No Jobs at MacWorld? What next, aliens?

The New York Times has an article by Brad Stone about the changes Apple is making this year:

For the last 10 years, attending Steven P. Jobs’s annual keynote address at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco has been a sacred pilgrimage for Apple enthusiasts. That ritual has now ended.
Apple announced on Tuesday that Mr. Jobs would not appear at the Macworld conference in January and that the company’s presentation would instead be delivered by Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide product marketing. Apple also said it would withdraw from the conference after this year’s event.
The news unleashed a wave of speculation among Apple fans about what this portends for the computer maker’s lineup of products — and for Mr. Jobs’s health, which has been subjected to intense scrutiny in the last few years.
In a statement, Apple strove to undercut any downbeat interpretation of the news. The company said that it was abandoning Macworld because it was able to unveil new products at its own events, like its Worldwide Developers Conference, held in June in San Francisco, and what has become an annual event each September at its campus in Cupertino, Calif., devoted to the iPod.
The company is also now in a position to broadcast those events online and in its growing network of 250 well-trafficked stores around the world, reaching a broader audience than it could inside any single convention hall.
“Phil is giving the keynote because this will be Apple’s last year at the show,” said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. “It doesn’t make sense for us to make a major investment in a trade show we will no longer be attending.”
Despite that explanation, the news that Mr. Jobs would not be making his anticipated public appearance at Macworld struck the predictable chords of anxiety among those who follow Apple. As bloggers and analysts traded rumors and theories about what it all means, Apple investors also reacted to the news, sending Apple shares down as much as 6 percent in after-hours trading. Mr. Jobs is a survivor of pancreatic cancer and has appeared unusually thin at recent appearances, though Apple says his health is fine.
Another explanation is that Apple’s slate of new product announcements in January is so unexciting that it does not require the considerable presentation talents of Mr. Jobs himself. In past years Mr. Jobs used the Macworld stage to unveil the iPhone and the thin MacBook Air. The Apple rumor mill has predicted that for January’s show Apple is readying a new version of the Mac Mini, a boxy computer that is sold without a monitor, and a smaller version of the iPhone. If true, neither announcement would induce paroxysms of delight in the Apple faithful. “Maybe they do have some surprising news and they are giving Phil Schiller a chance to introduce some exciting products,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. “But the likelihood of that is low.”
Apple has appeared in recent months to be making an effort to shine the public spotlight on executives other than Mr. Jobs. Timothy Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, delivered a presentation to press and analysts at the October introduction of new Macintosh laptops. Apple executives have also said they have a succession plan, but they have not publicly discussed it.
Tuesday’s announcement was a clear blow to IDG, a technology media company based in Framingham, Mass., that has been staging Macworld since 1984. This year’s conference has already been hit by the news that several large companies, including Belkin, a computer accessories maker, and Adobe, the software publisher, would be scaling back their presence at the show for economic reasons. Paul Kent, an IDG vice president and the general manager of the Macworld show, said he expected roughly the same number of exhibitors and attendees at the show in January as last January. He would not comment specifically about Apple’s news, but he affirmed IDG’s commitment to staging the show. “We look forward to many successful years of Macworld to come,” Mr. Kent said, reading from a prepared statement.

Rico says IDG is screwed...