Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld

In a predictable move (in the sense that they've pulled out of every other show throughout 2008) Apple have announced that 2009 will be their last year at the San Francisco MacWorld Expo. When I look back at the monster shows like E4, CES and the various MacWorld's around the world it's clear to me that they reflected a world that wasn't Internet enabled and that they were really geek holiday resorts. The Internet observation should be self apparent, but what I mean by the geek holiday, is that the people we would see at these Expo/Conferences where already customers, sure there was a smattering of people that had never heard of Macromedia or Apple or whatever companies stand I was working on but they were the tire kickers. Overwhelmingly the people in attendance where existing users not new potential clients. Having said that I will miss the Expo's when they pass into history.

Perhaps the more interesting aspects of this press release are the huge numbers of people (3.5 million) that visit every week and Phil Schiller is doing the keynote.

The biggest MacWorld keynote at the Moscone surely only fitted a few thousand people in - even the ones that had people bulging out the doors and standing around the walls to dangerous levels. The numbers of people that attended the entire Expo was at it's best equivalent to 10% of 1 day, and that's assuming a 7 day week. This is based on MacWorld's figures for 2007, interestingly I can't find the actual figure for 2008 in the press release. Clearly Apple is getting a lot more eyeballs from the Internet that from expensive hard to co-ordinate and leak prone Expo's - after all the iPhone SDK had over 100,000 registrations in its first few days of being released.

Phil Schiller - 17 year veteran at Apple - will make the keynote at Apple's final MacWorld SF. Interesting... the possible speculations that you see come from the blogging world will no doubt include:

1. Job's is too sick/dying/dead
   • (from the less than credible, will write anything to get eyeballs crowd)
2. It's the changing of the guard, Schiller has been anointed to carry the flame
   • (from the business analysts with "insider" knowledge - as if Apple still was a leaky Pepsi powered boat)
3. OMG!! No new products, Panic, Scream like a little bitch, The Worlds Coming to an End!
   • (from the Apple Fanboi Extremists)

Let's kill 1 & 3 right here. "Job's is too sick/dying/dead" -> unlikely and honestly irrelevant, not worth wasting anymore time on. As for "no new products" if that was the case they wouldn't go at all and again who cares - although I would snap up a couple of those new upgraded Mac Mini's if the rumours are true, an Wired has usually been not that far off with MacWorld SF, just not usuually this far in advance...
Personally I'm betting on a combination of #2 and the fact that I have never seen any indication that Steve Jobs gives a rats about sentimentality (after all there is no rumoured mega product coming, therefore it's the only other plausible reason he would give the "last keynote" at MacWorld SF).

Phil has certainly got the track record at Apple to be the anointed, but he's certainly doesn't have the RDF level of presentation skills that Steve Jobs has. Then again, you can only have one star on stage at a time, it's a dynamic of human nature in both the audience and the presenters. Maybe in the area of Presentation expertise Phil is only just now cracking his 10K hours (Amazon link to a great book) or he's been hiding his light under a bushel. Of course I could be way off...