Jason Snell waxes bitter.

In this weeks MacWorld newsletter…longtime editor Jason Snell waxes on re: Apple’s decision to dump MacWorld Expo.

Most of his points follow the common thinking…

1. The announcement may have been a cover for SJ’s ailing health.
2. Apple is sick of having to pull the curtain off of new products along IDG’s schedule.
3. Apple Stores are like Mini-MacWorld show floors.

The one that gets me is the “fans are owed better than” argument…to quote Jerry Maguire, “this ain’t show friends…it’s show business…” So very true…MacWorld may well be better off w/out Apple…as Mr. Snell suggests…but Apple owes nothing to the fans that attend MacWorld…other than the continuing development of fantastic consumer experience.

http://www.apple.com

this may portend nothing…but it is interesting…if you were on WiFi w/the iPhone, you should be able to watch it live on the phone…which would be very cool…if nothing else.

[UPDATE: I mis-read the site, although I don't know why you would bother to promote an afternoon feed of a live event...center stage...blah blah]

Most popular predictions are:

Per Joe – MacBook Air – docks into the new iMac body, no optical drive, flash mem, 13.3 inch display

Movie rentals – apparently apple has been ‘furiously’ working to get movie studios to allow them to rent their titles. Fuck You Netflix…we’ll see…Amazon is working pretty hard to compete w/Apple…consensus seems to be that the big players are trying to put some market pressure on apple re: price & terms…feh…looking at the amazon product…it sure as hell ain’t itunes…and I sure as shit ain’t going to manage my music w/it…minor diff’s in price not withstanding…as long as the song you buy is immediately entered into your catalog and syunc w/your ipod/iphone…apple will rule.

iPhone updates – if Apple puts out a new iphone version, look for a riot by iphone owners…Apple is (hopefully) not that stupid…, I do expect 1.1.3 to have fucking cut and paste…hello? (they’re must be a reason why they waited for this basic gui functionality) I’m also hopeful that apple will add gps functionality via firmware…be nice on the video Joe…but we’ll see…they most def need to throw the iphone crowd a bone…to not do so will be disappointment…

X factor…

AppleTV update – when they had released this iTV box…I had thought for sure I heard SJ say that iTunes was built in and that one could browse the ITMS from the box…which made sense to me…but apparently I was mistaken…I expect that if they rev this box…this would be an addition…but I may be whacked…if it can decode H.264, it can launch and use ITMS…a larger HD would be expected also…

Merger/New product – About a week or so ago Apple shares peaked @ ~$200 and institutional buyers look like they sold…volume doubled in 24 hours…the shares haven’t really bounced back…as they say, the smart money is out first…I’m wondering if some people know something about a move that maybe the street wouldn’t like…or perhaps $~200 was simply a such a meteoric rise to not cash out would be foolish…that said…unless apple does something like, buy Adobe…which Cringely just wrote about…I suspect that’s money I would have held onto…there was also some talk that APPL was revising forecasts based on ‘recessionary’ fears…and this could have caused the tank…blah blah…who really knows…apart from the illuminati who control this planet…(whoops…wrong meeting…)

Happy SJ Keynote Day!

Yours in faithful underling control-dom…

J.C.

PS: GO OBAMA! (perceived free will)