At Macworld, All Eyes Are on Steve Jobs

Apple Chief Executive Tends to Surprise With Announcement of New Product

As predictably as Santa Claus on Christmas morning, Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs will bring us something new today at the annual Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. And as usual, there's a lot of figurative box-shaking going on over what the surprise might be.

Last year it was the iPod Shuffle and Mac Mini; the year before it was the iPod Mini and Garage Band, a software program that lets users create their own music. The things Jobs announces in his speeches tend to mark significant milestones in consumer electronics.

Speculating about the speech in anticipation has become a kind of geeky parlor game, and this year is no exception.

As for official comment from Apple? Well, that would be like opening your gifts on Dec. 24. "We have no comment on that at all. Not until Steve gets up on [stage for] the keynote," said Anuj Nayar, a spokesman for Apple.

Macworld, held at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, comes on the heels of the massive International Consumer Electronics Show, an annual display of electronic gadgets held in Las Vegas. With 130,000 attendees and more than 2,500 exhibitors this year, CES is the undisputed mother of all trade shows.

While CES is a comprehensive show covering the entire universe of consumer electronics, Macworld focuses exclusively on products designed to support Macintosh products. It started 22 years ago and has been growing steadily over the past five years, to about 34,000 attendees last year and at least as many this year, said Mike Sponseller, a spokesman for IDG World Expo, the company that hosts the event.

This year, Macworld will host more than 300 exhibitors -- software makers and electronics vendors among them -- up from 275 last year, Sponseller said. Notably, this year there is heavy emphasis on accessories for iPods of all kinds -- headphones, cases and fashion purses, he said. "A lot more companies are springing up around that whole genre."

Apple focuses most of its energies on Macworld and keeps a minimal presence at CES, where plenty of companies were demonstrating products designed to chip away at the empire Apple created with its wildly successful iPod products.

Creative Technology Ltd., for example, showcased at CES the Zen Vision: M, a portable video and MP3 player that plays music bought from Napster, Rhapsody and Yahoo music stores. Microsoft Corp. and MTV Networks previewed Windows Media Player 11 and the companies' joint digital music venture, Urge, a service aimed at being easier to use.

Dozens of smaller companies also offered rival digital media players in various shapes and sizes or accessories like stereos and headphones.

"Every year over the last four years, Apple has dominated the music scene, and now you're seeing them get a foothold in video," with their introduction last year of Video iPods, said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research. At CES, other companies introduced competitive products, but they are still "playing catch-up" to Apple, Wu said, adding his prediction that "we'll hear Apple respond to the next generation of products."

Apple's Nayar offered no comment on competitive developments.

Wu predicts, however, that Jobs's announcement today will include a slimmer, lighter and wider-screen laptop computer built with a more power-efficient Intel chip, as well as an updated iPod Shuffle that will put the cheaper MP3 devices into more consumers' hands.

But that's not likely to be all, he said, noting that Jobs traditionally presents a device or program that no one expected.

"There's always something." he said.