IDG were briefing the media (and the media were publishing) only hours before that Steve will definitely appear, they just couldn't make the announcement yet. I'm thinking they were blind sided. Apple were stringing them along and only made the announcement after the media published.
Chances are the other exhibitors and even the expo attendees are making a (relatively) bigger financial commitment to attend Macworld than Apple is - what with its half-billion dollar a year advertising budget. This is a huge betrayal of Apple's business partners and user community.
There's talk about the Apple Store being as good as a trade show. Certainly they might be something like Apple's booth at a trade show, but neither the trade nor the show of such an event.
There's talk of Apple wanting to make product announcements on their own timetable. They've been happy to piggy back on IDGs efforts for their last 2 big product launches (iPhone & MacBook Air).
Apple announced the half-arsed MacBooks on their own schedule and look how they stuffed that up - no firewire 1600 or 3200 for the Pros (not available yet, despite the published timetable), cocked up firewire on MacBooks and numerous build quality issues (not least of which being the much vaunted graphics chips).
Nobody pushed Apple to release iPhone 3G and Mobile Me when they did, and Apple are still trying to fix the bugs in those products 5 months later.
Steve's been turning down the charisma at all his recent appearances (Apple and Macworld). I thought this was to lower the standard, so he could hand the job off to someone else.
I think we're going to have to look a lot further than the currently floated possibilities to find out why Apple bailed on supporters (who've outlaid real money), just when they needed Apple the most.
