All Articles Tagged macworld

The fallout from Steve Jobs’ no-show for Macworld 2009, and Apple’s pull-out from all future Macworlds continues.

• First up, Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek asks if Apple is ditching Macworld for CES. While many saner minds drafted up lengthy retorts, Daring Fireball nailed the one-punch-kill: “No.”
• Daring Fireball also gives it’s own perspective, that he not busy being born is busy dying: “Traditions are comforting. But comfort, I think, tends not to breed innovation. It can be hard to tell whether you’re staying the course because it’s the right direction, or because you’ve dug yourself into a deep rut.”

• John Siracusa of Ars Technica suggests Apple’s exit from Macworld is part of their “fearless” DNA: “Though painful and jarring in the short term, these kinds of moves are a big part of what makes Apple great. While other companies are paralyzed with indecision, or cling relentlessly to what has worked in the past, or are seduced by sentimentality, Apple is busy murdering its darlings. Though such dramatic moves often appear foolhardy to its more cautious competitors, Apple usually has the last laugh, working through the initial pain to find itself in a much better position down the road—a winning position.”

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The news is still fresh (and painful): No Steve-Note at this year’s Macworld Expo an no Apple from next year on. Reaction over the intertubes has been fast and in some cases furious. Here’s a quick sampling:

• Paul Kent of Macworld Expo responded with a non-response, which is probably all he really could do: “We look forward to many successful years of Macworld to come.”
• Jason Snell of Macworld Magazine (same parent, different company) thinks it might be better for the show: “And yet every year, those same companies schlep out to San Francisco to announce their next big products—and find their announcements completely washed away by whatever Steve Jobs announced on Tuesday morning. Completely washed away.”
• Jim Goldman of CNBC says the reasons are purely political, not health related: “Apple has been trying to separate itself from Macworld for some time, preferring instead to host its own “special events” a few times a year.” (er… um, that sounds more strategic than political, but who are we to analyze people’s headlines?)
• Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo says Apple has always wanted out of Macworld, but thinks no Steve-note is just one more step on Jobs’ road to retirement: “The simplest explanation, following previous events, is that canceling MacWorld and having Phil Schiller to present it is just another part of His Plan. This doesn’t mean that he is leaving the company tomorrow, however. it is just one more step towards that goal, as I explained back in October.”

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And lo, Steve Jobs opened the 7th seal, and there was silence at Macworld.

Apple just made it official folks, Phil Schiller will be presenting the Keynote, and after that, Apple will no longer be attending Macworld, leaving WWDC as possibly the only show big left for Apple and Steve Jobs.

Is this the end of an era, or the beginning of something new? Does no Steve-note mean no Macworld for anyone? What will this do to expectations? And will it make Apple’s “special events” even more special?

In 2007 Steve Jobs strode up onto the Macworld stage, rehashed the Apple TV for a bit, then dropped the shot heard around the consumer electronic universe: iPhone.

In 2008, it was Time Capsule, an iPhone OS update, Apple TV Take 2, and the MacBook Air.

And in 2009?

Er… um… we’re not even sure he’s going to be there, according to Businessweek (via MacRumors):

Update: 2:30 PM EST: Now Paul Kent is clarifying his statement. Here it is verbatim: “We haven’t made an announcement yet. We hope to in the next two weeks.” Rather than clearing the picture up, it just got muddy again.

Previous years, there’s been an announcement roughly a month before hand. We’ve blown that soft deadline this time around.

One concern is that Apple may have no big announcements to make. Mac Pro, MacBook Pro 17″, Mac Mini, and Apple TV are all due refreshes, maybe even iMacs, but none of those are iPhone or MacBook Air type sexay. Apple could drop an iPhone Nano or an iTablet, but those are seen as longshots.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard is almost a certainty, but while it includes Grand Central and Open CL, for consumers, it’s “no new features”.

But is Jobs giving a less than ‘verse denting keynote worse than him not showing up at all, generating more panic about his health and Apple’s confidence in the market, especially with Adobe already having pulled out of their booth?

What do you think? Is there a Macworld without a Steve Jobs Keynote? And if so, who gives it in his place, and what do they announce? Phil Schiller on iPhone 2.3 might not be enough…

With Macworld fast approaching, the rumor rate should begin increasing exponential. iTablets will be hot once again, of course, as will the iPhone Nano. Says MacRumors:

[iDealsChina] claims the product will be announced at Macworld San Francisco 2009. iDealsChina, however, has a very mixed track record. In August, it passed off renderings of knock-off iPod clones as the real thing and also claimed that the new iPod Touch would have GPS (it did not). The site, however, did previously have access to Griffin case moldings that appeared to be real. The sizes could correlate with smaller touch screen photographs that iLounge published in June.

MacRumors thinks such an iPhone Nano may break App compatibility with the existing iPhone and iPod Touch due to screen size and resolution. Shrinking the screen down using a higher DPI, like the iPod Nano would lessen part of the problem (though hitting tinier capacitive touch targets would no doubt be an interesting exercise in frustration).

What do you think? iPhone Nano for Macworld? And is it a Good Thing?

MacRumors is passing on… well… rumors from MacBlogz of a 32GB iPhone! Says MacRumors:

The reason the largest iPhone (16GB) currently has 1/2 the memory of the largest iPod touch (32GB) is that the iPhone can only house a single NAND Flash chip while the iPod touch can accommodate two. The additional space in the iPhone is taken up by its communication hardware. In August, Toshiba announced that they would begin mass production of higher density 32GB chips in the 4th quarter of 2008.

Intel, they go on to say, may well bump the capacity even further — to a startling 64GB — by early next year. Sound crazy? Heh. With Macworld coming in just over a month, we ain’t seen nothing yet on the rumor front.

Still, 32GB is drool worthy, and something we here at TiPb are predicting for next year as part of a third generation iPhone HD, so you know we wants it.

How about you? Is 16GB enough, or is it always going to be a case of the more, the better?

Daring Fireball links to a translation of a Swedish MacWorld rumor (Google translation) that quotes Telia as saying as MMS app would soon be available for the iPhone. Phew! Broken telephone much? Tries to clarify Gruber:

Not sure if this means Telia is writing their own MMS iPhone app, or if they’re suggesting that Apple is adding MMS support to the system software. I haven’t seen any reports of MMS support in the iPhone OS 2.2 betas.

Could this be a surprise feature? Personally, I never use it. I prefer device independent protocols like email and IM to handle my communications, but I know many of my fellow TiPbsters are still dying to get their multi-touch on this baby, so what do you think?

Apple bringing it? Telia? And if so, would other carriers like AT&T follow suit with MMS apps of their own? Do we want that kind of fragmentation, after it’s taken so long to get even the little interoperability that currently exists?

The Phone different Podcast is back, baby! We had a long, unplanned hiatus due to technical and spiritual difficulties. Maybe not so much with the spiritual, but you get my point.

In this episode, Mike and I talk about the Macworld experience and the new products that were announced there. We also spend a bit of time on the 1.1.3 iPhone update and some other industry news. Listen in!

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

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I spend a healthy portion of my time at Macworld doing the following:

1. Thinking about Google’s fixation on the iPhone and
2. Looking for a really good iPhone dock / Alarm clock.

…Keeping the iPhone in a dock by your bed seems like a no-brainer - charges it up, lets you play a song from your library to wake you up, maybe even lets you catch a quick movie before you fall asleep. Right? Apparently it does all of those things except the last part - the falling asleep part:

A study in Sweden and the United States finds that using a cell phone just before bedtime interferes with sleep patterns. - study

The deal is that the radiation from cell phone radios gets into your head and prevents you from getting into a deep sleep pattern. If it ain’t deep sleep, it don’t count. So maybe leaving that dock on the desk, next to your computer, and far from your sensitive squishy brain is the right idea after all.

Besides Google (much more on that tomorrow, stay tuned!), there weren’t a lot of “iPhone Web Apps” booths. Actually, none that I can remember. What there are a ton of at Macworld are accessories booths. Clearly the accessory market for the iPhone is ramping up quickly and may even near iPod accessory market status sometime soon.

…But it’s not there yet. Case in point, I saw probably a dozen different iPod speaker docks — all of which were “compatible” with the iPhone in flight mode only. Apple is requiring (and rightfully so, I suppose) that accessory makers submit their accessories for their seal of approval, iPhone-wise, so that the dreaded GSM-interference issue is taken care of. I personally wish Apple had managed to handle that on the device rather than forcing companies trying to interact with the Dock connector to re-make their products, but c’est la vie.

Otherwise, the thing to see, iPhone-wise, is cases. There are more skin cases here than you could shake a stick at, but there are some other gems as well. After the break, our three favorite cases at Macworld 2008.

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