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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.
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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iPhone Apps review site looking for bilingual testers
Nooooooooo!!!
Fearless Leader, why have you forsaken us?
I promise not to bitch about the lack of firewire in the new Mac Minis, unlike my faithless ranting about the new MacBooks! Just come back.
If I don't get my regular of RDF rays I go all wonky and think about buying crap from Dell! Or running Darwin on a home built system as a back end media server!
Help us Steve Jobs, you're our only hope!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
"Is there any other company with it's perception of viability so closely linked to a single living individual?"
I don't know, I think a lot of investors would be OK with Steve Ballmer keeling over.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Somebody think up something that includes the term "beleaguered".
That's why the imagineers invented animatronics.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
> "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.
Maybe they don't have anything.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The Catholic Church(tm).
I live in Omaha, and trust me, Berkshire Hathaway's meetings every year noticed by folks far and wide who have nothing to do with Warren Buffet. He's at least as strongly connected personally to his company as Jobs is to Apple. The problem is Warren has a strong "Reatily Clarity Field", and thus is far less of a rockstar then Jobs.
Kirby
We know Steve is going to die, someday.
Why do you hate Apple? Hater.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I think a lot of investors would be OK with Steve Ballmer keeling over.
Remember how HP's shares jumped when they threw Carlie over the side?
If I could get a tip from Ballmer's cardiologist, I just might buy some MSFT calls.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's 2008. Steve Jobs has already delivered the keynote at Macworld 2008.
Next year is 2009.
...and watch the stock crater tomorrow.
Unfortunately, ever since Jobs lost significant weight as a result of his surgery (an obligatory side effect for the type of surgery he had), MacWorld keynotes have become a "Steve Jobs Death Watch" for the press. Before, during and after the keynote, more ink is spent on speculations regarding his health than the product announcements.
I think one side benefit of Apple's abandoning MacWorld is the press can no longer turn it into a morbid event.
Risk of a rickroll? Pansy. Kids these days... In my day, we risked seeing a man with his anus stretched to almost athletic proportions or something even worse.
You kids with your 80s love ballads are so freaking spoiled.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Steve Jobs doesn't care about Mac people.
The cookie told me to.
We know Steve is going to die, someday.
Even if it's only for three days.
Consumer electronics are never seen for its technical merits. It is all about user interface, always has.
What good is having the latest tech where you have to dig it out a seven-level-deep menu structure to use it? Having a clean, simple interface is the key to succes.
And I'm not a Machead by a long shot, either.
I'm going to guess that Apple is backing out of Macworld SF because it's so poorly run that no one wants to go. $20k for a table? sure. five 30" Cinema displays 'go missing' from the loading dock? sorry, not our fault, not our problem. Need a new outlet? You have to hire one of our electricians. How many hours do you want him for? oh, we don't know how long it'll take, you have to figure that out yourself.
The company that runs Macworld runs it half-assed, they don't care about attendees because they know they're the only game in town and people will pay regardless, and they don't care about vendors, because again, you need the exposure or your competitor is going to get it first.
If we're lucky, Macworld will die off and be replaced with something better.
Are you serious? I have had nothing but touch screen phones since 2001.
The models I used actually started out as pure touch screen and then added keyboards (retaining the touch screen) because you can type faster with buttons (and the Xerox graffiti lawsuit). You can also touch-type with buttons.
The iPhone has nothing really new except that it was marketed to everyone and not just PDA users. Suddenly smartphones are "cool" because Apple makes one. That's fine.
I've been a Mac user for over 20 years. I'm typing this on a Mac. I'm glad Apple is doing well.
I'm also glad that people still make real smartphones like Treos, because I am a PDA user and I refuse to give up meaningful features for marketing fluff and looks. My four-year-old Treo model has many, many features that the iPhone lacks, including multimedia features like stereo bluetooth support and over a decade's worth of third-party software available directly from the people who developed it.
By saying that you show that you completely misunderstand the mindset of the Apple customer.
People that buy Apple products are not concerned with motherboards, chipsets, memory speed, CPU or other technical details so much (except perhaps MacPro buyers, esp. if they come from PC background).
People that care about that build their own PCs (I have certainly).
People who buy Apple want their computer to be transparent, they don't want to tinker with it endlessly (like that guy fixing old cars in his garage and never having it actually working, he just enjoys tinkering - kind of like Linux people early on).
If you say macbook is just like any other laptop then you don't get it. Look at any other laptop and just look at the level of "noise" on the keyboard designs these days. Find me one keyboard that doesn't scream at you with 5 things written on each keyboard with different colored letters, keys non-standard width or position etc.
That's just one detail, and then look at the beauty of simplicity of classical Macbook keyboard. It just disappears, and doesn't scream at you.
Macbook aluminum case feels so solid and sturdy, better than any other laptop I have ever held. And it does not have things written on it all over the place (certainly not stupid metal labels like Intel Inside or built for Vista), or things glued to it at the bottom containing certain product key.
The computer is sophisticated and simple, understated like luxury European sedan (think BMW, a lot of people don't get that one either, that's why you see idiots that put chrome wheels, and fart exhausts on their BMW).
And then we get to other soft things like the OS. That one is a topic on its own, but the joy of using OS X would be worth it to me even without these other things.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
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.
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.