Rubénerd Blog :)

Steve Jobs at the 1997 Macworld Expo

At a time eerily close to when I was writing my previous post about Steve Jobs’ health and the end of MacWorld, it seems a rumour is spreading that Apple may in fact appear at CES:

Apple is ditching MacWorld to instead exhibit at CES next year instead, according to one source.

The source, citing “friends who work at Apple,” insisted the company is ditching MacWorld because it will “go large” at CES, which typically runs concurrently with MacWorld in early January.

The International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, is the big annual gathering [of] the consumer electronics industry. Held in Las Vegas over several days, it attracts more than 2,700 companies from all over the world, including technology giants like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Apple has never had a presence at the show, exhibiting at MacWorld instead.

I’m treating this rumour from a friend from a friend from a friend as… well, a rumour. Still it presents an interesting scenario: Apple competing head to head with their arch rivals under one roof at CES would certainly be quite a spectacle.

While I love Apple products and the Mac OS X operating system, if Apple does something that I think is stupid or if they’re caught making something up, I call them out on it, as I hope I do with every technology company who’s products I use and endorse.

I will be interested to see how Apple’s diehard apologists explain this after they’ve been explaining Apple’s decision to leave MacWorld was about giving up on expensive trade shows. If this CES appearance rumour is true, that whole argument has just been shot down in flames.

I’ll be most interested to see Daniel Eran Dilger over at Roughy Drafted explain this. I’ve thought his coverage of Apple related topics have been spot on in the past, but his post last year about why Apple ditched MacWorld was uncharacteristically shaky. Will he be able to reconcile this CES appearance after he’s been saying the trade show paradigm is dead and Apple ditched MacWorld to save cash and to release products on their own schedule instead? I don’t see how he’ll be able to do it.

Then again this is just a rumour, and as with most rumours I suspect it’s bogus. If it turns out to be true though, prepare to read some serious backtracking across the blogosphere!

A bit of a belated post regarding this topic, but it’s one I think still needs to be addressed. Photo is of Steve Jobs holding a MacBook Air at MacWorld Conference & Expo 2008 by Matthew Yohe.

It seemed Apple made up a phony excuse about the "reduced relevance of MacWorld" as the reason why Steve wouldn’t be presenting the final keynote and dismissed rumours of his health, only later to backtrack when a letter from Steve was published.

I can understand. When my beautiful late mum was going through the last few years of her own battle with cancer and the side effects of the chemotherapy, she didn’t like anyone in the outside world to know she was ill because she was scared of being treated differently, and she wanted it to remain in the family. Life threatening illnesses do generate some weird responses from people, during high school people even treated me differently just because I was the guy with the terminally ill mum. Some of that treatment was nice, some really wasn’t.

Steve Jobs’ health should not have been made into a public spectacle, no matter how important some shareholders perceive him to be to the value of their stocks. Yes, that’s how shallow I see these people as. Morals and ethics of business have long been oxymorons, but personally I take two things seriously: health and family. Both should be off limits.

When someone is going through a crushing illness like that, the last thing they need is back seat doctors, media speculation and endless strings of questions by people who should know better. "Should" being the operative word.

I wish Steve the best in his recovery and hope he’s spending some quality time with his family. Don’t let those arses in the media get to you sir.