David Pogue kicks off Macworld 2010

David Pogue kicked off Macworld 2010 with his trademark mix of humor and geekery, bounding on stage after being announced as the new keynote speaker, Steve Ballmer. A few “Whoo!”s later, Pogue announced that this was the first Macworld where we didn’t have to be “nice to Apple,” shouting that the hockey puck mouse was terrible, and AT&T’s iPhone service stunk.

After playing one of his song parodies on a Yamaha Avante Grande piano (which has the full deep sound of a grand piano despite being entirely electronic), Pogue demonstrated the power of Twitter (a web app he initially derided), showing how it focuses the hive mind of it’s users (who, Pogue pointed out, tended to be older and wealthier than people who comment on YouTube (“12 year olds with English as a second language.”)). Pogue showed off some of the funny replies to questions he poses on his feed, which he collected into a book, The World According to Twitter.

Set up in a talk show format (hence the “Late Night with David Pogue” taking place at 9 a.m.), Pogue introduced his first guests, the Gregory Brothers of Auto-Tune the News. The family spelled out how they create internet sensation which takes news clips and turns them into music. They start by filtering the news through several blogs to see what’s the most outrageous or popular thing being talked about, pull clips off YouTube, then write a song around it (all the members of the family are musicians).

After another song, Pogue announced they’d be performing a play based on his 1998 column, It’s a Wonderful Mac. The Gregories took on the parts of the townsfolk who show what the world would be like if Apple had never created the Macintosh, but Pogue realized he was still missing the key role: Steve Jobs. Fortunately there was a professional actor on hand: Levar Burton!

Burton did a wonderful job of portraying El Steve, then settled in for a discussion of his career and love of Macs, but not before telling Pogue that he was a fan of his. When Pogue demurred, Burton pointed out “You’re the man, here. You’re the man… because Steve’s not here.”

Burton went on to discuss the new company he’s formed (Burton Wolf Entertainment) to bring programming “wherever there’s a screen.” In addition to, he said that they’re looking into bringing Reading Rainbow back for the internet. Burton described the iPad as “something I don’t feel like I need” as a die hard Mac user, Pogue remarked that a lot of people echoed that sentiment. And after a final song, the first event of Macworld 2010 drew to a close.