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Apple's Macworld Exit Due to Politics Not Health Issues?

On the health issue, has anyone seen Steve recently - I mean in the last month?

To the best of my knowledge no reports or sightings have surfaced to indicate that anything is wrong and we all know how quickly these things hit the media, if it's bad news, take 'Patrick Swayze' for example! So, until I hear or see anything that proves there's a problem, (like Steve being wheeled around in a chair or getting into an ambulance) I'm going to believe he's in good health, relatively. Therefore, I think we must assume that not to doing a keynote is a business decision and nothing else.

Unless anyone has firm evidence to the contrary???
 
dewser35 said:
The control thing absolutely makes sense! Why distract away from what Apple is trying to accomplish?

And in regards to his health... I think the perception that he has so much control over the success of Apple will absolutely be influenced by news of his health and the subsequent stock price fluctuations. It would be wise for the board to try to get more of a face for the company. Though the reality is that Steve IS Apple. All of these products are out of HIS brain. The vision he has in tandem with the attention to detail is extremely rare. There are leaders at many companies that make awful decisions which end up crippling their companies everyday and they will continue to do so until the end of time. Regardless of who else is put in place either now or after he steps down will never match his accomplishments.
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Actually its the other way around. Very little of the products are of Steve's creation. The idea of the iMac was NOT of Steve's creation. The original iMac was already in the works before Steve came back to Apple in 1997. The iMac G4 creation was of Steve's making and didn't really sell that well. The iPod was an idea of a 3rd party and that person came to Steve Jobs who put the idea into play when nobody else would, but the iPod itself was NOT of Steve's making. iTunes was not of Steve Job's creation. It was formally known as SoundJam. Many (thats not all!) of the ideas actually come from people internally, not from Steve Jobs.

Apple can more than survive without Steve Jobs. Thats not to say that Steve Jobs doesn't do anything for the company. He is a master as getting companies to partner with Apple and work together. For example, it was Apple who got all of the record companies to agree to an online music solution (iTunes Music Store). No other company was able to get all of the 5 major recording studios to agree on a specific buying model, but Apple was. This is what Steve Jobs brings to the table. Yes, it will be hard to get another person who can do those things, but its not impossible.

Apple has a very strong foundation and Steve has put some very good people in the right places. This is why Apple can more than survive without Steve Jobs. Yes, Phil Schiller doesn't provide the pop in keynote presentations, but it shouldn't be who presents it, it should be what are they presenting. You could go up and release a killer product for all I care. If its a cool product I'm gonna buy it. I'm not going to not buy it just because Steve Jobs didn't announce it, and Phil Schiller did. Thats just silly thinking. I actually think Scott Forestall (Spelling?) does a great job of doing presentations when he's asked to come up on stage. He presents himself very well, gives what he's presenting a little pop, and can get by well when mistakes happen. Jony Ive is a great person to design Apple products who does the majority of the designs of Apple products. He's awesome at what he does, but he's not the best person to lead Apple IMO. Tim Cook sounds like a cut and dry person, but is very good on the business end and has put Apple where it is today financially. So you can see the strong foundation of Apple today. If Apple can keep these people in place, it will have a great future, even without Steve Jobs.
 
jaw04005 said:
And you can't get the same excitement by holding YOUR OWN special event? Do you not check Macrumors when Apple holds the iPod event in September? Or the MacBook event that recently happened? Or WWDC?

As far as the mainstream media (CNBC, CBS/CNET, Wall Street Journal, New York Times) and online blogs (Engadget, Gizmodo) are concerned, they'll still cover each and every event.

Not to mention, the various "Applerati" (Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose, Cali Lewis, Veronica Belmont, Ryan Block, Robert Scoble, etc).
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Absolutely correct! Apple can do what not many companies can do and that is pull the media in when ever they feel like it. If Apple wants to be in the spotlight, they can do that anytime they want.

They don't need to spend hundreds of thousands if not millions to get their products across for a 5 day conference. They can do it in a simple 1-2hr media event when their products are ready for release. I think too many times Apple is forced to release products in Janurary when they aren't ready. So you either have a delay in shipment, or the product is shipped working half-@ss with a bunch of firmware updates the day its shipped.
 
If they want it to be political then why don't they have George Bush and Barack Obama give the keynote for Apple.

Come on, it is the last one. Have the man do the keynote.
 
robbyx said:
This is nothing new. Jobs has always hated (other companies') trade shows. Anyone remember NeXTWORLD? When he pulled NeXT out of that show, both the show and magazine died. He then started his own show, NEXTSTEP Expo. Anyone want to bet that an Apple Expo, controlled by the mothership, is in the works?
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Didn't NeXT sink pretty quickly afterwards?
 
I have not read every post in this read, so someone may have already hinted to this, but I think in the end this might help Apple by reducing the Steve == Apple mantra that many folks seem to abide by.

If Steve takes a lesser PR role in the coming years, and as such is less the public face of Apple, when he decides to exit his role as CEO, it will hopefully lessen the blow a bit. Right now, no one could imagine Apple without Steve, partly (obviously) because he is one of the founders, but partly too because he has been the face of Apple for so many years. If they can reduce the Steve == Apple mentality, it might even help reduce the media frenzy over his health.

At some point, the cord needs to be cut if Apple is to continue to thrive post-Steve, and I personally think this is just the first of many steps to come in that direction.
 
Apple is Steve's baby. Do you really think, that even after retirement, he would have entirely nothing to do with the creativeness of Apple? Certain people would probably be honored to have him get them out of ruts that come about. He probably just wouldn't want certain responsibilities any longer. :cool::apple:
 
Machiavellian times call for Steve to put on his Prince face. Anguard Macworld! :rolleyes:

.
 
Unfortunately I cannot help but feel lucky I got to see the last full Stevenote at MWSF 2008.

Is this... the end?
 
SpaceMagic said:
Let's not assume the worst! Perhaps he's just ready to retire or just distancing himself from Apple. It is kind of weird that the stock price reacts to news of his health, perhaps the board has told him to distance himself a little.
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In a way, Steve Jobs IS Apple. He's made himself so much of an icon, when he leaves, I have serious doubts how well Apple will do. I just have a bad feeling that Apple will fall into obscurity after Steve leaves.
 
BornAgainMac said:
Come on, it is the last one. Have the man do the keynote.
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Meh. I've got a sneaking hunch that this could be just a publicity stunt and downplaying of expectations.

Imagine... Phil Schiller wraps up... oh, and there's one last thing. Steve Jobs comes on with new Apple product that revolutionises life as we know it. Bonsai money tree, perpetual motion machine etc.
 
Blue Velvet said:
Meh. I've got a sneaking hunch that this could be just a publicity stunt and downplaying of expectations.

Imagine... Phil Schiller wraps up... oh, and there's one last thing. Steve Jobs comes on with new Apple product that revolutionises life as we know it. Bonsai money tree, perpetual motion machine etc.
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That would be the coolest One Last Thing ever. :D
 
Blue Velvet said:
Meh. I've got a sneaking hunch that this could be just a publicity stunt and downplaying of expectations.

Imagine... Phil Schiller wraps up... oh, and there's one last thing. Steve Jobs comes on with new Apple product that revolutionises life as we know it. Bonsai money tree, perpetual motion machine etc.
Click to expand...

Oh come on people.. I posted this almost exact statement on this, the prior and the page 2 threads yesterday. :rolleyes:

Anyway, as some has predicted.... this, the iphone overseas suspension announcments, and yet another post about Steve's health sent stocks tumbling this morning. been hovering around $80-$88 so far.

http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AAPL

if you scroll through the sidebar on the right, it pretty much has been all bad news since Monday/Yesterday.
 
Its called - Overcharging

MacWorld and all these shows have raped the vendors for years and its finally catching up. the internet can do a better job of getting the word out and shows like this are going to all go away sooner or later. The Unions tight grip on prices is hurting everyone.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

I'm sad to hear that Apple will no longer be participating in MacWorld. I can understand some of the reasons behind trying to separate from events like this and start using it's own special events for product releases.
 
apple wants to release things when they want to not by some convention and there rules and dates

its the new way
 
As for Macworld, it will be sad to see the annual event disappear, but I'm hoping Apple has a plan for something else rather than just their mundane media announcements. Jonathan Ives certainly has the charisma and popularity to be a step-in Steve, although being a designer he might get caught up in telling everybody how good the product looks rather than it's features, like the Unibody Macbooks haha. We'll see how Phil does.
 
Nah.....

Remember Comdex, anyone? That was the "end all, be all" of computer expos. And today? Zilch.

Times are changing, and Apple probably realizes that they could leverage all of their retail stores as places to go see a "special Apple announcement/launch event", vs. doing things based on the MacWorld expo schedule. (Think about it... A new product is unveiled live, in front of everyone who goes to their nearest Apple store - and then they can BUY it at the end of the televised keynote speech, given direct from Apple HQ, and take it home with them!)

Sure, you don't get tens of thousands of Mac users together under one big roof at the same time anymore -- but you do get the *local* Mac fans together with each other, and nobody has to buy a costly plane ticket and possibly an expo ticket for the privilege.

I'm as bummed out as anyone else about MacWorld dying off. But I'm also realistic about things. Only reason I wanted to attend was for the "entertainment value". It's a good excuse for a vacation trip, and to have fun meeting all the people involved with producing the latest Mac products. The fact that "it would be fun to attend" doesn't mean it makes financial or overall good business sense for Apple, though.


ubercool said:
No it doesn't. Macworld is one of the biggest computer exhibitions on earth. Apple cannot possibly buy "facetime" with 60,000-plus people cheaper than it can via this event. I'm sure that if they did a cost-per-conversion analysis, they would know that Macworld delivers sales in spades and then some.

My sense is that this is simply a bargaining chip to get IDG to cave on certain parameters. I cannot for the life of me imagine why you want to preclude demo time to that many people unless there's another reason that permeates this decision.

I may sound cruel, but it's high time that Jobs moves on. :eek:
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Maybe the Simpsons hurt Jobs' feelings???

Maybe Steve doesn't want to give the keynote because he's embarrassed by the Simpsons lampooning him with lines like "He's like a god who knows what we want!!!" and images of him on a giant wall screen like the big brother in the 1984 Macintosh commercial. Maybe he's finally realizing that he's coming off in a way contrary to his hippy/rebel roots and is in philosophical crisis. LOL
 
Could Phil give the keynote with Jobs also participating?

Just a thought...
In the past, Steve Jobs has given keynotes and had other people on stage to help him. The other people, Phil included, did not getting billing as a keynote speaker.

Is it possible.... that Steve Jobs WILL be at the keynote, but will not be the major speaker? That Phil will take the lead and use Steve for some portion of it?

Just a thought
 
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