Apple Pulls out of NAB 2008

[MacRumors]

Macenstein reports that Apple has decided not to exhibit at the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters conference which takes place from April 11-17 in Las Vegas, NV.

"Apple is participating in fewer trade shows this year," said Anuj Nayar, senior manager of PR at Apple. "Often there are better ways to reach our customers. The increasing popularity of our retail stores and Apple.com Web site allows us to directly reach more than 100 million customers around the world in innovative new ways."

The news follows an earlier announcement by Avid that they would also not be exhibiting at this year's NAB conference. We'd heard rumors that Apple would be pulling out of NAB and that the reason was primarily motived by the high cost of exhibiting.

In 2007, Apple even held a special event at NAB, announcing a number of updates to their professional video applications.

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[amac4me]

Apple has historically released new products at NAB such as Final Cut Studio (April 2007) and the first 17-inch MacBook Pro (April 2006). I wonder if this means that products Apple usually releases at NAB will be released earlier (hopefully not later! )

[MoreMaypo]

More importantly, no MBP update yet...

[4God]

So , I guess there'll be a separate event to announce new ACD's.

[tadunne]

2008 the year of mac hell!?

[psychofreak]

Originally Posted by 4God

So , I guess there'll be a separate event to announce new ACD's.

And Aperture 2.0...

[fluidedge]

interesting - apple were conspicuous by their absence from the Broadcast Live/Video Forum 08 in London earlier this month too.

Avid had a fairly pathetic stand there too.

[4God]

Originally Posted by psychofreak

And Aperture 2.0...

Ahh...you're right. I wonder if there'll be updates to Final Cut Studio 2 then?
I'm thinking better use of SSE4 instructions.

[jaw04005]

Originally Posted by psychofreak

And Aperture 2.0...

Aperture doesn't belong at NAB. You should see something about Aperture at Photokina.

This news is disappointing to those waiting for Blu-ray support. Apparently, no Final Cut Studio 2.5 announcement this year.

The question for Apple is what the hell is going on with DVD Studio? Where's DVD Studio Pro 4.5 or 5? Blu-ray authoring support? I suppose Final Cut Server is vaporware?

[CmdrLaForge]

Poor NAB guys. Without Apple and Avid I wonder who goes there.

[Nuvi]

I wasn't expecting new FCP / Studio but I was hoping to see that rumored high end edit station (FCP Extreme) from Apple. No show at NAB just means they don't have any new products for broadcasting/video/film market.

[Nuvi]

Originally Posted by CmdrLaForge

Poor NAB guys. Without Apple and Avid I wonder who goes there.

Everyone, NAB is huge for broadcasting/film/video industry.

[OriginalMacRat]

The recession has begun after all. Forking out $$ for those conferences has an impact on the bottom line.

[AoWolf]

To me this means macbooks before NAB. Which is a good thing.

[desenso]

Originally Posted by tadunne

2008 the year of mac hell!?

Hmm.. I have an all-2008 lineup of Macs and I'd be hard pressed to describe it as "hellish."

[toke lahti]

Originally Posted by 4God

So , I guess there'll be a separate event to announce new ACD's.

I guess that there will not be any new ACDs... or DvdStudioPro... or blu-ray...
Hope they announce led backlit 17" MBP at least at WWDC!

[killmoms]

With $16 billion or so in the bank and no debt, I'm not buying the "we don't have the money" excuse. This is clearly due to the lack of things to show: to wit, no significant announcements to make regarding the Final Cut suite of apps (most notably DVD Studio Pro which is now lagging significantly behind Adobe Encore in terms of HD authoring capabilities).

[fluidedge]

NAB is massive even without apple - for both apple and avid not to be there is surpising to say the least. It'll leave Adobe free to show everyone Premiere.

Sony and Panasonic have huge stands at these confrences showing off all the latest gear.

Apple weren't at Broadcast Live in london like I said, but there were a couple of people there from apple giving seminars on Final Cut/Podcasting etc - I dare say they will do the same at NAB

And of course there are loads of official resellers selling/demoing all the existing products.

If apple have nothing new to reveal there is little point in them being there. A good sized stand will cost about $10000/$15000 a day at an event like this.

[Nuvi]

Originally Posted by AoWolf

To me this means macbooks before NAB. Which is a good thing.

NAB isn't place for MB or even MBP if they don't come with ability to edit 4k or something as amazing as that out of box . NAB is for broadcasting, film and video innovations. It is by far the biggest tech expo for moving image professionals.

[Stampyhead]

Maybe if these shows didn't have such high exhibitor fees exhibitors would be more likely to go.

[iBunny]

They had to pull out of NAB. Their big announcement was going to be 10.5.2 but they know its going to take alot longer than April to be complete. So maybe it will be announced in the summer

[will99]

But how does this affect 10.5.2?

Apple doesn't have anything new to offer at NAB so why would they go in the first place?

[Reach]

Just give us some info on "Phenomenon" sometime soon, and I'll be happy. I don't care where they release it, I won't be going to NAB anyway.

[Chisholm]

At least Avid and Apple won't be shouting over each other in their demos. That floor gets SO loud.

[FunkyJunk]

Originally Posted by CmdrLaForge

Poor NAB guys. Without Apple and Avid I wonder who goes there.

I went to the NAB show last year for business and believe me, Apple won't really be missed much. They are actually a pretty small part of the entire show. There are microphone companies, monitor companies, television camera companies, television truck-studio companies, control board companies, portable digital recorder companies, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Any piece of hardware or software; any product or service even remotely related to the broadcasting industry is represented there.

I was actually suprised that Apple didn't really have that large of a booth compared to a lot of other companies. They had a theater area to show off Final Cut stuff and a few banks of Macs set up with Final Cut software, but aside from that there wasn't much to it. If they don't have anything new for Final Cut, I can't imagine why they'd bother, frankly.