Tuesday was a good email day. After running "Impressions of a Macworld Newbie" article in TidBITS-362 (my first TidBITS article), I received a steady stream of comments and words of welcome from readers around the world.

In particular, several people commented on my advice that new attendees refrain from picking up every freebie in sight, and others reacted to my mention of Steve Jobs's "Reality Distortion Field."

Suzanne Courteau <suzanne_courteau@macworld.com> writes:

First, I left my press bag at my office. In my jacket pocket I carried pens and business cards. When I ran across a truly fab product, it was easy enough to write a note on a business card asking the product manager or PR manager to send it to me at my office. I got all my information delivered to me and suffered absolutely no back or feet problems.

Adam L. Pollock <alp@umich.edu> takes a decidedly cumbersome approach:

As far as picking up every pen, CD, disk, etc., this was certainly my goal. I was also hunting for t-shirts - at the end of the show I ran around asking for freebies and trades and amassed about twelve!

Jack C. Kobzeff <jack.c.kobzeff@jpl.nasa.gov> observes:

I felt that Jobs's Reality Distortion Field was only running at half strength this time. I saw him in the early Mac days and as NeXT was getting started, and back then he could sell snow to Eskimos. He was incredible during the NeXT presentations, getting suit-and-tie executives excited about a box with no applications and no floppy disk. This time, I'm not sure if he's just older, too rich, or doesn't quite have his heart into the Apple deal, but he didn't have quite the same level of RDF. It was there; just weaker.