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Tokyo Macworld Canceled
jlechem writes "Wired is running a story about Apple pulling out of Macworld Tokyo. It seems they decided to pull out quietly several months ago. And once they left all the major Apple Developers followed, and IDG canceled the show due to 'lack of exhibitor interest.' Macworld Tokyo is the biggest gathering of Mac fans in the world. Although the three-day show draws about half the exhibitors of U.S. shows, it attracts double the number of visitors, about 190,000. Traditionally held in March, the Tokyo show has run for the last 12 years. After their threat to ditch Macworld Boston, you have to wonder why Apple is pulling out of these expos?"
Extremely worring news on one front, maybe Apple just an't comming up with the new goods to show off...
Problem being, why an't they developing anything new?
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
we'll miss em if they go. maybe now they can finish that port of OS X for the Hammer
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Darn you, natural selection, Darn you!!
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
Japan has a huge Mac market (anyone has the latest marketshare figures?). Cancellation of MacWorld Tokyo is bad news for Japanese Mac users. I hope Apple plans for another event independent of IDG - with or without new product intros. We'll probably see new products by January at MacWorld SF.
It takes ignorance to run a mac, it really does... they are (as compared to a PC): 1.) Expensive 2.) Perform poorer @ most things 3.) Not upgradable 4.) Software is becoming more and more limited .. i fail to see the reason to be running a mac? Am i alone here? And the "switching ads" see what i think of them here http://comdel.net/pr0c/applemac.htm
My experience from them with past MacWorld expos in the USA is that they are not nearly as willing to negotiate as they should be. These folks had a serious cash cow in the marketing money they took by the truckload from dotcoms who had to be have the biggest most amazing booths at their tradeshow. I'm glad to see some of the heavy weights in the industry, such as recent Apple pull-outs and Adobe's non-show in NY last year, finally put these people in their place. Time for some new blood in the promotional events arena methinks. Chin up. This only means good things for smaller software development houses, what the dotcom era was _supposed_ to be about.
i think it's pretty obvious why apple has decided to nix it's mac worlds, now that apple has OS X out the door, it doesn't need mac worlds to sell it, planned obselecence should do that nicely. starting around 2000, people started catching on and letting other people in on the big secret: don't buy hardware in the month(s) before macworld, you're gonna get screwed. mucho true. apple's hardware sales slow to a trickle, and then gush once new hardware is released, making it so that there's a ton of spare inventory laying around they have to sell almost at used prices. this is bad buisness. so they're getting rid of announcing new hardware at mac worlds, and more or less randomly announcing things as they come to frutition. i suspsect this makes hardware design deadlines more flexible, allowing for smarter and better designs also. the new iMac was the last big macworld announcment, the eMac was the first big non Macworld announcment.
moox. for a new generation.
Macworld Tokyo is the biggest gathering of Mac fans in the world.
was
Although the three-day show draws about half the exhibitors of U.S. shows,
drew
it attracts double the number of visitors, about 190,000.
attracted
"And like that
Apple's biggest problem, and what I believe is the reason for them pulling out of these trade shows, is simply that they can't keep up - ie produce new stuff worthy of the expense of attending the show, putting on a presentation, meeting strick show-time deadlines, etc.
Here's why in one word: Motorola
What Apple should have done is made one big fancy switch all at once. In other words, they should have gone with a new processor producer *before* they started coding OS X. That way, software producers who would have had to re-write the code for the new OS anyway could also take into account the new processor architecture.
Right now, unless someone else (likely IBM, but when?) can produce the PPC chips, Apple is stuck with Motorla and their craptastic ability to produce new, faster processors. Sure, OS X screams on a dual 1.25 GHz system compared to the 450 MHz I'm running right now, but Windows 2000 also screams on a 3.0 GHz system when compared to a 1 GHz system.
The point is, Apple can't switch to a new architecture now as it would mean software producers would have to once more re-write software they just re-wrote for OS X, and those who haven't gotten that far yet would be back to square one. This is, in short, a problem.
Furthermore, Apple's own 'Think Different' ideaology might be turning around to bite them in the ass. Here they are, presenting this new OS to Windows users and saying "Switch. We're different. And better. And we'll give you cool stuff." But people have short attention spans. If Apple doesn't put out new/cool stuff on a really regular basis, people wonder if Apple is still inovating.
I don't think any what I just wrote is clear. Sigh...
Ack!
Apple has not given its employees a pay raise in 2 years. They just laid off a few people.
They are cutting all unnecessary costs.
The internet is taking away from the importance of expo's, as are the Apple Stores.
...Macworld cancels YOU!
During the current OS X transition, Apple needs the G4 architecture to support legacy software. Not just in Classic. Many users still boot OS 9.
Once OS X is fully adopted, Apple could release hardware based on another architecture with no Classic support. App vendors would need to recompile Carbon/Cocoa apps into "fat" binaries.
But who knows...if Intel continues to push Pentium performance, maybe a G4 emulator could smooth the transition, like the 68K emulator that shipped with the first PPC macs.
Apple is as active as ever with the events that count, events that my company helps manage. They sponsor many of the O'Reilly events, as well as (for example) the recent Macromedia DevCon in Orlando.
Apple's quite generous with the hardware at these events, rivalling the amount of equipment found in the largest tradeshow booths.
This, and the fact that Comdex is on the skids (how's CeBit doing?), really just points to the fact that vendors everywhere, Apple included, are realizing that the best way to reach real customers is through smaller, targeted, developer-oriented events.
There was a lot of talk after the last Comdex that trade shows may be dying all together. Since the main purposes of the trade show have always been announcements and demonstrations, the internet has made a major dent in their usefulness. Tech companies used to use the shows to band together their announcements. The release of several products at the same time increased the odds of tv airtime. Now, with specialized media and a 24 hour news cycle, there isn't as much a need for it. In fact, its now better to announce a product during a dry spell in the news week.
As someone who has been a marketing droid, tradeshows are not an effective use of marketing money when you brand is well established - it doesn't tend to generate new leads or customers because most of the people that go are already existing (in Apple's case, also loyal) customers. A marketing investment *should* translate into sales, immediate or repeat (this is the post .com era, right?).
There can be post-sales value in a "user group" sense but there are often better ways to sustain customer loyalty, particularly for commodity products, which PCs including Macs have become.
JGski
It seems to me that the people who pay attention to MacWorlds the most are Mac Zealots. These people are going to buy a Mac no matter what. Why should Apple spend all this extra money to sell to people who are going to buy regardless. With "times as they are", you have to cut costs.
<footnote>
Speaking of "times as they are", are times really that tough for everyone or are we being hood winked into missing raises and doing without when things aren't that bad? Maybe this isn't intentional, it could be that people have gone from being ultra liberal with spending to ultra conservative. Even in my company which has always been slow to spend, things have cut back. What's the real reason behind all this?
</footnote>
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
In some article involving a ranking member of IDG, a conference call/phone conversation with Steve Jobs is quoted or paraphrased saying that he didn't know if he could make enough new product announcements twice a year to warrant two major US expos. Sounds reasonable enough.
Another reason why the expos are a hassle for Apple is people read all the rumor sites and expect ridiculous products (I've been waiting for a 2Ghz G5 for some time now.) to be released. When they aren't released, customers get pissed and blame Apple. It's a joke. One rumor site (I don't want to give them advertising.) once posted an article about a possible join effort between Apple and Lucent to produce a wireless product. The source? A Lucent commercial that shows people using Mac's. It's no wonder Apple lets their lawyers loose on these guys.
Now if only Mr. Google would help me find that darn article...
i admit, its odd for apple to not be at macworld, but who puts them on? is it apple? from my understanding it is not. so it makes total sense for apple to not go to one. i'm sure it costs a nice chunk of change for them to do their thing and if they dont have anything "new and improved" to offset that cost, what is the motivation? we've all seen the new goods apple has right now. give em some time to get something new. they just revealed a lot of new goods this past summer so you cant expect another load of them only 6 months later.
you obviously don't have a Mac and haven't used one recently...so who's the ignorant one?
It's true, you know it is. They're all effeminate mincing transgendered shills for Steve Jobs. Hey Mac-luser: ya know that Macintosh ya just bought (and still secretly think that OS X is WAYYYYY too slow)... ya coulda bought TWO equivalent Wintel boxes/laptops, wiped the hard drives, and put an adult's OS on them. Then you'd have machines that run FAST, are reliable, and don't make total strangers want to put their fist through your Steve Jobs-style wire rims. That's because everybody wouldn't know that you're homosexual.
Macintosh uses YOU!!!
They just don't put out desktop number cruncher chips and Apple is too small of a customer for them to modify the line. It's not worth their time (i.e. money).
;)
If someone entered a Honda Insight at the Indianapolis 500, would it be Honda's fault when they lost? Is the Insight *bad* because it's designed for efficiency rather than performance?
I think Apple cornered themselves to an extent with their anti-Pentium advertising. Yeah, the software compatability is an issue, but they've been telling everyone for years how slow the Pentiums supposedly are. Now they're getting spanked even on their home Photoshop turf, let alone any other benchmark.
I wonder how well the Insight would sell if they marketed it as faster than a Ferrari like Apple basically does?
While it is true that people seem to assume *anything* can be updated at MW (unless it just was), the Origional Rev A Bondi iMac 233mghz was announced August 15th 1998. I think the iMac might be the biggest thing Apple released since 1984. Granted the iMac took nearly everyone by suprise, so it was not the usual "i'm not buying an ibook now if they might upgrade them next month", but you get my point.
Apple very publically said a year or so ago that they are not going to save all big hardware releases for 2or 3 Expos a year (Tokyo has been the release for some big products). The last two years they used NYC as more of a hands on intro to 10.1 and 10.2 as much as a place to upgrade some of the existing hardware. NYC has not had a "knock their sock off" release since the Cube a few years back. yes, they did not sell well, but it was a huge crowd magnet.
All that being said i find it unfortunate that MW Tokyo is bagged for 2003. The turnout is not that of the US expos, but they Mac users in Japan are generally quite dedicated. I always heard Jobs loved to go into Sony's home territory and and be able to win over a crowd (like releasing the TiBook there). The show also is usually used by a lot of 3rd parties to show off some cool hardware. Everything from the newest Epson printers (that the USA will not see for months) to the clear iBook modification parts. oh well..... maybe it'll be back for 2004.
It`s same thing happen about mac world tokyo....
...to stage a war during prime MacWorld Tokyo time. Bit hard to keep your attention focused on all the overpriced, underpowered hardware when you can watch Wolf Blitzer explain why our cruise missiles are so beautiful.
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