Macworld, Macboring

Hey smartass Dan. Looks like Apple had a record quarter in light of the worst economy in decades. They also did sell "bajillions" so maybe you do owe Jim Goldman an apology. Yeah, Apple sure has run out of gas. You're the one with bajillions of cubic yards of hot gas and are single-handedly contributing to the loss of bajillions of glaciers in Antarctica. You have no credibility and are a pathetic attempt at being anywhre near creative.

Ask Schiller-or CUE at Apple about the iPod compatible kiosk for shopping malls/airports to be launched end Q2 09 with NIKE-np.

same as last comment

Apple DOES have a tightly lipped-wrapped project working with NIKE-fyi.

Schack

This article is quite funny because the article could be published unchanged regardless of what Apple's keynote would have introduced. The writer is unimpressed with face recognition in photo software (something all future photo software will have to include from this point forward), unimpressed with video stabilization features in a $79 tool, unimpressed with making musical instruments easier to learn in an app-store like purchasing of lessons from artists and unimpressed with the world's longest running 17" notebook (oh which also happens to be the world's thinnest, lightest and brightest 17" notebook). So let me ask you this: What new product or feature would have impressed you?

http://twitter.com/hamids

This reviewer and his ilk are exactly the reason why Apple want to bail out of MacWorld - people who want the company to jump through a hoop for their entertainment and so they can fill their column-inches. The keynotes have ALWAYS been boring and cringeworthy. Funny you've only just noticed.

You don't know the half of it ... Apple is also busy digging its own grave. It has always been a company dedicated to planned obsolescence. This only works up to a point. The latest victim executed by its parent is Apple's successful and finally near-flawless OSX 10.3.9 ... Panther. It has been relegated to a status beyond "legacy" ... it is no longer supported by Firefox and is incompatible with video on CNN and ABC News. Minor upgrades for which this Panther user would gladly pay, have not been offered. How many Panthers are out here? And is anybody deducting our number from the eyeball counts given to advertisers? 10,000? 200,000? A million? Apple???s past momentum won???t carry it forward much longer. Glitch-ridden, buggy new software with furry animal names is Over. Everybody has caught on. Snow Leopard is headed for history. Panther sings!

What a surprising lack of insights it must take to write an article like this.

Nothing new, loads of confusing features and we, the users, will never learn the (because we are not with the "right mind"

Newsweek - iprove please. The only lack of news in this thread is Newsweeks lack of insight.

Just because Apple had a Macworld and Jobs i temporarily sick doesn't mean Apple is going down! What the hell! They've got lots of other events going, so Jobs will sure be standing on the stage a lot more in the future. While they killed Macworld and Apple Expo nobody seems to remember that they've also created new events such as the annual iPod event. And face it, people don't care about conventions anymore. They're an expensive way to make a small group of people happy with little effect on everyone who didn't attend. "Apple have lost there steam" - in the era of iPhone. I wonder if Dan would have written the same article if he had waited and let his own steam run of. Yeah, it was a sucky keynote, but that doesn't mean Jobs is dead and Apple lost forever.

I agree with the other comments. This article was more than a little whiny. (What's up, Newsweek?) We get that MacWorld didn't entertain you this year, Dan, but come on??? Were you sincerely upset that Apple didn't release a new, hot Thing?? If so, I feel badly for you. You should know there's a time and season for every activity. You've heard the song??? there's a time to reap, and a time to sow; a time to build, and a time to tear down; a time to speak, and a time to be silent. This nation is entering a new season, come to think of it. Some choose the frenetic, forced path... Some rest and regroup for the next round. I applaud Apple for modeling the latter; to me, that epitomizes Zen-like simplicity.

I agree with the other comments. This article was more than a little whiny. (What's up, Newsweek?) We get that MacWorld didn't entertain you this year, Dan, but come on??? Were you sincerely upset that Apple didn't release a new, hot Thing?? If so, I feel badly for you. You should know there's a time and season for every activity. You've heard the song??? there's a time to reap, and a time to sow; a time to build, and a time to tear down; a time to speak, and a time to be silent. This nation is entering a new season, come to think of it. Some choose the frenetic, forced path... Some rest and regroup for the next round. I applaud Apple for modeling the latter; to me, that epitomizes Zen-like simplicity.

!!

Geeeez, so they didn't release another breathtaking gadget or groundbreaking Mac, and all of the sudden they're as good as finished?
This is exactly why Apple chose to NOT continue to attend Macworld; because everybodys insane, unrealistic expectations has gone to far, and really don't do the company any good any more.

This is just bad journalism, plain and simple. I thought the keynote was a bit weak too, but to read THAT much into it is just...silly. or as the Macalope puts it: just jackassery in the third degree.

Both the iLife and iWokr presentations showed cool new features; I've been busy today toying with the Keynote trial. Sure maybe they didn't deserved an hour of a MacWorld keynote, but really; cry me a river.

Read the Macalope-post; it has many good points on the matter: http://www.macalope.com/2009/01/06/piling-on/

Wow, some really sensitive people here...very funny.

It's quite ironic that a "journalist" whose fame is predicated upon his own "golden era" as the Fake Steve Jobs, an era that for Dan Lyons has ended and thus clearly Dan Lyons' golden era is truly over, is now attempting to paint the company responsible for his claim to fame as also over.

No Mr. Lyons, Apple's so called golden era isn't over on the basis of one "boring" non-Steve Jobs keynote. But clearly yours is. Since you choose to go public as the Fake Steve Jobs, I don't recall reading anything by you that was at all compelling or really even interesting.

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By the by, the battery technology is quite interesting. Apple is taking the lessons learned on the iPod and the iPhone and applying them to the MacBook Pro. I'd kill if my 15" MacBook Pro had an 8 hour battery life. The battery manufacturing clearly comes from the iPods. The unibody construction also comes from the iPods. There may be no other cross fertilization or this may be the beginning of an interesting era of cross fertilization. Who can tell?

Finally, if one is being honest, one knows that one can not call a trend on the basis of a single data point...but Dan Lyons and Newsweek obviously aren't interested in being honest. Just in getting clicks.

reinharden

I read the article and thought, "what a lousy piece of journalism". I see after reading the other comments I am not alone.

If anyone is in decline, it's Dan Lyons. Apple's most incredible and promising products (the iPhone and the AppleTV) are its most recent. I know reporters don't care about how a battery works, but an 8-hour battery for a 17" laptop is a huge deal, and the obsession with the tech reveals why Apple has been so successful: their marketers are geeks at heart.

The real takeaway here is the unstated but obvious reason Apple is pulling out of MacWorld. It's not fair to Apple or its customers to be tied to a yearly schedule (especially a deadline right after Christmas) and be expected to wow Dan Lyons every time. Breaking out of the Macworld cycle gives Apple more control, and a chance to perfect things before they announce if necessary.

I agree the presentation was dull, but it just proves being tied to Macworld is a problem. It says nothing at all about Apple.

I've attended several Boston MacWorld Expos and 1 New York MacWorld Expo and do miss them. I was there when they introduced the technology of having video in a window that could be moved around the screen (the crowd in the Wang Auditorium went wild) and even saw Stephen Hawking give a Keynote as he was hawking (pun intended) a CD about space/time he had worked on. But this is a much different world for Apple now that they have a multitude of Apple Stores around the country. As Schiller mentioned during the keynote the amount of people who visit the Apple stores daily is equivalant to the amount of people attending the Expo once a year. I even remember when Apple first started up their stores many pundits thought they were foolish, it was a waste of resources, etc. What are those pundits saying now about their success? If someone wants to check out Apple products they can go to a store and not have to wait for the Expo to come around. So now that they didn't have blockbuster announcements and are pulling out of the Expo, "they are running out of gas". Yet in the past few years we have seen them with successful product announcements in venues besides an Expo. More Apple products then ever are being sold with the company's growth outpacing the industry in general. So chances are that this has been in the works for a few years and while the Expo participation will be missed, it in no way means that Apple has lost its sizzle. There will probably be more opportunities for "one more insanely great thing".

To call this piece "reporting" would be an insult to respectable journalists everywhere. Expecting a company like Apple to blow the socks off of the audience twice a year every year is just unrealistic. Innovation takes time--better to release quality products when they're ready instead of rushing.

Its a bit early to announce the demise of Apple. I think someone is getting paid by how many visits they get to their catchy headline, not by the quality of their research or writing.