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Reaction to Apple's Withdrawal from Macworld, Apple Expo Paris Cancelled

Sayonara Big Shows

Well I think this marks the end of the big tradeshow. Companies have trouble justifying the expense, from show fees to the return on investment(ROI). If Apple doesn't think they can make their money back at Macworld, regular companies have no hope on tradeshow ROI.
 
motulist said:
I completely disagree. I think they'll still exist, but they'll be radically different. They'll be MUCH MUCH smaller, and much much less expensive, and much more focused, like WWDC, but even smaller.
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This was already tried with the East Coast show and it went nowhere. That show was cancelled.

And we've already seen the Paris Expo cancelled, as well.

I think an attempt will be made, but it will be very difficult to get a draw without Apple (let alone without Adobe and a host of others that aren't attending this year and have no real incentive to go next year).
 
Mac Unconvention

Perhaps users (and I would love to be one, but I live in New Zealand) should work towards a new form of convention – a Mac Unconvention, ha ha – where they can meet up annually and keep the sense of community alive? It sounds like IDG wants to keep it going, but we'll see what the recession deals them, I guess.
I looked forward to Macworld every year and always dreamt of attending, but I've never managed to come up with the airfare. Still, I really hate to kiss the dream good bye.
 
Macworld

The event is over after this year. There is no way to support such an event without apple coming. Sucks for the mac community, in general, but that is the way of the world.
 
No doubt a cool event and one that I might have been able to attend if I still lived in California. But times are tough and I certainly can believe it is hard to justify such an extravaganza in today's economy. Everything I know about Apple I know from what I see online and by my own personal experience with their products, so I don't see this as a big problem for Apple--but I'm sure it will be missed by many.
 
Actually, this is a great opportunity for Phil to shine, and to introduce products which might have been contradictory otherwise, such as: netbooks, and blu-ray. (bag 'o hurt) We'll certainly see some great stuff being offered, as well as demos, and "bake-offs" with Snow Leopard. This enormous drama will indeed turn out to be a great spin for all to focus on MW 2009, like never before.
 
errol said:
.....all I care is that the stock is down nearly 7% today. That is a lot of market value for something so silly. Why do companies make such announcements, knowing that their value in stock will fall off a cliff?......
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I thought about it exactly the opposite way: I thought "Cool the stock is down 7%" You have to remember that for every seller there is a buyer. I'm a buyer.

I'm kind of thinking this housing down turn a good thing too. I've got money I want to put into real estate.
 
Smart move

Apple doesn't run Macworld. IDG runs the show. Macworld is for fanboise and not for professionals. WWDC is for Mac professionals. Additionally, not being tied to a six month product showcase cycle allows the company to move new products to market faster with less 'what's it going to look like' speculation. They should have done this years ago. Get over it.
 
The Macworld withdrawal and Mac Expo Paris cancelled doesn't bother me. That part makes sense. People just like those for the keynotes and the new product announcements and demos. Those can be done by those media only events and downloadable as a podcast.
 
Remember this quote?

"Our holiday line-up is set,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans told Macworld.

I agree with many that this is an issue of control.

MacWorld

1) generates too much hype
2) causes Apple to withhold releases in order to somehow live up to #1, which is difficult to do

Perhaps in the past the hype was a good thing. It brought attention. But anytime Apple releases even a small update the blogosphere goes wild. They don't need it anymore. They can do things completely on their own terms, bring back the element of surprise, have a more stratified product release schedule, and not worry about time to market issues so much.
 
Incidentally, Macworld has been one of the few tech trade shows that grew over the past few years, both in terms of participants and attendees.

I think there will still be a place for a gathering of Mac users in the flesh. It may be smaller scale, and it may have a different focus, but such an event would still be important to the Mac community.
 
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)

bbotte said:
Maybe it's to keep stuff under wraps better. If there are no regular scheduled shows to make announcements, the rumors and stuff will not be so accurate. Now we will just get hints that an event is coming.
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I think this is very possible. The rumor mills have been quite accurate with predictions as of late and this could be a way to at least keep the release date under wraps if not the product.
 
Gasu E. said:
From the standpoint of an overall Marketing budget, trade shows are ineffective, and I can understand where Apple is coming from. On the other hand, Apple was sustained for years by a core group of fan-evangelists, without which the company would have gone out of business, and the recent Mac mini-renaissance would have been impossible. Now, undoubtedly puffed by the iPod and iPhone, Apple seems to be ignoring the traditional fan-evangelists and going straight for the larger market. The end of MacWorld and the minimization of FireWire both reflect that; both moves are of little significance to the larger market, but are major losses, respectively, to obsessive users and creative types, two legs of the fan-evangelist base.
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A couple of thoughts on fan evangelism:

1. As Apple becomes a mainstream company, fan evangelism is simply less important. If 10 million people have an iPhone, does Apple really need poorly-groomed nerds ranting about how much Microsoft s*cks (hey, I was one, I'm allowed to say that). Like me, Apple is growing up.

2. The fan evangelists stopped buying Apple products a couple of months before each event, in anticipation of the next great thing. I suspect Apple wants to have more normal product cycles.
 
Money and future

We are in an area where we expect more then what apple can deliver. And the Rummer mills have been beating them to the punch. Making harder to get the wow effect... Also a lot of people holding off purchases waiting to see what will be new come out. Why buy an iMac 2.8Ghz when you can get the new iMac 2.9Ghz with new case. Next month. Getting out of MacWorld it no longer giving an expected release of a product allowing apple to release stuff when they are ready. And not expected a big new idea every year.
 
sishaw said:
The fan evangelists stopped buying Apple products a couple of months before each event, in anticipation of the next great thing. I suspect Apple wants to have more normal product cycles.
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The fan evangelists and informed consumers alike, mostly waited until week 2 of January before buying. Apple could have held out introducing the new Macbooks until January 5th, but this would have hurt holiday sales. The writing has been on the wall for Macworld, and they seem to have majorly pissed off Steve for him to bail at the last minute.
 
DMann said:
The fan evangelists and informed consumers alike, mostly waited until week 2 of January before buying. Apple could have held out introducing the new Macbooks until January 5th, but this would have hurt holiday sales. The writing has been on the wall for Macworld, and they seem to have majorly pissed off Steve for him to bail at the last minute.
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But what did IDG do to piss Steve and Apple off so much?

Don
 
Unspeaked said:
This was already tried with the East Coast show and it went nowhere. That show was cancelled.

And we've already seen the Paris Expo cancelled, as well.

I think an attempt will be made, but it will be very difficult to get a draw without Apple (let alone without Adobe and a host of others that aren't attending this year and have no real incentive to go next year).
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Exactly. Come on be honest, who's planning on going to MacWorld 2010 with no keynote from Apple and no Apple presence at all? Show of hands.

Just as I thought. IDG can put a brave face on it, but this expo is doornail dead.
 
Apple has grown immensly during the last decade, coming from their own Dark Ages basically as a niche player, staunchly defended by a legion of crusader fanbois, amongst whom I count myself. But that reallity is no more.

Apple is moving fast to the mainstream, and the last thing it needs at this point is to be seen as a cult, supported by wild-eyed vitriol-spewing funny-looking fanbois in their own private gatherings, even if that's not the case.
 
Dmac77 said:
But what did IDG do to piss Steve and Apple off so much?

Don
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They same thing they pulled in 2002-04. Although publicly, the reason is because of the move from New York City, it is very likely a lot deeper than that.
 
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