Well, I’m just now getting around to watching my former boss’s boss’s boss do the MWSF keynote this year. Listening to the early returns, though, it should be fairly obvious why Himself skipped this one: there’s literally nothing new to report. New versions of iLife and iWork, and the new MacBook paradigm comes to the Pro 17″ model, and iTunes changes its model ever so slightly…
Om’s people are right about iTunes, I think – tiered pricing where the top tier is only $1.29 isn’t that big a deal when the same 30 cents is coming off other tracks. Internet pricing tends to be a race to the bottom – after all, once you adjust for infrastructure costs and rights, there’s not really much else you can do for a value-add and the main competition has to be on price. And if people get used to the idea that everything but the latest hottest American Idol dreck should be 69 cents rather than 99…well, could be a problem.
Anyway, there’s nothing revolutionary today. There’s nothing, really, that wasn’t there in some form previously. Normally we’re used to getting game-changers at MWSF – the Mac mini and iPod shuffle in 2005, the surprise Intel launch in 2006, the iPhone reveal in 2007, the MacBook Air last year. Nothing this year is a radical change or a new product category or the sort of thing that takes all the air out of CES. And at this point in Apple’s history, where we’re preparing for a post-Steve world, you don’t waste the big man on this kind of stuff. Sure, he got up there at many a MacWorld past and made chicken salad out of much more fragrant feces than were offered today, but that was Back Then – before Apple was the top music retailer, the overwhelming owner of the digital music industry and the maker of the #1 selling mobile phone in the country. In 2009, a couple of software updates and a slight hardware stretch aren’t that big a deal, and Steve only does big deals.
Phil Schiller was always amusing as Steve’s sidekick – especially for those who knew what an absolutely relentless hardass he was in real live, whether it was rooting on the Red Sox or cracking the whip in Product Marketing. But let’s face it – there’s a reason you’ve never seen Robin: The Movie. He’s not terrible – let’s face it, he kicks the shit out of Gil Amelio or the kinds of drudgery during the Spindler nightmare. But he’s not Steve, and he will get grilled for it.
Oh yeah – at a beer bash a couple of years ago, we went at it mouthing off about the Sharks vs the Predators. A couple of hours later, one of my co-workers said “I can’t believe you had the sack to talk like that to Phil Schiller.” At which point I blasphemed at the top of my lungs and demanded to know when exactly they planned to tell me who that was and now my expletive badge wasn’t going to work in the morning. As it turns out, it did – but only because Vokoun stopped only 40 of 43 and the Preds lost. I hope he gave all his defensemen a wood shampoo when they got back to Nash Vegas. But yeah, if you’re curious why I’m not into hockey, it’s because deep down, I feel it could still turn out to be a career-limiting move.