No more Macworld expos?

[Giaguara]

Apple to ditch Macworld gathering

In a surprise move, Apple said it is to abandon its annual tech gathering Macworld after this January's event.

"Apple is steadily scaling back on trade shows and in recent years is reaching more people in more ways than ever before," Mr Dowling told BBC News.

etc etc. Yikes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7786895.stm (bbc links stay functional forever)

[fryke]

It's been foreseeable, though. Apple's pulled out of all _other_ MacWorld or Apple Expos in Boston, Tokyo, Paris. Instead, they're doing their special press events, which gives them a better way to plan releases.

It's still sad, though, because it was like we elitist old-know-it-all Mac users had a special Christmas party, just for ourselves, two weeks after everyone else got their "old" iMacs and iBooks and stuff. Then we could gather here on the forums and tell people whining about them getting their hardware too early to pull it together.

[bbloke]

Originally Posted by fryke

It's still sad, though, because it was like we elitist old-know-it-all Mac users had a special Christmas party, just for ourselves, two weeks after everyone else got their "old" iMacs and iBooks and stuff. Then we could gather here on the forums and tell people whining about them getting their hardware too early to pull it together.

Hehehe, full of the Christmas spirit, eh, fryke?

It will certainly be a shame to see Apple pull out of the Expos. I was particularly surprised, then, that Steve Jobs was not scheduled for the final appearance.

[nixgeek]

Lots of people thought that this was the last MacWorld Expo ever, but it's just the last one for Apple. Macworld is still doing the expo, just without Apple being the highlight of it all.

To be honest, lots of the Apple keynotes lately have been ho-hum for me (and it seems that I'm not the only one). Personally, I don't know that I would miss it that much, but yes it is rather "end-of-an-era" for Apple to not be a part of it anymore.

[Mikuro]

I remember when Apple pulled out of the east coast expos. What happened to those again?

We all know how much of a control freak Jobs is, so I guess it's no surprise that he doesn't want to work on someone else's predictable timetable now that Apple gets all the hype it can handle one way or another.

[Satcomer]

A little birdie said the news of this does not tell the whole story. The main reason was rising costs (back story of conference centers costs getting out of control) and ability now for Apple to reach their customers (stores, etc.) on their terms.

Plus the world wide recession & possible economic depression is not helping either. I even give a time frame for CES & many other conferences falling too. To me this is a safe prediction.

[lbj]

I imagine MacWorld had become an annual curse much like quarterly reports are for public corporations. So widely followed, hyped, and critiqued that any misstep or failure to match, let alone beat, earnings and everyone runs to the hills.

A growing number of corporations are pulling out of the quarterly reporting game because it is just that, a game. It forces companies to plan strategies for the short term, to meet quarterly expectations, at the expense of taking a more deliberate, long term approach.

I see this situation as very analogous. I don't want Apple to constantly be looking at January and planning strategies to "wow" the crowd every winter. If they have a killer product, great! But when they don't, and that's OK, I don't want them to have to over-hype a minor change, nor do I want the stock to take a beating.

Apple has many avenues to wow the crowd, they don't need to be held to someone else's timeline. Nor should they confine themselves in such a manner.

Sure, I'll miss my January announcements, but I think it is a smart long term move with only short term consequences.

[fryke]

It'll be a bad thing for rumour sites, though. They could always rely on that every MW show at least featured *one* product introduction. The momentum before such shows certainly got their ad revenues up.