Apple's sweet week turns a bit sour

Lacking any earth-shattering novelty, Macworld was bound to be dominated by the health of Steve Jobs, writes John Collinsin San Francisco

WANDERING THE halls of the Macworld exhibition in San Francisco this week it was difficult not to wonder if Apple had shot itself in the foot. The computer and consumer electronics maker is riding high. The iPod is the best-selling digital music player, it has sold over 12 million of its high-end iPhones, Macintosh PCs are grabbing market share all over the place with 9.7 million sales last year and growth twice that of the rest of the industry.

And it's not just Apple that is in rude health. Hundreds of companies have paid to exhibit their wares, from protective skins for iPhones to virtualisation software that lets you run Windows on a Mac.

But last month's announcement that this would be Apple's last time at Macworld and that charismatic chief executive and co-founder Steve Jobs would not give his customary keynote speech cast a cloud over proceedings.

Apple argues that trade shows just aren't that important anymore. There are 3.4 million visitors to its Apple stores each week, which Phil Schiller, the marketing boss who stood in for Jobs, likened to "100 Macworlds every week".

Jobs's keynote speeches at Macworld, known as "Stevenotes" to fans, are the stuff of legend. Since his 1997 return to the company he founded with Steve Wozniak in the 1970s, Jobs has delivered every single Macworld keynote, with almost all of them featuring a major announcement such as the iMac in 1998, the iPod for Windows in 2002, the legendary iPhone unveiling in 2007 and the super skinny MacBook Air notebook last year.

San Francisco is Apple's home turf - the company is based in Cupertino down the road in Silicon Valley - yet this week the local media was full of speculation about the health of its chief executive and how Macworld would survive without him.

What should have been a positive week for Apple turned just a little bit sour. Even Steve Jobs's highly uncharacteristic decision to discuss his health - an undiagnosed hormone imbalance which caused him to lose weight - didn't put a stop to speculation about his health and his future at the helm of the company.

In many ways that's hardly surprising. None of Apple's announcements this week were really earth-shattering and so were never going to distract from the absence of Jobs.

The possible exception was the news that all music from iTunes would be available without the crippling digital rights management (DRM) restrictions that the major labels have insisted on. The music industry had insisted on them in the belief that they prevent piracy while consumers and the electronics industry said they placed too many restrictions on something that people bought legitimately.

The quid pro quo for the end of DRM is a tiered pricing structure - 69 cent, 99 cent and €1.29 per track - which will give record labels more flexibility but Apple execs say they expect more songs to be priced at 69 cent than €1.29 and "most albums" will still cost €9.99.

The most interesting feature of the 17-inch MacBook Pro unveiled by Phil Schiller was its eight-hour battery life. The trade-off is that the battery cannot be removed for easy replacement. But for that level of performance, users may think it is one worth making.

While there was some cool new features for iLife, the suite of software that Apple ships with Macs, such as automatic mapping of where photos were taken, facial recognition and the ability to get guitar lessons from Sting using GarageBand, much of the excitement of MacWorld came from the more than 400 exhibitors whose products interact with the Mac, iPhone or iPod.

Although the Mac is still seen as something of a minority interest in Ireland, the "halo effect" of iPod and iPhone sales has made it a real player in the US. Everything from tax software to an iPhone application for online flirting was on display.

Exhibitors ranged from industry giants such as Google and Skype to a mind-numbing number of me-too makers of protective iPod skins.

A spokesman for Boingo, a Wi-Fi roaming service, said his firm had seen a significant increase in use from Macs, particularly among business travellers at airports, and "you have to offer service to that proportion of the market".

He went on to say that just 1 per cent of access was from non-PC devices before the launch of the iPhone but that's now over 15 per cent with the bulk of traffic coming from Apple devices.

Griffin, one of the original makers of iPod accessories, including the ubiquitous iTrip which allows you broadcast music from your player to any FM radio within a short range, showcased stylish products that Apple itself would be happy to sell. The AirCurve, a $20 translucent acrylic docking station which acoustically amplifies an iPhone's speaker in much the same way that the horn on a gramophone worked, was particularly eye-catching.

A new presence at Macworld were the iPhone application makers. Apple only opened its App Store to third parties last July but already it is home to more than 10,000 apps. A spokeswomen for IDG, the publishers and exhibition specialists who organise the show rather than Apple itself, told local TV that about 15 per cent of exhibitors have an iPhone app or are totally focused on that.

But all is not happy in the world of the iPhone software developers. Freedom Voice, the makers of the Newber application which adds a second business line to the iPhone and manages it dynamically, was organising a petition to call on Apple to be more transparent in the way applications can be added to the App Store.

The firm has been waiting for three months to get its software into Apple's online shop - the only way it is possible to add software to an unlocked iPhone.

Macworld will continue without Apple and dates have already been announced for 2010. Serguei Beloussov, chief executive of Parallels, a company which makes virtualisation software so you can run Windows on Macs, says the company will still come to Macworld next year but is unsure how big the company's presence will be.

"The show without Apple may be better because it was mostly an Apple show which generated PR for Apple," says Beloussov. "It was almost impossible to do a new product announcement here because all the coverage goes to Apple."