Jobs, Apple out of Macworld Expo

IDG is a Waste of Money

When you pay all the IDG and convention center union fees, you are out a LOT of money with no real return on investment.

It's not like the old days when buyers would go to MacWorld to look at product. Now they can go into any Apple store and see all the products first hand.

Apple should have pulled out sooner.

Eh?

People still attend COMDEX and E3? Really?

Why?

Stepping down or no

Jobs has to make moves of some sort to avert the personality cult that causes such market stupidity every time he farts, though I doubt we'll hear a proper succession plan, as that would involve commenting on future CEOs.

Much more fun in the next couple of weeks is going to be the rumour-mongering about whether or not Schiller getting the gig means the Mac mini update is a go or not. Let alone the launch of the mythical xMac

The Blonde Ambition

Actually, Schiller did keynote a MacWorld Expo on his own, and it wasn't bad at all: it resulted in a gentler nicer one.

@ACoward "when will people catch on"

I look after six Macs in a small publishing house. I have done so for about twelve years. In that time we have NEVER missed a deadline or schedule, NEVER had to outsource and NEVER had to call in an "IT professional". We have NEVER had a computer fail. We have had to replace the occasional on-board battery and have sometimes fitted extra RAM.

Stupid (sheep) people?

Yep, that's us!

Would the world be worse without Jobs at Apple?

I'm not sure it would. I assume that products would remain of equal quality and adverts would remain of equal smugness. If it meant a refostering of the relationship between Apple and the press as a result of the end of the Steve keynotes then that could only possibly be a good thing.

@AC, good effort with the trolling, but this is The Reg so I'm sure a more fruitful opportunity to insinuate that anybody you don't agree with is stupid will occur later in the day.

@when will people catch on...?

You're so right!

If I go out and buy a Sony laptop from PC World the evil Apple software called Windows is supplied with the laptop even if I don't want to run it.

errrr hold on it's Microsoft who are shafting everyone, supplying Windows with a laptop even if you don't want it!!!!!!

Time to pass on the baton

What I see happening is that Jobs is slowly but decidedly de-emphasizing his presence. His very visible leadership was necessary to get / keep the boat afloat. This is no more necessary; it's no more Jobs selling a single product (i.e. bondi-blue iMac).

On a side-note, why is Jobs the only one considered capable / worthy / etc for announcing a new product? Of course, he is a master showman, but at the end it's the product that has to sell. I see lots of ads for the iPhone, and even there, the Apple logo appears only discreetly.

ipods and broomsticks

Well what if that simpsons episode comes true... and really everyone is moving to their undersea fortress... What about a new product launch with Jobs as the 'Hal 9000' inside the mini... perhaps it will be called the iJobs... (whoops no fan to blow or suck).

Actually Apple's have good marketing image; and manage to make software / hardware which matches that image and stay stable. Since Image is what sells to many of the fashion conscious these days; it will make them a good buck or two. Despite what governments / corporations try to do; some people do still like to be different and make such statements.

As to the various industry fairs... who goes to them? I used to go to an image processing fair in the UK (late 90's) and most of it was people networking and making contacts... with people they already knew. Perhaps there needs to be an online Web2.0 version of a trade fair... an extension to LinkedIn or Xing which adds fields for products you are using... and then once a week 'your contact x is now using product y'. Oh wait... that could be marketing 3.0. Especially if they make it company / product sponsored.

I can see where Apple's coming from with this

as it stands, twice a year (Macworld and WWDC) the Apple rumourmill goes into bugfuck crazy meltdown, setting unrealistic expectations of new kit which only dumps on the share price when it doesn't turn up. By removing at least one of the fixed points, Apple gets to release new product when it wants to in a less formal setting and, hopefully, a more finished state, pretty much as every other company does. About the only losers will be the circlejerking clickthrough rumourmongers and the analysts who seemingly smoke crack while they play buzzword bingo in an effort to yank the chains of those same rumourmongers, while the more mature news sources can run pretty much the articles they normally do after the event anyway.

@Ascylto

You've had no failures of 6 computers in 12 years?

Bullsh*t.

Oh the humanity...

I'm no Apple fanboi - I use Windows and Linux at home and I bought a Mac for my wife. I have an iPod Touch that I bought as a present to myself, and a Blackberry. I don't covet the iPhone.

Right, that's all the tech baggage out of the way. On to my point.

So far everyone's talking about what Steve's departure would mean to Apple. But no one's mentioned that he's unlikely to give up that position lightly. So if he is going, it's probably because he's very ill. Perhaps even terminally.

Right now I'm not thinking so much about the next gadget, or whether MacWorld will be the same without Apple's presence. I'm thinking about a fellow human being who's facing a challenge that's eclipsing many aspects of life as he's known it. That's something all of us will have to deal with eventually and I sympathise with his plight.

Get well soon, Steve.