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If you haven't heard that Apple is pulling out of Macworld Expo...well, you probably don't read this site, and you aren't reading it now, so why do I care?
That aside, yes, Apple announced they're pulling out of Macworld Expo, and the MacMacs have all gone nuts. But really, why is this a surprise? Let me be perfectly clear here:
Apple Inc. HATES unmanaged random customer contact.
If anyone thinks the powers that be at Apple have ever liked the idea that just anyone could walk up to them for 4-5 days and ask inconvenient, (read: "any") questions of their employees, y'all are smoking crack. Apple does not like that. At all. Without Macworld Conference & Expo, here are the all the avenues that average customers can directly contact Apple: The physical Apple Stores, the online Apple Store, a small handful of public email addresses which all involve the word "feedback", mailing lists, and the AppleCare support line.
Now, how many of those aren't completely controlled by Apple? The closest you get are the mailing lists. How many of those give you any form of direct contact with the people actually making Apple products? That's right. None. No, the physical Apple Stores don't count. None of the people working there are involved with Apple other than as a way to sell you stuff, and front line tech support. There is a chasm of both infinite depth and width between the Apple Stores and the rest of Apple. Apple Stores have no advanced knowledge of anything. In fact, quite often, they're noticeably behind.
So let me say this again: Apple doesn't want to talk to average customers unless you're buying something. "Give us money, we give you stuff, then you go away."
If you're able to get a membership in the Apple Developer Program, (ADC), you have one option available that the average schmuck doesn't: The WWDC. Apple doesn't like that either, mind you. Developers, if possible, ask even more impertinent questions than MacMacs on the show floor, and they come armed with inconvenient things like "proof that it's a bug". But, Apple understands from a business POV that they can't write all the software, so they have to make nice for the devs. But there's nothing like the distaste on an Apple Exec's face when faced with a question they can't answer with a PR blurb. Over the years, the amount of contact at the WWDC from the members of Apple upper management has shrunk dramatically. The "Meet the VPs" session died before the WWDC left San Jose, and in 2008, there were no feedback forums. None. The WWDC was in essence, a five day presentation, with limited Q&A, and a lot of people wondered why they bothered, especially if they were in the IT track. Okay, it wasn't as bad as 2007, which was "Look, yet another session shilling for the CalConnect Consortium".
If the 2009 WWDC is the last one that isn't just a series of overpriced podcasts, I'll not blink an eye. If the 2009 WWDC is the first one that's just a series of overpriced podcasts, I might raise an eyebrow. It's not like Apple people handle questions well. Well, not all of them. A lot of them are really good at it, and I respect them for their ability to deal with people who are asking not only impertinent, but legitimately hard questions. However, after getting my fucking head ripped off for asking Apple "Why can't we get new OS images with the latest patches after a numerical update, i.e. 10.5.4, etc. We'll pay for them, but they'd make our lives tons easier?", because I evidently dared suggest that no, it's not our job to come up with ever more complex imaging mechanisms, (InstaDMG is in fact, the bomb, but easy? Oh shit no it ain't), I realized that there are huge parts of Apple that hate talking to anyone not wearing an Apple badge. It was like "How DARE you suggest that Apple do such a thing. It's not our job to make your life easier just because you write us big checks." Fucking priceless. Classic "We're Apple and you're not". Some days, it's a good thing they have some really good products, and that the alternative suck worse.
Oh, just in case you don't get the hint:
Apple doesn't want to talk to you. Apple has never wanted to talk to you
Really. Get over it. The Mac community was only ever valued as a cash cow for Apple, and as soon as they realized that the MacMacs weren't bringing in a significant amount of money over new Mac customers, it was only a matter of time before Apple kicked them to the curb.
That's not to say that individuals within Apple don't realize that customer contact is, by and large a good thing, even when a good chunk of your customers are batshit insane. But in the upper ranks of Apple management, I think they honestly dream of a day when the only contact they have to have with customers is the internet.
That won't completely happen of course, because there are Apple customers Apple can't ignore: companies with the bad habit of buying a lot of Apple stuff. Those people actually want human contact, and so Apple gives them AEs, (account execs) and SEs, (system engineers). If you have a good AE/SE team, it's really nice. They come talk to you, they show you things, you can get problems fast-tracked, etc.
However, if you have a mediocre or bad AE/SE team, you're kinda fucked. You get emails promising one day, one day, you'll be together, but it never happens. Questions get the standard Apple responses of either what you'd get on the Internet, or "We can't talk about that". You know, the usual bullshit. I've had both kinds of teams, and the bad/mediocre teams tend to outnumber the good ones. However, the good ones are very good, and given the choice, I'd drag them with me wherever I work.
But, with end of Apple's participation in Macworld, (this isn't, by the way, carved in stone y'all. Keep in mind that Apple has been known to reverse decisions before. It's rare, but not unheard of), this means that my ability to directly talk to Apple has dropped by a third. Who's going to make that up? My AE/SE team. They may not know it yet, but this decision just fucked them in the ass, because now, we're going to start insisting they show up after announcements so we can actually see the new toys, and we're going to start insisting on better contact with engineers about problems. You remove a primary contact channel, I'm going to use the remaining ones a LOT more. (Apple's too silly to start having official blogs et al, so let's not even talk about that as a possibility. Not happening, get over it.)
I also think the timing was a total dick move by Apple designed to generate so much hysteria that no one actually stops to think. In fact, quotes from Apple, such as the one John Gruber has where Apple PR says, "hey, it's the last one we're doing, why waste Steve's time" show the dickness of the move, and that all of Apple's upper management should get pages on Dickipedia, because face it, that's a dick move, a dick statement, and they're dicks for doing it. Yes, I know the less profane description was that Apple is, yet again, playing power games with people to remind them of who the big dog here is, but let's call it what it is: A Dick Move.
Could Apple, even if they weren't being dicks about it, communicated this better? Probably not. Apple's always sucked at communication. No really. They suck at it. Apple blows ass at communication. They are great at delivering a specific, consistent message via a specific set of channels that they control, or nearly control. But at communication? Real, honest to god 2-way communication? They suck, they always have.
So why are the MacMacs all crying, besides the fact of that's just what they do? Well for two reasons, one of which is not true, unless they want it to be, but we'll get to that in a second. The first one is that once Apple stops doing Macworld, they're just like every other computer company. No other major computer vendor has had anything like Macworld for quite some time. At most, CES, and that's all marketing drones. 95% of the engineering talent at CES is running the show's IT and multimedia infrastructure.
Apple is now just like Microsoft, Dell, HP, IBM and all the others, who appear at either CES in a marketing status only, or at shows they run and control. That's the part that's really hurting the MacMacs. This is the unavoidable statement, the undeniable message burning in the sky: Apple is just another computer company. It may do some things different from a development standpoint, and it has some great products...but it's just another multibillion-dollar, multinational tech company. This announcement ripped away the last band-aid that there was something "special" about Apple, or that the Mac community had some "special" relationship with Apple. You never did, and there never was. I'm sorry they were such dicks about it, but in the end, it was they only way you'd ever really understand.
However, that's actually good for us, the customers. For one, it means that Apple can't rely on that RDF bullshit anymore. They have to actually justify to me, and others, why I should write them checks, just like Dell or HP does. It also, hopefully, means that they have to start being more competitive.
See, for a long time, there was a quid pro quo going. Apple, however reluctantly and poorly, put up with the MacMacs, and in return, the MacMacs put up with Apple. Well, there's no more pro quo, so let's knife the quid. Especially in the server arena. Face it, the Xserve, even the Intel models, is not all that. In fact, it's kind of crappy, from a feature standpoint. It's rather underpowered, lacks the kind of sophisticated management you get from other vendors, and is highly overpriced, especially compared with HP, and folks, from an engineering standpoint, HP can keep up with anyone.
For example, the last HP server I bought was a DL 360 G5, 8Cores @ 2.8GHz with 6 SATA 250GB drives and 8GB of RAM. It has a hardware RAID card, that supports RAID 6, 3 years of 24x7x4 onsite support. It cost me, with FL tax, $6,880
First, you can't get an Xserve with 6 drives at any price, nor can you get one that does RAID 6 at any price. Apple doesn't offer that. Period.
So what was my last Xserve?
An 8-Core, 3.0GHz, 8GB of RAM, Hardware RAID card, with 3 1TB SATA drives, and standard 3-year AppleCare "Premium Service and Support Plan", which will get you basic support for standard configs so you're up and running.
How much was that? ~$9200. Even if I equalize out the CPU speeds, the Xserve was still going to be $8600. Even if I had the option of 250GB drives in the Xserve, which I didn't, it was either 80GB SATA or 1TB SATA, it would have still cost more. Even going with 80GB SATA drives, that only dropped the price $1050. So to get the Xserve down to the price of the HP, I would basically have to gut it. (No, I did not buy all the RAM from Apple. Please.)
But, when I had multiple chances per year to talk to engineers, I could live with that much better, because it meant I could get in touch with the people I needed to pretty easily. But now that my only non-remote direct contact with Apple is going to be my AE or paying $1500 to talk to Apple at the WWDC?
Oh yeah, my next Apple purchase is not going to be a pleasant experience for the Apple side, because my tolerance for that shit just dropped. Colorful and Not Very Shy indeed.
Oh, and spare me the "BUT IT'S PRETTY!" bullshit. It sits in a server room, I rarely see it. 90% of my direct interactions with servers is SSH. Pretty doesn't matter for servers.
If Apple isn't going to even be marginally tolerant of direct contact with its customers, why the hell should the customers be marginally tolerable of the shit Apple does that they don't like? Yeah. Dick moves cut both ways Steve.
So now the other reasons that the MacMacs are crying:
IT'S THE END OF MACWORLD EXPO
Bullshit. It's the end of the biggest booth at Macworld. It's the end of ever-lamer Stevenotes that other than the iPhone blip, were what they'd always been: Marketing Presos.
But other than THE BIG BOOTH, Apple's presence at the rest of the show has been shrinking for some time. The number of Apple-run sessions has been going down, partially because well, that's uncontrolled customer contact, and also because there's a shitload of talent in the Mac market, and honestly, the non-Apple sessions were the more interesting and useful ones. (DISCLAIMER: Yes, I'm doing a 2-day session, and I am completely convinced it's better than any session Apple would ever do.) But my point still stands. Apple's Macworld sessions tended to be, again, marketing bullet points, with the occasional Mac IT track session that was actually useful. Any speaker identifying as being from Apple and using Apple marketing materials had to toe the line, and sing the company song. Almost no other speakers got that kind of a bye on turning sessions into marketing fests. Honestly, if Apple dropping its Expo appearances means more open slots for sessions by people talking about real world stuff, I'm happy about it.
True, the show floor might contract, in fact, it probably will. It was going to anyway, there's a recession, duh! So Apple is just another shovelfull of shit there. But for some time now, and I mean for well over ten years, the real value of Macworld Conference & Expo has not been the damned monkey show on the floor. It's been the sessions and the contacts. If all you ever did at an Expo was wait in line for the Keynote and wander the show floor for days, why the fuck did you waste your time? The sessions are the best, most easily justified reasons for going to Macworld, and since unlike the WWDC, they aren't under Apple's control, you can get a ton of information about non-Apple stuff that you'd never get at a WWDC. Apple is never going to do a forensics session at the WWDC, unless you see them create iForensics Pro. Apple is never going to have a WWDC track with gobs of sessions based solely on real-world experiences from non-Apple employees. Apple is never going to do half the sessions you see at Macworld Conference & Expo in the WWDC, because they aren't all about Apple, and that's just the Mac IT conference track. If you add in the User track and all the rest, you have an insane amount of value that you aren't going to get anywhere else.
Oh, and to all the people saying this proves that conferences are dead and we only need the internet? If you really think that, you're too fucking stupid to talk to, and you should go back to reading Le Scoble and his separated twin, Winer. I cannot even begin to explain how wrong you are, and I've no interest in wasting the time to do so. Pigs and singing right there.
But even the show floor doesn't have to go away. So Apple won't be there. So Adobe won't be there. Big fucking deal. If you take away the show floor classroom Adobe had, their booth wasn't that good anyway. Adobe at Expo has sucked for years, good riddance. Good riddance to Apple too, they were never the most interesting booth just the biggest. Macworld Conference & Expo has, in recent years, been about far more than just Apple. Think about the companies there that you would never get a chance to talk to without Expo. Think about all the contacts you get from an Expo, in person. I don't care how big and bad your web presence is, it's not got half the weight of actually talking to people. Without that in-person time, you're just an email address. Not even video conferencing can fix that. Classes and personal contacts...that's where Macworld excels, and none.of.that requires Apple.
Yes, I know, Boston. Whatever, that show died for a lot of reasons, including fallout from the economy post-9/11, the fact that a lot of people had a hard time justifying two Macworlds a year, and no offense to Paul and his crew, but the last New York expo was nothing to sing about. However, Macworld SF has always had more of a draw to start with. It can, and should do well without Apple. For one, it doesn't need Apple.
For another, can you really, honestly think of a better "No, Fuck YOU Apple" than for Macworld Expo to thrive sans Apple? There's nothing better than taking an attempt to stab you in the back, and turning that knife against your attacker, and there's no better way to gut-stab the people behind this decision, and its dick move timing than for the Mac community to say "No Apple at Macworld? So?", and have Macworld Conference & Expo not just survive, but thrive.
What makes Macworld Conference & Expo great has never been Apple, it's always been the attendees. You want proof? I'll lay odds that almost every non-Apple person running a conference at Macworld Conference & Expo was an attendee who went to some great conferences and thought, "Hey, I could do one on <subject that no one else did a conference on>, it would be fun!" The attendees make Macworld great, not Apple.
This is only going to be the end of Macworld if the Mac community allows it to be. If that community, instead of crying and folding, gives Apple the finger, and helps make Macworld even better, especially in terms of sessions, then Macworld can keep going as long as there's a Mac.
Apple may make the computers, but y'all make the community. Apple can't kill that unless you let it.
So let's recap:
Apple doesn't like uncontrolled direct customer contact.
Apple has never liked uncontrolled direct customer contact.
The way Apple did this was a dick move designed to try to kill Macworld.
Apple's dick move will only succeed if the Mac community proves Apple right by having no spine, no guts, and letting Macworld die.
It's up to you folks if Apple's move is a success or a big, stupid failure on their part.
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Apple, Macworld Expo
Posted by John C. Welch at 17:43 | Permalink
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Wow. Finally, a blog post about the Apple and Macworld that cuts through the crap. And, as an added bonus, even has Macworld properly capitalized. It's just annoying to keep seeing "MacWorld" all over the place. But I digress…
I had the same thought about the so-called Mac community: without Apple (and Steve's keynote) as a crutch and in many cases, a huge distraction, the community should get its act together.
John, I agree: Macworld doesn't have to die unless we let it. Yes, it was a dick move, as Apple is prone to do from time to time; it reminds me that the day of the ribbon cutting for the Boston Convention Center and the news from IDG that Macworld would be returning to Boston is when Apple announced it had no intention of attending the Boston show, pulling the rug from beneath the mayor and the entire city of Boston.
Dick move.
I may have seen the last Stevenote last year; hopefully Macworld will be around for a long time to come.
Posted by:
Al 
|
December 17, 2008 10:51 PM
That was fucking awesome. I'm going to reply with this article every time someone emails me saying "waaaah no more steve!!!"
Thank you John.
Posted by:
adamjackson |
December 18, 2008 11:26 AM
I don't understand what all the crying is about... I really don't. Of course, I also never thought keynotes were worth standing in line for any length of time for, either, so I only went if I had guaranteed access and didn't have to stand on queue for hours.
Honestly, I don't go to Macworld to see Apple (or Adobe, or any of the other "big name" players)... I go to find the nifty gadget or amazing utility that I never would have spotted in a tiny little ad online or in a magazine. The Adobe booth was a source of too much noise. The Apple booth was only really useful if my feet were dying to stand on something soft for a few minutes, since they always had the extra-squishy carpet. Beyond that, it was just the big crowded thing taking up space between the two sections of cool shit. I go to Macworld to talk to vendors who actually bring developers and engineers to the conference (and make time for them to talk to people)... I go for the content of the conference sessions... and NONE OF THESE THINGS are going away.
The only way Expo will die is if we (the Mac community collectively) let it die. If people pick up their toys and pout and refuse to go because ZOMGSteve'sNotThereWaaaaah, then yes... Expo may die. But if people look at where the _real_ value is, they'll realize it's not coming from Apple, and it hasn't for a long time.
I can't be there this year due to budgetary restraints (decided long before all this hoopla came up), but I fully intend to be there next year. See ya at Dave's!
Posted by:
DebbieG |
December 18, 2008 3:48 PM
I've decided that the MacMacs are a contemporary Cargo Cult. All the behaviour is there: fetishism, ignorance, magical thinking, rituals...
Posted by:
Wrinkle_In_Time |
December 21, 2008 1:10 PM
