Macworld Coverage: Hits and Misses

Tuesday January 6, 2009

During a keynote address that Apple says will be its last from a Macworld Conference and Expo, Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, handled himself with grace, delivering an excellent performance in a robust voice.

Courtesy of IDG World Expo Event

Unfortunately, the script Phil had to work with was anything but memorable. The crowd waited patiently for the (pre-2009) dependably gee-whiz product announcements. Phil started with marketing department reports about Apple’s market share, growth, and other typical items designed to whet the appetites of the Mac faithful. Then came the first product announcement: iLife ’09. Not exactly a heart-stopper, but Apple always saves the best for last, and the crowd is usually content to go along for the ride. The crowd expressed its appreciation for the elegance of iLife ’09’s new features, with a few ooohs and ahhhs for iPhoto’s new features.

Next came iWork ’09, with its satisfying, if not earthshaking, new features. The new web-based document sharing system was an obvious crowd pleaser.

The crowd was still waiting patiently when Phil started describing the first new hardware item: the new 17” MacBook Pro. The crowd appreciated the design of the new MacBook Pro, with its unibody construction and choice of a glossy or matte screen. (The crowd leaned heavily toward the matte option.)

Then suddenly, the hardware portion of the show was already over. Phil moved on to iTunes and its new pricing structure and DRM-free library of music. DRM-free is certainly a crowd pleaser, and the new pricing structure went over well as well.

And then the keynote was over. There was no ‘just one more thing.’ No stunning revelations. No new Mac Mini. No bump in the iMac’s performance. No iPhone nano. (If you’re keeping track, that means I went 0 for 3 in my top three picks, the things I most expected to see.) There wasn’t even a sneak peek at Snow Leopard, the next version of OS X.

In the end, I believe Steve stayed away not because of poor health, but because he knew this lackluster keynote would make him ill.

You can read about each of the product announcements here: