Reports of Macworld’s Death Were Greatly Exaggerated

A few weeks before Macworld 2009, Apple announced its intent to no longer participate in trade shows and that the ’09 Macworld would be its last.  With that, the ’09 Macworld took on a sort of funereal quality with lots of buzz about it being the last one.  Many, including myself were having a hard time visualizing a Macworld minus the object of everyone’s adoration.  IDG, having already committed to the 2010 event began registering ’09 attendees for free.  I gladly accepted the no-cost invitation having no idea whether I would again make the 1300 mile journey or not.  I talked to many others who’d done the same, so hearing IDG’s pronouncement earlier this month that over 40,000 people were registered for this year’s event meant very little.  I had doubts that free registration would translate to actual attendance.

There were fewer vendors than before and IDG confined the show to the north and west halls of the Moscone Center.  The west hall was for conference use only leaving only the north hall for the expo.  Last year, Apple consumed much of the south hall and without them I’m sure it wasn’t cost-effective for IDG to include it.  The consequence: The Expo floor was elbow-to-elbow whenever it was open.  I felt more crowded at this year’s event than at any one previous.  Maybe there weren’t enough vendors to justify use of the south hall, but there were certainly enough attendees.  There are probably lots of reasons vendors shied away from this year’s event: uncertainty about user attendance, Apple not showing or just a bad economy in general. If their reason was concern about attendance, they gravely miscalculated.  The loyal Mac community put to rest any doubts about whether they’d show up. I haven’t heard the final tally, but my observation is that this year’s Macworld was as crowded as ever.  The line to get into the David Pogue keynote was as long as the one for last year’s Apple keynote and the line for Kevin Smith’s performance was even longer.  The expo floor was uncomfortably crowded both days (Thursday & Friday) I went and the conference classes I attended were as full as last year’s.

For those who bet on Macworld ending with Apple’s withdrawal, “Sorry, no cigar.”  I honestly didn’t know how things would turn out.  The Mac fans have proven again that they are much more than your average fickle consumer.  It will take more than Apple pulling out to deter us Macheads.  Macworld is truly “our show”.

California, Here I Come!

Lots of tech journalists have already buried Macworld.  Apple’s decision a year ago to nix participation in all trade shows probably didn’t mean much to anybody except the Macworld organizers and those of us who make the annual pilgrimage.  Conventional thinking would seem to dictate that a conference and trade show devoted to the use of Apple products would suffer if Apple wasn’t there, but I’m not sure we Macheads bow to conventions.  It looks like the number of vendor participants is down a bit and this year’s attendance is still TBD, but I get the feeling all is well.  Sure, there’s no big keynote presentation to get everyone all worked up.  Apple made their splash last week with the big iPad event, so there certainly won’t be any earth-shattering press releases, but those things are really for the rest of the world.  While we really enjoyed being part of the big keynote announcements (as evidenced by the 4 AM queues), us Macworld attendees really enjoy being around each other.  NASCAR fans have Daytona, Harley-Davidson riders have Sturgis and we Apple geeks have Macworld.  We really are fans in the truest sense of the word.

I, for one think that IDG (the company that puts on Macworld Expo) has a real opportunity to make this expo all about us fans. In fact, it will be interesting to see just what type atmosphere they foster with no worries about offending Apple.  You know, when the cat’s away…

I’m traveling to San Francisco tomorrow (Monday) to attend the conference that begins two days before the expo opens.  I’m signed up for a couple of labs Tuesday and Wednesday and they look like the normal fair.  Maybe they’ll add a little extra to the curriculum like say, iPhone baseband modification or how to crack wireless encryption with an iPod Touch.  There’s no reason now to keep a lid on that type of thing.  What’s Apple going to do, boycott?  I for one would be first in line for a lab called “OS X on a Dell Mini 10” or “Running Snow Leopard on Your iPad”.  These are exaggerations, of course, but its not hard to imagine how constrained things can be with Apple looking over your shoulder.  In fact, I’m certain that not pissing off Mr. Jobs was high on IDG’s priority list for past expos.

The pre-expo buzz seems to be as prolific as ever, just minus the rumors and guesswork about what Apple may announce at the keynote.  For me, I’m OK with Apple having already shot their wad last week.  Now we can turn our attention to the rest of the show and not worry about Apple’s overshadowing.  The Apple portion of the expo was never much to see anyway.  They put on a few good presentations, but for the most part it amounted to little more than a great big Apple store staffed with employees who rarely knew as much about the products as the average expo attendee.  I’m sure the biggest hurt for IDG will be the absence of the check Apple used to write for renting almost half of the south hall.

Sorry, but no time to continue, gotta pack.  If this is the last Macworld Expo as many have predicted, I’m gonna get my money’s worth.  With Apple being more popular than ever, there must be a good number of hard-core zealots like myself to keep this train rolling.  I’m guessing there’ll be an Expo 2011.