Trade Shows Are Toast



[caption id=”” align=”alignright” width=”202” caption=”Image via Wikipedia”]Steve Jobs at Macworld[/caption]


And it took Steve Jobs to give it a proper send-off:
Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple announces final MacWorld, Steve Jobs won’t deliver keynote - Engadget

Apple gets conversational marketing and is abandoning traditional outreach in favor of high-touch venues like their retail stores. I also expect to see them cut back on print advertising this year and focus on their important constituencies: mainstream consumers, media professionals and developers with online and broadcast channels.

I’m going to miss the Stevenote at MacWorld, but we’ll still be hearing from him in other venues next year, I expect.
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Outline of Stevenote Posted? Hardly…

By way of Steve Rubel’s Tweet, I read this post about how an outline of Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote speech was posted on Wikipedia. They even repost the outline for us to get a 24 hour head start on all the announcements.

The only problem is it’s probably a hoax.

Steve Jobs in actionThat’s because Steve Jobs is not done with his speech yet; I bet he has yet to even fire up Keynote on his super tricked out Macbook Pro.

As I understand his keynote writing process, based upon what I’ve read and back-channel accounts, all of the Apple product managers have sent their white boards to Steve’s Macworld war room. These white boards contain all of the products ready or nearly ready to ship with detailed specs, key features and positioning. Steve will then pick and choose the order of announcement and then put together his slides. No one but Steve is sure what will be announced until it is; it’s just his way.

Sure, there are big product announcements that have been planned for months, such as the previously announced iPhone SDK and redesigned Macbook, that hundreds of Apple people know about but the “one last thing” is still something Steve reserves for something really special. And no way is it YouTube videos in iTunes… my money is still on the hybrid iMac/Macbook I blogged about last week.

But we will know for sure in about 24 hours.

Macworld Predictions

It’s fun to make predictions about new technology, particularly with secretive Apple, Inc. With the demise of Think Secret, the rumor mills have been not as active as normal during the run-up to next week’s Macworld Expo. We’ve seen rumors of tablets, smaller Macbooks and 3G iPhone’s but I don’t think we’ll see any of these things next week. I believe this Macworld will be all about the Mac and not much about the iPhone and iPod.




But I could be wrong as Apple has just announced new Intel Penryn-based Mac Pro’s and Xserve’s so what else might they have up their sleeve ready for announcement next week?




Let’s keep with the Mac theme for a moment and run down the obvious suspects. They will more than likely bump the processors and other features of the current Macbook Pro line-up; ditto for iMacs. The Macbook line will also probably see more of a recognizable change than just internal components but I don’t think it will turn into a flash-based, ultra-portable or tablet that some have speculated. No, I think it will be something radical: a return to the past.


Apple Powerbook Duo, Circa 1993Back in the mid-1990’s, I had a Powerbook Duo. What I liked about the setup was a regular monitor, keyboard and external hard drives housed in a docking station that the Powerbook fit into like a huge floppy disk. When on the road, it was a small, ultra-portable with a tiny monochrome display but it got the job done; I loved it.


What I think will be the biggest story next week is a return to this form factor but with the portable based upon 32 and/or 64GB of flash memory. It seems the folks at Gizmodo have dug up some interesting news along these lines earlier today.


The only other thing I think might be announced is the discontinuation of Apple TV and it’s replacement by a $399 Mac mini with DVR functionality. The rumored iTunes movie rental store would make more sense and another hobby for Steve and Company would be retired.


Well see for sure in 5 days. Stay tuned.