MacWorld Expo seemed like one big press conference for Steve Jobs' new consumer products, particularly the iPhone, combining the ability to do everything except have sex -- which was what filmmaker/comedian Kevin Smith suggested be the next feature on an upcoming iFuck phone during a speech he gave during the expo's opening day.
As a professional publicist, I would advise Apple to dump the expo, throw a press conference on Jay Leno and with Howard Stern for the radio crowd, and continue to stream the event worldwide over computers and computing devices, such as the iPhone. Really, is there any need for a pitifully small expo -- made even more diminutive by the cavernous space of Moscone Center -- that draws a few thousand Macintosh faithful and the consumer-electronics curious?
Maybe Steve Jobs should just have his own Internet video channel -- on the new Disney network that Iger hinted at during the competing expo, CES. The Jobs Channel, with a video stream from strategic web cams on the Apple campus, including scrofulus factories in China and wherever its hardware is made.
You're right about MacWorld Expo and Jay Leno... when Leno was making fun of the iPhone on his show he said it was announced at CES... MacWorld was thus relegated to invisibility.
Posted by: Fred Davis | January 12, 2007 at 05:45 PM
Even with streaming video, etc. there is a palpable sense of drama that having the "mac faithful" in a live audience gives the event.
The audience isn't there to be communicated to by Jobs, they're there to convey the emotional resonance of his announcements to the journalists in attendance.
Even in the things like Engadget's live blogging of the event there are asides describing the crowd reaction.
Posted by: Michael Buckbee | January 13, 2007 at 02:00 PM
A lot of folks (including me) have commented on how the Steve Jobs keynote sucked all the air out of CES. Thanks for reminding us that it also sucked all the air out of Macworld. I was in New York last week... and I don't think any news of anything other than Apple TV and iPhone got out of Mosocne.
Posted by: Michael Markman | January 13, 2007 at 02:37 PM