Jobs Not Giving This Year's Macworld Keynote

Many readers including thermopile wrote in about Apple withdrawing from Macworld Expo after this year. The other bad news for Apple fans is that Steve Jobs won't be delivering the keynote in 3 weeks — we may have seen his last "one more thing." Apple VP Phil Schiller will be doing the honors. He's "an Apple executive notably lacking in Jobs's showmanship and star power," according to the Fortune blogger. Apple's press release states that "trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers." While this may be true, the keynote addresses have been a critical venue for major new product announcements. Apple's stock is taking a 6% hit in after-hours trading, possibly on concerns about Jobs's health. Reader Harry has gathered together YouTube clips from most of the Macworld keynotes Jobs given since 1997.

Comments

iPod, iPhone, then what?

[alain94040]

I have been following Apple for more than 20 years, including stints at MacWorld and today's headline is a repeat of the mini-drama that Apple has been having with the Expo for decades. But today is different.

Ignore the dispute about who controls MacWorld Expo's agenda. Apple feels like on top of the world (always has) and they want absolute control. But they also had found a great recipe for success. Two years ago, on the cab from the caltrain station to Moscone, the taxi driver asked us if we were there for this new "iPhone thing". The hype was just so big, the distortion field so powerful, the force was with Apple.

Somehow, no cab driver ever asked me about Android.

Think of the history: the iPod, the MacBook Air, the iPhone... By having someone else present the keynote this year, our collective expectations just sunk by an order of magnitude. I, for one, don't expect anything amazing this year. But on the other hand, it's only fair: even Apple can't pull off revolution after revolution, year after year. Give them a break, they are doing so much already by showing everyone how boring other products are.

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Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[johnsonav]

the ipod, macbook and iphone do nothing other gadgets haven't before. indeed on many technical levels they are inferior, especially the ipod.

One thing Apple has done well, since its beginning, is to make technology exciting for the masses. Most of that is marketing, to be sure. But it always takes marketing to push technology into general use.

True, Apple entered the portable mp3 player market late, and with an, arguably, inferior product. But, through marketing and tight integration with the computer, managed to get 90% of people to trade in their Discmans for iPods. They were able to dominate a market which didn't even exist a few years before (and probably would not be nearly as large without Apple).

From the Apple II, to the iMac, to the iPod, and to the iPhone, Apple has managed to create mass markets where none existed before. I don't think that fact can be overlooked. Whenever Apple comes out with a product, they are trying to open up larger markets for technology, even when they fail (Newton).

The other thing Apple does well is make money. Lots and lots of money. Metric buttloads of money.

Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[dgatwood]

And there are no words for how much the MWSF schedule sucks. When I realize how many employees at Apple, Adobe, Canon, and hundreds of other vendors are forced to skip Christmas vacation every year to get products and show displays ready for that horribly timed conference, it makes me want to shove my foot up IDG CEO Bob Carrigan's you-know-what. If the conference were in February, those employees would almost certainly be happier, plus it would likely cost those vendors a lot less in extra compensation to make up for keeping those folks through the holidays. If the show were in February, they might not be watching their vendor list drop like flies....

Scheduling a trade show for the first full week in January is just plain abusive. Maybe this will get IDG to extricate their crania from their posteriors long enough to figure that out.... I won't hold my breath, though. I'd imagine they're getting a hefty discount from the Moscone Center for booking during a week that nobody in their right minds would touch with a ten meter pole.

Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[Nyeerrmm]

I don't know if it was luck or a really good understanding of where the industry was going, but the iPod popularity is significantly different than the MacBook or iPhone.

The MacBook took the existing Mac product line, improved it, and grew more popular for a number of reasons... the Intel switch, the improvements in OSX and the recent developments that have made the OS less and less critical are the first things that occur to me. While popular, it doesn't absolutely dominate the market. Its simply a healthy growth of one of Apple's oldest product lines.

The iPhone was a new move into an already well-established market. It has generated new interest in smartphones and helped to push other vendors to improve their products; however, it hasn't ridden the boom of a new market to complete dominance in the same way that the iPod has. iPhone is not (yet?) synonymous with smartphones, and despite strong sales doesn't have the absurdly high installed base.

However, the iPod came out when MP3 players were a niche product for techno-geeks, and rode the growth of the market to have a 70%(?) market share. I can't say whether it led to the growth of the market or simply rode a trend that would have occurred anyway, but needless to say, the iPod's place in the market is stronger than either the MacBook or the iPhone. They are synonymous with the market as a whole, have dozens of companies making accessories... iPod compatibility is even listed as a selling feature on cars.

The supposition of Apple getting lucky makes sense to me. If they're product hadn't been so well developed (at 3rd gen) by the time of the boom, or if some other companies had had better developed products at the time, with well-developed music stores, I can see the iPod being a 20%-30% market share product, that while still successful wouldn't be the cultural phenomenon it is now. And note that I type this on a Macbook Air with my iPhone beside me and my iPod in the car, so believe me when I say I have nothing against the company.

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What's good about trade shows....

[twasserman]

When I was a vendor back in the Dark Ages of the 20th century, I had very mixed feelings about trade shows. It took a lot of people, time, and money to prepare for a show and then be present for the duration. Most of the people who came by our booth were tire-kickers at best, and we developed the theory that anyone who took our giveaway (candy, etc.) first wasn't really a prospect. On the plus side, we came away from almost every show with enough good leads to justify our expenses. Our marketing and sales guys would screen the leads and follow up with the best prospects. A few of our bigger customers would never have found us had we not shown up at these shows.

With so much information available online, and with the ability to purchase things with just a few mouse clicks, why would I go to such a trade show today? For me, that's easy.

• It's a great way to discover new companies and products, often hiding in the corner of the show floor or as an adjunct to a larger vendor.
• It's often valuable to get your hands on a product to see if it is well made and usable. I recently went through a lot of hassle with Dell when I bought and subsequently returned the Inspiron Mini 9 (Ubuntu version) because of the tiny and unusable keyboard.
• If you expect that the product you are seeking will be critical to your business over time, it's valuable to build a relationship with the vendor. A major trade show is often the best chance to meet their senior people and decide if you want to invite them to make a sales call.

So I will once again show up at Macworld SF and will hope that IDC will find it profitable to continue running the show. That gives companies the chance to show their stuff rather than struggling to get their product stocked and displayed by the Apple retail store or other merchants (who show only a tiny percentage of what's available out there). I'm likely to show up at future Macworlds, too, since my purpose for attending isn't to see Apple's products, but to see everything else.