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.

--
iPhone Apps review site looking for bilingual testers

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?

[tzhuge]

I'm pretty sure the reason that Jobs won't be presenting at MacWorld is that "One More Thing" at the expo will be a Cyborg Steve Jobs. It will be the most astoundingly fantastic reveal ever, and, if we're really lucky, Apple will be cutting legal department costs by equipping Cyborg Jobs with weapons (gotta make up for that 1% drop in computer sales). Awww... just imagine the smell of crackling bacon as tech journalists fry.

Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[tlhIngan]

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).

Actually, I'd argue that Apple entered the portable MP3 player market at the right time. Consider the market at the time - small flash-based players that could barely hold 1 album, maybe 2 if you compressed them below 128kbps, or humongous hard-drive based MP3 players that were larger than a discman (i.e., the Nomad), or when they weren't, were huge bricks.

Now, Apple releases an MP3 player that has most of the space of the large hard disk players, but is only maybe 1 1/2 to 2 times of the flash-based player. Oh yeah, and instead of syncing via painfully slow USB 1.1 (or parallel/serial!), it would work at firewire speeds. So copying lots of music to the hard disk takes minutes, not hours (1GB would take around 15-20 minutes via USB 1.1 versus 2-5 minutes via firewire...).

So what did Apple do? They released an MP3 player in a formfactor that's usable, and made filling it much less of an all-nighter thing and something that someone can do on their way out the door.

Oh yeah, they also marketed the heck out of the iPod, and made everyone who would normally carry CDs or listen to tapes... consider buying one and carrying their entire collection in a handheld device, rather than a huge stack of CDs. Instead of MP3 players being relegated to the realms of the techie, Apple made them wanted and usable to the masses.

And Apple did this a month after 9/11 - when no one was willing to spend $600 nor have they fully recovered. Apple won out because Jobs seized upon the concept just as it was beginning to take off, then when the huge growth happens, they were already on the 3rd generation iPod (total sales under 1 million units at the point, yet it was the #1 selling MP3 player). Boom, the market takes off, Apple has a refined 3rd generation iPod on sale, and people start wanting iPods and MP3 players, to the point where Apple sells millions per month.

Apple got really lucky with the iPod. They were at the right place at the right time.

Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[tlhIngan]

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.

I think this was bound to happen when Apple made the switch to Intel. Apple traditionally releases product on these big events - MacWorld, WWDC (more to the things developers want), and other big conferences. New product appears on a regular schedule, and advances could be easily plotted. This was because Apple's source hardware (e.g., PowerPC) roadmaps were quite tightly sealed, and thus, Apple could gather up momentum leading up to the event on what the next big thing was.

But now, Intel and AMD have roadmaps known to the public way in advance. New chips, chipsets, graphics, etc., come out monthly, and there's no way Apple can wait 6 months to the next event to showcase their latest computers, using a CPU/chipset/GPU everyone else has been shipping the past 3 months. Apple can't wait for these big events to announce new product, because they happen at inconvenient times.

Apple is large enough that it can draw a huge crowd easily, which it does with these "spotlight" meetings/keynotes. The advantage is that Apple can release product around the same time everyone else releases product. A new chipset released by Intel? Well, hold a spotlight and release the new notebooks within a month or two from the first manufacturer releasing them, before it becomes "old news."

Apple has to release product, and they can't wait for the Next Big Expo to do it - to compete with all the other PC manufacturers now, they have to release in a timely fashion. (Think about how long it took for Apple to release Santa Rosa notebooks - everyone else had them for months!)

Once Apple went Intel, they have to follow Intel's schedule for product releases, which won't coincide with most of the Mac Expos. Or get left behind releasing old technology, with everyone annoyed waiting for the notebooks to use the latest and greatest. It's not practical for Apple to wait - they have to release. Holding a spotlight meeting is easier than holding a random Expo (scheduled months to years in advance) to release product in a timely manner.

Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[Canberra Bob]

Which is why Ubuntu is dominating the desktop market while Apple is fading away into oblivion. Ubuntu offers everything anyone could dream of on the desktop while Apple is listening to nobody.

This is all because all anybody cares about when using their home desktop is whether or not they can view the source code to the applications they run and if they can recompile the kernel. Usability has nothing to do with it for the average Joe.

Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[The Great Pretender]

But there's no Jobs to be found anywhere in this economy, so I'm not surprised the expo is also Jobs void.

Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[berend botje]

Apple got really lucky with the iPod.

Yes, they were. And they were very lucky with the MacBook. And once again with the iPhone. Lucky bastards, making stuff that people actually want to buy. Jeez, what were they thinking?

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.

Re:iPod, iPhone, then what?

[intheshelter]

My guess about why you're so wrong is your comment sounds like a lot of other short sighted haters who look simply at feature list items one by one and assume that tells the whole story. It's the package as a whole, user interface, user experience, product design, etc. These are all intangibles that add up to far more than the feature list and tech specs. Simply put. . . forest or trees? You're looking at the trees.

Let me be the first to say

[foo fighter]

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!

Re:Time Article

[foo fighter]

"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.

Hmm well

[roc97007]

> "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.

Re:Look, really?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

We know Steve is going to die, someday.

Why do you hate Apple? Hater.

What year is this?

[Xenex]

Jobs Not Giving This Year's Macworld Keynote

It's 2008. Steve Jobs has already delivered the keynote at Macworld 2008.

Next year is 2009.

Re:Quick

[Valdrax]

iBeleaguered?

Re:If you want to see a real Steve Jobs Keynote...

[Valdrax]

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.

It's true.

[puppyfox]

Steve Jobs doesn't care about Mac people.

Re:Look, really?

[pnevin]

We know Steve is going to die, someday.

Even if it's only for three days.

First touch screen?

[Monx]

... iPhone brought in the first touch screen, and now everybody and I mean everybody is coming out with touch screens ...

Are you serious? I have had nothing but touch screen phones since 2001.

1. VisorPhone
2. Samsung SPH-I300
3. Samsung SPH-I330
4. Treo 600
5. Treo 650p

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.

I don't think you understand

[mario_grgic]

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.