Mr. Jobs drew his greatest applause when he ceremoniously took the cover from the PowerBook G4, a new thin and light portable computer clad in silver titanium.
It was perhaps, his moment of greatest applause, when he uttered the words: "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come".
But it was hard, most of the time, to tell just who the shouting was for: Daniel Hernandez, the intern who helped keep Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords alive, got the greatest applause when he deflected the praise to other people.
Ballet Theater's Daniil Simkin rightly earned the night's greatest applause in Ben van Cauwenbergh's "Bourgeois," set to Jacques Brel and imbued by Mr. Simkin with slouchy, Baryshnikov-like charm and virtuosity.
The greatest applause was for Arkadius Weremczuk, whose show began with a shaven-headed model with an image of Jesus's head between her bare breasts, and finished with another model wearing a religious painting and gold trousers.
I think the speech hit all those marks, but the problems can be summed up by the fact that its greatest applause line was the pregnant hush Mitt dropped after referencing Obama's promise to "raise the oceans".
On the BBC's Question Time, for example, the greatest applause is often reserved for attacks on politicians from one of the celebrity panellists, "who seem to have been chosen for knowing nothing about politics".
The actress (and sometime designer) Milla Jovovich appreciated the show Wednesday, saying: "Why does it have to be costume, when there are such lovely things to wear?" The greatest applause went to Mr. Lagerfeld's male muse, the model Baptiste Giabiconi, who walked the finale wearing a lion's mane that looked more Tina Turner than king of the jungle.
The greatest applause and whoops from the school groups in the normally staid British Library auditorium was reserved for Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's Fergus Crane, the gold medal winner in the six to eight years category and also the 4Children special award (chosen by after school clubs).
Variety, however, noted a lack of chemistry between the leads, commenting that "there's something not entirely right in Siam when the greatest applause is reserved for Lady Thiang".
