[frgough]

There's nothing more fun than watching self-important media types being told by the real world that they aren't as indispensable as they thought they were. The agony of soul is truly hilarious to watch.

[Steve_S]

Overall, nice article. I was with you until you wrote:

>"Macworld Expo as an idea would be better off without Apple."

LOL! Yeah, good luck with that. Trade shows like the Macworld Expo are in trouble in general. When the anchor of the show pulls out, it's DOA. The very best case scenario for IDG would be to somehow manage to get enough vendors to show up for a 2010 event without Apple. However, once the vendors see the utter lack of interest in an event like this without Apple, that would surely be the end.

Seriously, I've been to a few Macworld shows. The vendors are nice "extras", but the main driver for attendance is to see Apple's products. Steve's Keynote in particular has been the main interest. We all like Phil, but he sort of comes off like a used car salesman.

[ChasmoeBrown]

Jason, good article - great simply for not speculating on 'you-know-what' as the rest of the 'Net seems to have.

I believe this was coming because of us. We were starting to expect too much (maybe) and post announcement remarks had generally become "ho hum, Apple, that's nice" - blasé. Steve probably felt his audience eroding.

Then again, Mac minis (which I'd bet Steve absolutely hate but are best sellers - see Amazon's list) and Snow Leopard are just not as sexy as the iPhone. The announcement show, where Steve brought a couple of others on stage, was, in hindsight, the warmup.

[Steve_S]

IEBA1 said:

Remember, there is NO "Apple Computer, Inc." any more. They dropped "computer" from the name of the company. Now they drop the expo that highlights the computing arm of Apple, Inc.

How soon till they ditch computers altogether?
IMHO, not long at all.

LOL! That's quite a leap, don't you think? Since when does a company expand their business into new areas then drop their cash cow? Sorry, there is nothing to support your conjecture.

Quote

Their intent is clear.

Yes, there intent is clear on expanding its customer based beyond the traditional Mac specific users. This halo effect has resulted in more customers for the Mac platform. If you look at the numbers, Apple's moves have done nothing but increase their Mac business / market share. Likewise, you're not doing a good read on Apple's "intent" or direction.

Quote

So my next machine won't be a Mac.

Which platform you (or I) choose is irrelevant. Though, I do find it amusing when computing platform decisions are driven strictly by emotion, not to mention a misunderstanding of the facts.

I've enjoyed going to Macworld events in years past, but all of these events are in trouble. Attendance has been down in non-Mac related trade shows and many of the traditional vendors for these shows are choosing not to participate. The companies that do attend trade shows have also been cutting back the number of shows. Like everything else, Apple may be a bit ahead of the curve, but you can't deny Apple does a better job of seeing the future trends than most companies. In the days of the internet and Apple stores all over the place, it's hard to argue against Apple's side of the argument. If anything, we might agree that Apple's timing stinks. But, when you think about it, if Apple made the announcement 6 months ago, how many other vendors would even bother with Macworld this January. In some sense, Apple may have done Macworld (IDG) a favor by delaying the announcement until the last minute.

Either way, computers are tools. You either see value in the Mac platform or not. Switching platforms in order to use a better tool (even if only in your own perception) makes sense. Switching platforms because a company pulls out of a trade show is just absurd and illogical.

[Jason Snell]

hilltoons said:

With regard to the "disclosure" at the beginning of this column, if you work for IDG, you're kidding yourself if you think that their overall revenues, (and financial health), are not related in any way to MacWorld Expo or other ventures owned by IDG. To say that the parent company set up different budgets and managers is splitting hairs. Your company's well-being is not independent of IDG's other ventures.

Excuse me, but I think I know more about how IDG works than you do. Also, please stop putting words in my mouth. I never said what you claim I said. You are distorting my statement in order to make your point.

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If you have followed the demise of many print media giants in recent years or even recent days, (Tribune Media for one, having to declare bankruptcy because some of their other holdings have not done well...Time/Warner, AOL, Scripps Howard, etc.), you know that trouble in one area can bring the whole ship down.

Actually, a positive of IDG's system -- it's a privately-held company which owns individual corporations below it -- is that the individual businesses can stand or fall on their own. In fact, they must stand or fall on their own. And they do.

The fact that you suggest that IDG is somehow like the "many print media giants" you mention exposes your lack of understanding of the details of how IDG works, which isn't too surprising since as a private company we don't give out details.

Quote

Not to say that this news dooms the Expo or anything at IDG. But as much you might like to, any journalist employed by IDG is not able to comment on this as someone completely independent of the situation.

Hence the disclosure! It lets you know the situation in boring detail and then you can judge how close or far away I am from the matter.

[Jason Snell]

Steve_S said:

Overall, nice article. I was with you until you wrote:
>"Macworld Expo as an idea would be better off without Apple."
LOL!

So you didn't read the next sentence, where I said "Bear with me, I know this sounds like crazy talk?" Or the part where I said, "Theoretically."

If you read past that sentence you'll find that it makes a whole lot more sense.

[UlfDahlen]

Apple has revealed itself to be just another short-sighted, greedy and selfish corporation, not the special company many Mac loyalists believed in. The Mac base stood up for Apple during some very hard times, just to be brushed off as an inconvenience now when Apple is doing fine. But what can we do?
I was disappointed when Apple withdrew from Paris, Tokyo etc, but I understood. Apple can't be everywhere. But withdrawing from Macworld SF? That's totally nuts! I would like to protest in some form. Is anything planned? (The "silent keynote" idea will not work.)

[Steve_S]

Jason Snell said:

So you didn't read the next sentence, where I said "Bear with me, I know this sounds like crazy talk?" Or the part where I said, "Theoretically."

If you read past that sentence you'll find that it makes a whole lot more sense.

Oh, I read the next sentence and more. You made a bold claim by stating that "Macworld Expo as an idea would be better off without Apple", but I don't buy the justification you provided for that claim. Honestly, if you have to say "Bear with me, I know this sounds like crazy talk", then that indicates that even you are trying to convince yourself of what you're saying. So, if you wish, let's take a look at the justification you provide.

1. "Macworld Expo is the premier showcase for third-party companies who develop products for Apple?s markets. "

You try to make the point that vendors announcements get washed away by whatever Steve Jobs announces. Okay, fair enough. But, exactly what audience do you think there would be for third party vendors without Apple? The interest in attending such an event without Apple is very small. If that weren't the case, IDG would still hold an East Coast expo in New York or in Boston. Without Apple there is no audience. Without the audience, there are no (or at least not enough) third party vendors that would be willing to participate. Which begs the question... how would this be better for either Apple or third party vendors?

2. "My impossible dream is that sometime in the next year, Apple will agree to appear at Macworld Expo 2010 in a dramatically reduced fashion, perhaps with a reduced booth presence and no keynote address. If that happens, perhaps Macworld Expo as we know it today can survive."

Okay, so in fantasy land scenario number too (reference to your "impossible dream"), Apple attends the expo with no keynote and likewise no new product announcements in a "dramatically reduced fashion". In your mind, just by virtue of Apple attending, even in a dramatically reduced fashion, crowds will come and third parties will be interested in paying their fees to attend as well. Really? Are you kidding? I just can't imagine the interest that sort of event would draw. I've attended Macworld events in the past, but I have to tell you, I couldn't imagine making travel plans for an event with little more value than a common flea market. Visiting the vendor booths is a novelty the first few times. It's one of those things that you do because you're there already, it's not one of those things that you go out of your way for. Apple knows this, third party vendors understand this and eventually IDG will understand this as they close down their MacWorld show for good.

You'd have more luck doing some kind of virtual MacWorld on-line.

" Paul Kent and his team at Macworld Expo witnessed the death of Macworld Expo in Boston and presumably learned a whole lot from that experience. I expect them to be incredibly creative in finding a way to reinvent Macworld Expo without Apple as a participant."

I realize, it's you job to take this position. But, just speaking practically here... what evidence do we have to suggest IDG is capable of sustaining a Macworld Expo in 2010 and beyond without Apple? What lesson did they learn from the death of Macworld Boston? Where is there an example of sustaining this sort of event without Apple? What is the basis for the confidence you place in Paul Kent and his team? The rest of us need not look beyond what happened with Macworld Boston expo to see the result of Apple pulling out. It wasn't pretty. If it were commercially viable to continue the event, I have no doubt that IDG would have done so. Why do you believe this is any different?

"I don?t want Macworld San Francisco 2010 to be like Macworld Boston 2005. But that?s still the most likely scenario, and it?s a crying shame. I may understand Apple?s motivation, but I can?t agree with it. Macworld Expo and its community of users and vendors deserve better."

When you get past the emotion of Apple's decision, even you agree with the most likely way this will turn out. While I may share your sadness for the end of a great tradition / great show, etc. I don't share your notion that "Macworld Expo as an idea would be better off without Apple", nor do I believe you made a convincing argument to support such a claim. You even acknowledge how you believe this is going to go down. In short, you can't hide "crazy talk" ideas behind weasel words like "theoretically" and not expect to be called out on it.

[MichaelM]

I have attended MacWorld off and on for years and at one time also took my wife and kids to it for 5 years in a row. We are a Mac house and I've been a Apple and UNIX Sys Admin for departments with as many as 250 Macs. My house has always had Apple products around even during several of the so-called "Apple is dead" eras. If you walk into our home any given night you will find up to 6 people in front of the TV, all with Apple laptops spanning the last 10 years working away! It's actually kind of funny to see us.

So as a die hard Mac user, someone who has consulted for Apple in the past and has many friends who work there and many more who derive their income on Macs, I have to say I have been more and more disappointed with Apple over the last few years.

The OS really is buggy, the hardware has not been innovative in years, and technically the entire system although it looks good has just no lived up to the hype. Apple is the iPhone and iPod now. It seems computers are a distance neglected second even as market share increases.

I don't mind that they are no longer at MacWorld, I stopped going because the entire show has become less interesting, has lost it's energy and passion. But I wish Apple would get back into the computer business. Be the company the press loved to complain about and that other computers were envious over.

Apple, take some time off the marketing bandwagon, get your computers ahead again, get the OS stable again, stop following, lead and set the pass for everyone else. It's people like me who kept you alive, fought with IT to keep you in place, and many of us lost jobs in efforts to keep you afloat, and now most of the hard core Mac users feel abandoned. Not because of the consumer products but because you seemed to stop caring about innovation or quality. My wife asked me for a PC laptop the other day for Christmas, she said she wanted at least one computer in the house that worked all the time. I was devastated but understood her point.

You've proved your a leader in consumer products now please get back into the computer business or roll it out into a separate division where it can get the proper attention and feeding.

Oh and also as a early adopter of .mac, please get back to work on fixing that too. I am amazed how much better gmail and all other free systems are over .mac. Where I used to brag I now am often ashamed.

[beachbum]

Ah, youth... I am in awe of anyone who can re-jigger an iPod four times and do the necessary with taking apart their computer. My old "Kaypro" (circa 1980) conditioned me to exercise fear and trepidation in the tech world, but wow, was "WordStar" the perfect word processing program for writers! Anyway, I now work on the Mac OS X and want to call on you if and when I need help!!! (If that's possible?)

[Steve_S]

MichaelM said:

The OS really is buggy, the hardware has not been innovative in years, and technically the entire system although it looks good has just no lived up to the hype. Apple is the iPhone and iPod now. It seems computers are a distance neglected second even as market share increases.

I'm just curious as to the basis for making such comments. Lets start with the OS. What are you comparing it to? Do you consider Windows less buggy and if so, why? Are you comparing OS X to the "classic" Mac OS which essentially when unchanged for years? Now, what about the hardware designs? Since you were a fan of the Mac in the dark days, what is it about the beige boxes that you found more innovative than today's Macs? What was the last Mac that you found innovative and why? Have you looked at the ease of serviceability in the Mac Pros? You don't consider the most recent laptop designs to be more innovative? Who in the industry is doing a better job?

Quote

Apple, take some time off the marketing bandwagon, get your computers ahead again, get the OS stable again, stop following, lead and set the pass for everyone else.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but really please explain the OS stability issue you speak of. Please explain what you are comparing it to. Surely, you can't be comparing the stability of the classic Mac OS with OS X. As a multiple platform user, I've also seen no evidence of Windows being a more stable platform.

>My wife asked me for a PC laptop the other day for Christmas, she said she wanted at least one computer in the house that worked all the time. I was devastated but understood her point.

Help me understand her point. Right now, I don't. My Macs work all the time and have zero stability issues. It's been years since I've had a crash in OS X (back in the Jaguar days) and even then it was a fluke. If you're having constant stability issues, then it's more likely that you're having a hardware issue (perhaps bad memory, etc.) than it is an issue with the OS. Also, by coincidence, one of the stories I came across today was noting the Mac platform's reliability. http://blogs.nzheral...?ref=rss&c_id=5

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You've proved your a leader in consumer products now please get back into the computer business or roll it out into a separate division where it can get the proper attention and feeding.

While I'd agree that Apple as a company has been more focused on expanding into the iPod and iPhone markets. But, when you look at Apple's bottom line, that's perfectly reasonable. Look at how much money these emerging platforms are adding to Apple's bottom line (and for their shareholders). Apple has the opportunity to prevent Windows mobile from monopolizing the hand held platforms. This is sort of like the wild west where companies are trying very hard to stake their claim. This smartphone market will emerge to become much greater than the desktop computer market eventually and Apple is making great strides at the ground level. Asking Apple to do anything other than what it is doing would be a disaster. Especially when you consider the success the halo effect has brought to the Mac platform already. Further, which era in history has Apple produced more for the Mac platform that it does today?

Quote

Oh and also as a early adopter of .mac, please get back to work on fixing that too. I am amazed how much better gmail and all other free systems are over .mac. Where I used to brag I now am often ashamed.

I'm beginning to question whether you're even a Mac user or whether you're just trolling here. Yes, the rollout of MobileMe was a disaster. Everyone is aware of that. Have you used it recently? The problems have been cleared up and I get items synced very quickly now. Though, I'd agree Apple could probably offer more features for the price.

[MichaelM]

Steve_S - I'll answer some of your points starting with .mac, Are you kidding me it's a joke! Lets start with oh I don't know a little thing like being able to display the count of unread vs read e-mails, it used to, it can't now. How about when you select a range of e-mails to delete and it ignores the e-mails you highlight and instead selects from the bottom of the list up to where you last clicked. I get complaints about that all the time. Perhaps it's the way it can't seem to keep the address book in sync with the address book application, or regularly duplicates events (yes I know that too is a Sync issue but not to the lay user, it's all part of the same thing to most people). The missing button to indicate that an e-mail is spam? The list goes on and on. Gmail is faster and feature rich, features that used to be in .mac. Perhaps you have not been using it long enough to realize Apple keeps dumbing it down. This has nothing to do with stability, Apple just removes what it decides we no longer need or that it can't fix.

OS stability? Again it is you who seem to be showing your inexperience on Macs. I could not care less about the stability of an MS Windows PC. I'm talking about Mac OS against Mac OS. It used to be rock solid and resistant to crashes. Having worked as an Admin since the Mac 128 and by the way I have a Lisa in the garage and pretty much every other Mac model ever made (I should open a museum). It used to be a simple matter to set up and install the software and for the most part forget about it.

Macs today routinely and randomly misplace files, loose preferences, have rampant application crashes (yes you can blame that on the Application publishers too) but when we used to be able to brag about not having to spent much time supporting the Mac is simply is not true anymore. I spend and my IT staff spends just as much time fixing Mac related problems as we do PC ones and thats the point.

It seems to me it is you who is the light weight. If you only use your Mac for cruising the net and playing iTunes sure it runs fine. But as any hard core long time user will tell you the Mac is not nearly as stable as it used to be, the hardware fails more than it used to, it is just not the premium machine it used to be. I'm not comparing any of my thoughts against a PC.

Like arguments as to what is wrong with America (regardless of political points of view) that does not mean I do not love my great country, only that is has seen better days and I've been more proud of it in the past. Apple is the same, there is a reason we still all use Mac's in my profession and at my house, why I still teach classes and encourage students to buy them, why I just bought a new myself. It may be the best choice, that does not make it perfect or infallible.

I don't blindly drink the cool-aid, I instead point out that things could be better, and have been in the past. And can be again!

Anyone who claims they have not had a crash in years is in fact a liar plan and simple. And as I said before I have access to pretty much all models and all ages going back to the beginning and right up to the most current ones. My older Macs rarely crash, the newer ones have issues all the time. I still use a Twentieth Anniversary Mac as a music server and it has run for years for example without having to be rebooted unless I take it down for some reason. My brand new MacBook Pro requires a forced reboot about every two weeks. My daughters iBook which has been services by Apple 5 times is set up to never sleep or shut down because it crashes every single time it does. The Apple guys at three of the stores say it's just a problem with that model sometimes. This is not two isolated issues, at my work I spend more time than in year past fixing, rebuilding, replacing drives, reloading the OS or applications than I had to do in year gone by, it should not be this way. Vista may suck but that does not make OSX perfect.

And again my point, Apple has become sloppy, and has allowed poor quality into the OS as well as the hardware.

[baddawg]

Like Ford pulling out of a car show for Ford Mustangs.
It definitely won't be same without Apple at MacWorld Expo. The local economies that rely on MacWorld Expo show for business and vendors that rely on MacWorld Expo to show and sell their product will suffer from this.
This will have great effect on the Mac community to not to share knowledge and see what is new things for the Mac since the other shows have been canceled. There maybe a smaller MacWorld Expo but again it won't be the same as if Apple was there.
However, not being on someone else schedule is can help Apple so I can announce products when it is really ready (ie. good QA testing and production lines bugs hammered out) and sold. For the press this Apple controlled media annoucement sounds of a "Bush job" on the media so most thinking people will be more cynical about these announcements.
As for health of Steve Jobs only his family, close friends & co-workers know what is it and I hope his health is good. However, NO one lives forever and it is smart for Steve Jobs to groom new leaders and so he can retire or have a long vacation if he wished. Boy I wish I had this option for me at my company.

[artspeed]

"The economy is tanking" is probably more relevant than is postulated here; I work in the automotive training field, and just heard that Toyota has cancelled their nat'l. dealer meeting -- an unprecedented ocurrance, considering that Toyota is one of the strongest auto manufacturers on the planet.
If they're trying to save a buck (actually, more like $1M...) it doesn't surprise me that Applw is pulling back from something they may see as relatively irrelevant to their growth. Like PhotoNerd said earlier -- it's business.