I have to say, I really don’t understand why there’s such an uproar over Apple not participating in MacWorld. Don’t get me wrong, I love MacWorld, and nothing compares to Job’s keynotes. However….

1. There’s so much pent-up anticipation for MacWorld every year that, for months beforehand, there’s usually a slump in sales because everyone wants to wait and see what comes out.

2. Regardless of whatever is announced at MacWorld, regardless of how amazing it is, Apple’s stock always dumps ridiculous amounts immediately after.. sometimes taking months to recover. It seems that users, analysts, stockholders, everyone has such high expectations that, no matter what Apple does its not good enough.

In today’s economy, companies simply can’t afford to have billions of dollars of value disappear just because, for the upteenth year in a row, Apple didn’t unveil some industry changing new product. At least now, when Apple suddenly holds one of its last-minute press conferences, people can be pleasantly surprised…. rather than griping and complaining and selling stocks.

This stinks and it is a big deal to me.  I really love to watch the keynotes.  Apple is so secretive that this event explains all the new things, and their features and creates hype.  Just info on the web is boring.
Seems like they just want us to get used to Steve being gone. Out of site out of mind?

Apple’s been preaching to the choir by allowing Macworld to be focussed on San Francisco.  Us lowly East Coast citizens have to spend extra time in traffic, face off airport security, and book a hotel in San Francisco for Macworld.  Macworld would be ideal in New York or Washington DC, if they could just get it off the ground.  The local usergroup is losing its luster, and to have a true Macworld in DC, would get back its local supporters together.

MacWorld was fun but it now belongs to a past era.
It’s not cost effective and too disruptive for small participants.
It’s attendance is too local.
It’s too often a show of “work in progress”
It’s too expensive to attend for most Macintosh owners.
It’s only useful for a tiny percentage of Macintosh owners.
OK: it will be missed by a lot of meaningful persons in the Macintosh world.
New and much more efficient and meaningful ways of connecting to the world of Macintosh are available and will thrive on the Web.
Other events will become even more important to specialists.

Hey, Lesa!

Remain silent at the keynote? How rude! How unfeeling! How ungrateful!

Enjoy to the fullest what may well be the last Macworld Expo keynote by an Apple favorite, even if it’s not Steve. And demonstrate thanks for all that Phil has offered us in the past, including some hilarious stunts.

Otherwise, Respectfully I recommend that you just don’t attend. With your attitude, why would you want to anyway?

I think NextLoop got most of it:  the expectations raised by Macworld for innovation were impossible to meet, and the stock market reacted always negatively.  Apple needed to find a way to break that cycle and create its own way of introducing its products.
Having said that, it also appears that Apple has neglected to understand how to speak to its own community.  First of all, why delay the announcement until right before the event?  People already have bought their tickets, made their travel arrangements, paid for hotels, etc.  Maybe some of them might have appreciated learning Apple’s intentions last June, not late December, eh?

More important, Apple should have realized that Macworld, despite its shortcomings for Apple, was the Super Bowl for Mac users in this country at least.  Why?  Exactly because the CEO came to unleash his new world upon us! 

If you’re going to cancel the Super Bowl, you better offer a replacement.  A couple of commercial e-mails doesn’t do that. 

If I were Apple right now, I’d be thinking hard of a way to make future presentations of products and services that would re-create not the expecations, but the drama and celebrity status of the announcement process itself.  Otherwise, pretty damn soon, this is one Apple fan who’s going to quickly start regarding his favorite company as just another one of those corporate, faceless money-grabbing entities we have enough of.  If Apple thinks it’s invulnerable to arrogance, check how General Motors is doing.  Remember the Hummer?

I agree with the first part of your post, Tik Tok, but as for the way it was announced.. I know it came off like a wet fart in church, but honestly, I don’t really know how they could have done it much better. That news was going to be taken badly by the Mac community however it was received. Apple could have announced earlier, but attendance would have tanked. SJ could have gone forward with the keynote, but we really don’t know at this point why the decision to have Phil do it instead. We may discover after it’s all said and done that it was the right decision.

Speculation is cheap, but here’s a thought worth considering. Maybe SJ is too busy right now negotiating with officials of China Telecom to wrap up a deal to make iPhone available to the umpteen billions of Chinese consumers that want it. As a shareholder, I’ll sacrifice the Stevenote for other goals that can be achieved with Apple’s precious resources.

And these silent keynote people are a bunch of freaks that really need to grow up and take a stab at seeing the big picture. Macworld, despite how cool the Stevenote has been over the last several years, has become a clusterf$ck, and is truly a major burden on Apple from an operational perspective.

I can’t convey enough how bad it is for a major corporation to 1) have their schedule for major product releases dictated by a third party such as IDG, and 2) how sick and tired many shareholders have become over the stock manipulation, excessive rumor mongering, and braindead media pontification surrounding the Macworld keynote.

Sorry folks, as much as I will miss the Stevenote, I think Apple absolutely has done the right thing here, even if the manner and timing of the announcement was less than ideal.

Sorry folks, as much as I will miss the Stevenote, I think Apple absolutely has done the right thing here, even if the manner and timing of the announcement was less than ideal.

Apple has grown up. It is dropping the oddmanout/couterculture/us against the world image. Apple is now the BMOC that sets the agenda, from music players, iPod, to GUI environment, Mac, to smart phones, iPhone. Everyone else follows. Apple is now a big corporation and is acting like it.

Like it or not that is the pattern all successful companies follow.