12-17-2008, 02:21 AM
This is...
Weird. I've gone to something like seventeen or eighteen straight expos in San Francisco. Maybe more. And now, the REAL expo is about to in all likelihood take its last breath. Macworld without Apple will become just another modest sized tradeshow as fast as you can blink. Blink again, and I have a feeling what we'll see in a year or so is the R.I.P. banners being hung.
Not at all surprising. Trade shows, especially "trade" shows that are largely attended by the general public, are dinosaurs. Video killed the radio star and HTML and QT streaming killed "Just one more thing..."
Inevitable. No Apple at Macworld? People are going to fly across the country and across continents to check out the latest offerings from Ambrosia and Microsoft? If Adobe was still on board, well if the Adobe of old was on board anyway, I might have hoped for the expo to keep going and transform into something with a pulse. Now, barely a flicker of hope from where I sit.
Just the last the way things are now. The party that was the Mac community has been changing shape and character for quite awhile now. It's a natural evolution, neither inherently good or bad. But "cardboard fort in the front yard where all your best buds come to play" feel is very much a thing of the past. We've moved beyond "local hangout" and even "college frathouse." It's been and continues to be a maturation process. It's still sad to lose some of the good bits though.
I've already got my exhibit pass for this year (Thanks, Larry!), so I'll take a few days off and dive into the splinter universe of macmacness one last time.
Who knows? Maybe by 2010 things will turn around and Apple will change their collective mind.
(Come on, humor me.)
Weird. I've gone to something like seventeen or eighteen straight expos in San Francisco. Maybe more. And now, the REAL expo is about to in all likelihood take its last breath. Macworld without Apple will become just another modest sized tradeshow as fast as you can blink. Blink again, and I have a feeling what we'll see in a year or so is the R.I.P. banners being hung.
Not at all surprising. Trade shows, especially "trade" shows that are largely attended by the general public, are dinosaurs. Video killed the radio star and HTML and QT streaming killed "Just one more thing..."
Inevitable. No Apple at Macworld? People are going to fly across the country and across continents to check out the latest offerings from Ambrosia and Microsoft? If Adobe was still on board, well if the Adobe of old was on board anyway, I might have hoped for the expo to keep going and transform into something with a pulse. Now, barely a flicker of hope from where I sit.
Just the last the way things are now. The party that was the Mac community has been changing shape and character for quite awhile now. It's a natural evolution, neither inherently good or bad. But "cardboard fort in the front yard where all your best buds come to play" feel is very much a thing of the past. We've moved beyond "local hangout" and even "college frathouse." It's been and continues to be a maturation process. It's still sad to lose some of the good bits though.
I've already got my exhibit pass for this year (Thanks, Larry!), so I'll take a few days off and dive into the splinter universe of macmacness one last time.
Who knows? Maybe by 2010 things will turn around and Apple will change their collective mind.
(Come on, humor me.)