“There’ll be no Steve Jobs keynote, no gigantic Apple booth, and only about half as many exhibitors — roughly 220 vs. nearly 500 last year, according to Ars Technica,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“But IDG World Expo has determined that the show must go on — at least for one more year — and so from Tuesday Feb. 9 to Saturday Feb. 13, San Franciso’s Moscone Center will host the software vendors, accessory makers, iPhone developers, fanmag publishers, celebrity bloggers, AAPL investors and Mac faithful that are the Apple community,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
Elmer-DeWitt’s five highlights:
• David Pogue, Thursday 9 a.m. PT
• Kevin Smith, Thursday 2 p.m. PT
• Leo Laporte, Friday 2 p.m. PT
• John Gruber, Friday 4:30 p.m. PT
• iPad discussion: Saturday 1 p.m. PT
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Thrilling. Wake us when it’s over or when IDG World Expo comes to their senses, whichever comes first.
Macworld 2010 is now a vestigial event. IDG is dragging around the corpse just like they did in New York and Boston. How long until IDG buries the poor, decaying thing this time?
MacDailyNews Note: 7:55am PT: There seems to be some confusion as evidenced by some of the reader feedback below. To clarify: We’re not saying don’t go. We’re not saying don’t support the companies that show up this year. We’re simply saying that we find it to be far less interesting and we wouldn’t rush to book plane tickets and hotel rooms for next year.
MacDailyNews Note: 10:05am PT: More clarification: Nobody loved Macworld Conferences and Expos more than us. “Loved,” past tense, as in: When there were real Macworld Expos. We will miss them, but since we have had over a year now to get over it, and they are an anachronism, please forgive us for not being maudlin today.
We’d rather see it dead than lingering too long; a pitiful, poorly-attended shell of what it once was.
Apple conducts localized mini Macworld Conferences and Expos every day of the year in hundreds of locations worldwide. More info: here.
Okay, . . . it looks like we’ve established that the IDG part of Macworld is not beloved. But it also appears that Macworld as a concept is actually needed.
Perhaps we should encourage Apple to develop something adjunct the the Apple Store chain that could travel America. This looks like an opportunity!
I know I’d go.
I think the guy who runs MDN is a noob to the Mac and he never attended any Mac trade shows. Otherwise he wouldn’t write such utter crap.
Calling the ONLY MAC TRADE SHOW useless.
MDN low on daily meds today?
Cheesssss
I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. MDN is right, Macworld without Apple is a bit lame. The event’s days are numbered. Lets accept it and move on. That doesn’t mean there is any less interest in Macs, it simply means that these Macworld events are throwbacks to years past, before the internet, Apple Stores, big WWDC events, etc.
MDN, you made a mistake.
Mac Users love Mac events just like they love Apple stores.
IDG World Expo has pissed off Apple it seems.
I do not blame Apple for backing out of MacWorld Expo.
But, Apple should put on Apple World in a number of places wordwide.
I have gone to MacWorld Expo for over 20 years and loved it.
Apparently so have a lot of other people.
You might be right about the expo but I will miss it if it ends.
Wow. This seems like a first.
@MDN, You suck, period. Don’t even support the Mac community. Why don’t you rename your site to SuckingApplesTit.com? All you care about is Apple, Inc.
Isn’t Macworld Paris still running, without Apple?
No MDN, I don’t think your readers are “confused” about your take. They understood it perfectly, and it appears that most of them don’t like it.
I don’t understand why MDN is doing its best to harm Macworld Expo.
This makes no sense on any level.
MDN you lack chivalry! Why deliberately aim a kick in the teeth of the very people who are your supporters.
Really Apple should have a presence there supporting those guys and gals that do so much to return the favour. Apple can afford it cant they! Attending does not really mean having to make big announcements nor having an over elaborate display.
Let’s see.
A site specifically addressing Apple/Mac news, picks up and links Apple stories to the full article and has an editor/manager/creator that is somewhat bias towards the hand that feeds him?
Not any different than any newspaper that I have ever read. Accept that it is free and obvious a lot of the trollers would not be here if they had to pay for it, even if it only cost a penny.
Why don’t you create a site called SuckAppleTit. Then you can wallow to your heart’s content.
MDN, you have sunk to new lows.
Your rhetoric has always been so feverish and hateful that it finally has backfired on your own followers. You really haven’t been helping people “Get a Mac” at all, more like driving them away with your propaganda.
Apple would be better off with MacWorld than with you.
MDN Take:
“Apple conducts localized mini Macworld Conferences and Expos every day of the year in hundreds of locations worldwide.”
Wow, MDN, are you out of touch with reality. It sure sounds like you’ve never attended a MacWorld Expo. MacWorld Expo gives me opportunities that simply aren’t available anywhere else. In my work I regularly use a dozen or more 3rd party software products. Over the years many of these vendors would show up at MacWorld and afford lowly “users” like myself the opportunity to talk face to face with these vendors – often with the software engineers/developers themselves! You cannot have the same experience through email, etc. The opportunity to get some knotty technical questions answered and even give them feedback that affected the course of their product development has been invaluable to me over the years….
I fully understand Apple’s reasons for pulling out of MacWorld Expo and I even share many of the concerns about IDG that have been voiced here, but for MDN to bad-mouth a once-a-year opportunity for Mac users all over the world to get together face-to-face with developers/other users is simply unfathomable… perhaps “despicable” is a better word.
Shame on you MDN!
MDN likes to ridicule damn near everything. Add that to their political comments and I am going to look elsewhere for mac oriented news. If a meeting of mac fanboys is not a positive thing to MDN then I could not disagree more. Please someone post a list of other sites that you prefer. I am ready to move.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/links/
TUAW is the best one IMHO.
Ditching MDN.
bye mdn. it’s been real.
Tip for fellow MAC LOVERS
Just go to Google News and type in iPhone News or iPad News on a daily basis. That’s how 99% of mdn stories are located anyway.
Fruitless (no Apple) – √
Pseudo Macworld – √
Snoozefest – √
Begins in San Francisco – √
Exactly the facts. Just because you wish there was a Jobs keynote, don’t shoot the messenger.
MDN, don’t ever change a thing. You’re perfect just the way you are.
A friend emailed me this link:
http://www.macblogz.com/
When I’m old and living on a fixed income, no longer able to afford to snap up every new Apple gizmo that comes along, will MDN *insult* me for not being the rabid fanboy I am today?
*sheesh*
I guess I should unsubscribe from the RSS feed before that happens. No time like the present …
MDN. Face it. You blew it. But I forgive you because of your aggressive devotion to the platform and pit bull attacks on the Evil Empire.
I understand Apple’s decision to pull back from MacWorld. So, OK. No Apple. But there’s still all the third party vendors. I generally spend most of my time at MacWorld visiting these vendors. And look forward to doing so again this year. And despite your lame attempt to claim the Apple Store provides a MacWorld experience, that’s just not true. Third party sessions are not given at the Apple Stores.
An apology would be lame, so forget that. Just take your beating and let it pass.
Personally, I’d swap Macworld for a PageUp key that moves the cursor.
the original article from cnnmoney.com was not that bad. In fact THEY are going to be at Macworld (unlike MDN). MDN added all the bashing words like, “Fruitless”, “Snoozefest”, “Wake us when it’s over”, “vestigial event”, “bury the poor, decaying thing this time”, these are all works of MDN!
And then, after offending us, they belittle us by writing “please forgive us for not being maudlin today”
maudlin: tearfully sentimental, often through drunkenness
apology through sarcasm?
I’m deeply disappointed in MND. This USE to be a daily event for me, but I don’t feel like I can support them.
MDN iPhone app GONE
MDN bookmark GONE
Fruitless pseudo Macworld snoozefest begins in San Francisco
Headlines like this sure help promote attendance. /s
I’m a little bit disgusted by MDN’s take. We should be promoting Apple focused events (no matter how small).
How the heck can you say that the event is “fruitless” and “snoozefest” if you haven’t even seen what the vendors who actually showed up have to offer.
You can say what you want MDN, but your opinion is in the minority and it doesn’t represent Apple loyalists very well.
I too have attended nearly every Macworld in San Francisco. Before that I attended Applefest and even the West Coast Computer Faire. The passing of the computer “trade show” is a very sad phenomenon. The presence of Apple was to my mind a minor attraction. Much more important was the chance to talk to the other vendors. The chance to get hands-on time with software and hardware was invaluable. I know, I know. We have the internet. Doesn’t that provide all the information we can possibly need.
No. The Internet is often a poor venue for finding useful information. Too many vendor websites are frankly BS. Short on information and long on flash. (small f) I get frustrated by the number of websites that tease but don’t deliver any real information. Usually, the small vendors at Macworld would be the actual owner and/or programmer and the large vendors would bring a couple technical people among the horde of sales people you could corner and ask questions. I will miss the chance to talk to the people and make connections.
Having attended a number of Macworld conferences I can attest to the fact that without Apple and in particular Jobs’ doing the keynote, it is virtually a relative failure.
In the early days in Boston, you couldn’t hardly get through the massive crowds. The only way we had access to all the latest info was being there. With the advent of the internet, however, interest in or need for the Macworld Conferences waned significantly. And only till Jobs returned and presented his first keynote in 1997 did the landscape changed.
Last year as we know, Jobs didn’t do the keynote and basically from the get-go, i.e., the announcement that he wasn’t going to attend and that it would be Apple’s last show, the conference began to cave in.
Now we see major companies opting out. Hell, even Macworld has been amiss in promoting the event. It is not Macworld any more. It doesn’t represent Mac or Apple or Jobs. It’s a regional fair; it is more like a Mactown.
So who is going to be displaying. Well the Macworld lists the exhibitors on http://www.macworldexpo.com/expo which really doesn’t excite me. Perhaps if I were living in the west coast I would drop in, but having to fly in for it like I did in the the past, forget it. That and when you look to see who is missing, e.g., Adobe, Google, Logitech, Macally, Bare Bones, FileMaker, Ambrosia, Altsys, Aspyr Media, Berkely Systems, BIAS, Big Fish Games, Blacktree Software, Delicious Monster, MacroMind, Silicon Beach, Pangea Software, etc., I don’t feel that it is worth it.
Like MDN, I am not knocking the intent. It was the Mac fans that made Macworld work. And when you start crapping on the fans, you are not going to get support. It is Wacworld that dug its own grave. Now they can lie in it.