Today’s was the first MacWorld keynote I’ve missed in three years, and I have to say, I really didn’t miss anything. But then again, it was quite clear Apple was making a half-hearted showing as it was, revealing none of the products people are most excited about <cough>Mac mini</cough> and announcing several products that are either predictable, uninspiring, or just plain obnoxious toward consumers. Is anyone excited about variable iTunes song pricing who doesn’t work for a record label? Anyone? Or how about the “Indiana Jones” effect for iMovie 09 so you can have a fake plane fly over a fake globe to represent travel? This was worth gathering the world’s technology media?
It’s probably for the best that Steve Jobs didn’t show.
But all of the above was apparent to anyone watching. What was left implicit, though it was communicated loud and clear, is the fact that Apple now has to put its money where its mouth is, having dismissed MacWorld’s trade show atmosphere, and put together some truly special product launch events very quickly. The biggest advantage to not making the first Tuesday of January the holy grail of Apple announcements is that Apple can announce products when they’re ready and as it suits them, instead of forcing stuff to be ready ahead of time for MacWorld (and to beat out the CES news cycle). In other words, Apple should let the rest of the month pass, and then make a major hardware introduction on every Tuesday in February, culminating in a press event on the last Tuesday of the month to unveil the much-anticipated new Mac mini (and with the 32-gig iPhone coming somewhere beforehand).
At the end of the day, Apple is probably logically right that MacWorld doesn’t make sense for them anymore. I think it’s ungrateful, given how much the enthusiast community saved Apple during the mid-’90s, but it probably is the right thing from a business standpoint. But it also feels like they deliberately left a lot out of today’s announcements, as if to emphasize their rejection of the trade show model. It just felt cheap, you know?
20 responses to “MacWorld Reflections: Apple Makes Hasty Exit, Stage Right”
Variable pricing bad for consumers? What? I think it’s great. Maybe it’s bad if all you buy is mainstream popular stuff but 69 cents for older tracks is awesome and the lack of DRM is certainly something that should have been in place all along. I usually use amazon’s mp3 store but if I can get the same thing for the same price and in AAC from the iTMS I’m going to use iTunes just because it’s easier.
Having a major show in Jan doesn’t make sense from a retail standpoint. I did not but a new iMac this holiday season because I was waiting for January and I am sure I am not the only one who had pause when they stepped into an Apple store in Nov/Dec. Macworld hurts Apple’s all-important holiday sales.
It’s hard to understand how you can acknowledge that Apple’s biggest reason for bowing out of MacWorld is to release products on its own schedule. And then, in the same sentence, insist that they follow *your* schedule. WTF?!
I’m reminded of the quotation that the world will end not with a bang, but a whimper. I think we had all hoped that Apple would at least use this last Macworld as a thank you to the enthusiast community. That isn’t what I felt happened. In truth, it felt like my favorite relative gave me a limp, half-hearted handshake, and some regifted after shave.
For consumers it has nothing to do with variable pricing. It’s all about no more DRM.
As for the Mac Mini? Yes, I’ve been waiting for over a year for it to be updated. But most people I talk to aren’t interested in the Mac Mini. They are interested in the MacBook or MacBook Pro.
For those of who actually write and work with spreadsheets WE ARE really excited about the update to iWork. This is just another step in Numbers becoming more than just a house hold mini-spreadsheet and is something business people, not necessarily finance people, can actually start using for more than very simple spreadsheets. Pages definitely has some things I can take advantage of. I just wish that full screen had it’s own settings for zoom.
iLife? Major updates to iLife for GarageBand (don’t you play guitar or keyboard???), iPhoto (cool!) and iMovie (I still might be using iMovie ’06 more though. I’m not sure yet.). Too bad they didn’t do something more for iDVD and iWeb, both of which I also use.
I edit and then burn DVDs for my relatives junior high, high school, and now some small college events. Apparently Windows isn’t very good at this so they keep coming to me.
I also maintain websites for seven different groups including the motorcycle group I’m a member of.
It’s like Apple specifically made all of their products with me in mind. They just aren’t keeping up with iDVD to make that better as I still live in more of a DVD world than YouTube.
Apparently I’m Apple’s target audience and not you.
I can honestly say I was excited by the iPhoto announcements by Phil. Just last week on ski holiday we were discussing the advantages of the iPhone camera using the GPS functionality and “geo-tagging” in general. We tried using the pictures taken with the iPhone in ‘Googlemaps, but that was a no-go. Now with the new iPhoto there is a really great use for geo-tagging your pictures. The “faces” stuff will also be a lot of fun I think and the Facebook + Flickr integration is good.
iMovie updates are very welcome too (cool).
I guess I also fall into Apple’s targeted audience like OlsonBW.
Let me start by saying if you hadn’t written this article we wouldn’t have missed anything either. I grow weary of articles like this form writers who are acting like spoiled children who didn’t get what they wanted. For some of you nothing Apple does will impress you. Apparently this is what your sense of pride is based on, not being impressed with anything. Let it be known that if someone is hard to impress they aren’t worth impressing.
Why not consider writing for PCs now? You’ll be more of help to Apple that way…
Maybe Steve Jobs didn’t deliver the keynote because there just wasn’t anything big enough announced to warrant the time and effort involved on his part.
I think Pete gives the exact reason Apple is no longer doing these keynotes– people like Pete expect an iPhone every single january. Their expectations are unrealistic, and when Apple releases several innovative products, they complain about how Apple is wasting their time.
Its really unfortunate that you can’t give the announcements they made the respect they deserve. You say “ho hum” to things for which there are no other products on the market in the same class.
And while the mac mini is a fine product, its not like its the most important product in their line.
It seems that since what you want is a mac mini, then everything else is lame and them not talking about the mini means “nothing significant announced”.
You seem to be lacking some perspective here.
This is an Apple blog, and you don’t even spell Macworld correctly. Come on. How much freakin’ research does that take. Is there even such thing as copy editors any longer?