As illustrated by our previous keynote text analysis, Apple CEO Steve Jobs likes to say "boom" a lot, particularly during product demos. So why not create a Steve Jobs Boom Index? This is unofficial and perhaps imprecise, but I counted 13 "booms" during yesterday's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote.

The tally was boosted significantly by this remarkable riff, during an on-stage demonstration of the new Mac OS X Quick Look feature in Leopard:

"All I do is hit the space bar, and boom, there it is, and I am now looking through my PDF. Without launching a viewer app, or anything else. Boom, boom, boom. Keynote presentation? Boom, there it is. I can just click through the slides, make sure this is what I want. Boom, there it goes."

On the Steve Jobs Boom Index (SJBI), the total of 13 booms at WWDC is slightly less than the record 15 booms racked up by Jobs during his last Macworld keynote address. But that Macworld marked the iPhone unveiling, so anything close to that is pretty significant.

What's more, taking into account the length of the WWDC keynote (about 83 minutes), yesterday's Steve Jobs Boom Ratio (a corollary to the SJBI) was .157 booms per minute. That's actually higher than the Macworld keynote, which ran 108 minutes (not counting John Mayer's two-song performance at the end), translating into an SJBR of .139 per minute.

OK, on to more serious matters:

Assessing Safari on Windows: On Wired News, Leander Kahney questions one of the reasons behind Apple's decision to offer its browser on Windows PCs:

"Apple is hoping there are Windows users so in love with their iPods and iTunes that they will also download Safari. Then they'll fall in love with that, and the next thing you know they'll be down at the Apple Store fishing for their credit cards," he writes. "There's only one problem with that scenario -- Safari sucks. A lot of Mac users won't run the browser (I'm one of them), so why would anyone run it on Windows?"

Kyle Purdy at WWDC

Young Mac fan: One of the people attending the WWDC keynote was 14-year-old Kyle Purdy of Eugene, Ore., an aspiring software developer. He was too young to register for WWDC as an attendee, but he got a VIP pass after -- get this -- faxing a letter to Steve Jobs last week. (Kyle had called Apple headquarters and asked to speak with Jobs but, as is standard in the corporate world, was told that he first needed to contact the Apple CEO's office in writing.)

Kyle, who has taken programming classes at Eugene's Lane Community College, attended the keynote with his dad, Dwight. Kyle said he wants to build a new Web-based platform -- with e-mail, calendar, browser, etc. -- with an intuitive interface for use by the elderly and disabled. He's not attending the whole conference, but he was hoping to come back for a session on technology accessibility issues.

Why does he like the Mac platform? "My biggest issue is that it's stable," he said.

Audience reaction: Longtime Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley was at the WWDC keynote yesterday. (I did a double-take when I saw her in the waiting area.) Mac users will quibble with some of the conclusions in this post she wrote, but I thought her comparison of the Apple and Microsoft crowds was interesting:

"I've sat through countless Microsoft demos of Vista at a variety of consumer and business events. I don't remember ever hearing thunderous applause when Microsoft showed off Flip 3D or Vista's ability to preview thumbnails of documents. The 'wows' were few and far between. Yet when Jobs put almost identical versions of these features in Leopard through their paces, there were lots of oohs and ahhs."

Apple's Microsoft jokes, revisited: At the end of my interview yesterday with Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, I asked him how it felt to "speak" on behalf of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during the WWDC keynote. (As noted yesterday, Schiller demonstrated a new iChat feature by digitally inserting his mouth into a picture of Ballmer and saying, "I love my Mac!")

"I tried to make sure I was respectful," Schiller said.