With just days to go before the 25th Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco kicks off Tuesday morning, speculation about what Apple may or may not unveil during senior vice president Philip Schiller’s keynote address is mounting. Among the rumored possibilities: a preview of Snow Leopard, a long-overdue update to the Mac Mini, new iMacs and perhaps an appearance by CEO Steve Jobs himself.
On Dec. 30, with just a couple of hours left in the penultimate trading session of the year, Apple’s shares hit $87.99 and seemed to be well on their way back to $90. But before they could break $88, claims that Steve Jobs’s declining health is the real reason the Apple CEO won’t deliver the keynote at Macworld 2009 cut the legs out from under them. The rumor was quickly dismissed, but not before AAPL plunged to $85.04.
There are many words that characterize Apple under the second reign of Steve Jobs: resurgent, exciting, innovative, successful. I’d add one more to that list: fearless. Most large corporations are afraid of change. Successful product lines, business plans, and especially brands are milked for every penny. And when there’s nothing left, when the thing’s been beaten into the ground until not a single ounce of value remains, only then will corporations reluctantly move on….Over the past decade, Apple has been using a different playbook. In Apple’s estimation, the best time to kill off a successful product or brand is “as soon as possible.” Dropping a winner means creating a new winner to replace it.”
– Ars Technica’s John Siracusa on Apple’s recent Macworld exit
Apple Expo Paris is no more. Reed Exhibitions, which organizes the event, confirmed today that the annual trade show has been canceled for 2009. News of the cancellation follows the announcement of Apple’s withdrawal from Macworld Expo Tuesday.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s 11th-hour withdrawal from Macworld has prompted all manner of concern for his health. But Jobs is fine, says Apple. Which means it’s Macworld that’s suddenly fallen ill. How can it survive when its single largest exhibitor says the show simply doesn’t matter anymore? Did Apple just kill Macworld?
Told that Macworld Expo 2009 will be Apple’s last, and the first that CEO Steve Jobs does not keynote, investors behaved much as you’d imagine, dragging the company’s shares into the mud in after-hours trading. Fueling the panic: obvious concerns about Jobs’s well-being. And, of course, speculation that Macworld is likely to disappoint devotees hoping for the introduction of some insanely great new product. But would Apple really send Senior VP Phil Schiller out onto the Macworld stage without a cool new product to introduce?
Dissapointing news for the Mac faithful and anyone who’s ever seen Apple CEO Steve Jobs deliver his annual Macworld keynote address. Macworld Expo 2009 will be the first such event that Jobs will not keynote and the last the company will attend.
Perhaps Macworld Expo 2009 will have its “one more thing” after all. In a note to clients this morning, Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research speculates that Apple will indeed launch a new product category at Macworld in early January. A netbook.
Apple may not announce any new product categories at MacWorld come January, but it will uncrate an update to at least one old one: the Mac Mini. An “Apple corporate employee” tells Wired that the diminutive desktop has received a long overdue upgrade that’s to be revealed at the annual expo.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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