stevebert's Profile

First off, I think your premise is somewhat fantastic -- not in the "good" way, but rather in the sense of being a mass delusion. Just because Apple has a fat wallet doesn't mean it owes anyone in the Mac community a trade show if it doesn't make marketing and economic sense. The January product announcement cycle hasn't really made sense for Apple for a very long time. MacWorld or CES make no sense because they don't feed into the education or holiday buying seasons. What they DO feed (negatively) are the ever more ridiculous flood of blogospheric speculation and expectation for the next "one more thing" product -- expectations that must be inevitably dashed because it is not possible for anyone, even Apple, to be truly revolutionary on a clock. Perhaps MacWorld made more sense in the pre-Apple-store, pre-internet era, but Apple has long been able to generate as much press as it needs by sending out postcards and at critical events like WWDC. Perhaps the best thing Apple can do for it's own long term success is to break the tyranny of the January announcement and instead announce insanely-great products when they are actually ready to ship.