. Manners gave way to elbows as I was almost trampled by men twice my height and fighting weight. 'No running!' cried the stewards, as a gaggle of spiky-booted Japanese women broke into a sprint for the front row. I became alarmed as MacUser colleague Alan Stonebridge disappeared from view, possibly trampled or squashed into a mild-mannered pulp. 'No one gets left behind,' assured a dauntless Canadian with whom I had struck up a Dunkirk-style relationship. It was all I could do not to clutch his sleeve as we were swept into the auditorium.

Steve Jobs strolled onto the stage completely unannounced. It's difficult to think of another CEO who could elicit such a reaction. Cheers, sustained applause, one woman even screamed. He spoke for a little over an hour and was witty, engaging and mildly hypnotic. I'd like to take every PowerPoint dullard I've ever shared a lecture hall with to a Stevenote - he is a genuinely great public speaker. Calm and relaxed, chuckling softly when a Flickr image fails to load, Steve is seemingly unflappable. He uses an interesting system of suggestion and reassurance at regular intervals - 'Isn't this cool? This is so cool.' - but he does it with such conviction that I find I don't really mind. Every announcement, however minor, is greeted with cheers.

Am I drawn in? Not really. Okay, maybe a little, when Steve slides out the MacBook Air from a manilla envelope. It's just a laptop. But it is beautiful and it's odd to want something so badly when seconds earlier I'd been unaware of its existence.

The end of the Stevenote was signalled by Randy-freaking-Newman taking the stage to sing us a vaguely inappropriate song featuring Hitler and the theme from Toy Story. Randy rambles on for a while, then Steve thanks everyone and walks off the stage.

It feels slightly anticlimactic and much of the initial grumbling, both online and in reality, was that the Air was nothing special. Yeah, it's a really thin, moderately expensive laptop, but so what? We have laptops already. We wanted something new - personally, I was holding out for human teleportation, but perhaps I was expecting too much.