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The Star of the Show Bids Farewell to Macworld
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This comes not quite six years after Apple opened the iTunes Store and two years after Jobs challenged record labels to drop DRM. Other music-download stores, such as Amazon, had moved to non-DRM sales earlier. But Apple has become the biggest music outlet in the United States; for it to consign DRM to oblivion (at the cost of allowing labels a little flexibility in song prices) means a lot.
This successful liberation of music downloads raises a tantalizing prospect: What if movie studios ever cared to learn from the music industry's example and drop their own self-destructive insistence on DRM? Wouldn't that be a great Macworld announcement?
Except that it can't be, since Apple won't be part of this show anymore. Mac users won't clog the Moscone Center's halls for a look at Apple's new products; the dedicated or obsessed among them won't line up along Howard Street outside of Moscone for the chance to watch a keynote in person.
At 9 p.m. the night before Schiller's keynote, seven such people had camped out. Most had arranged their Macworld trips months before Apple's Dec. 16 announcement of its pullout from the show -- one said he'd traveled from Melbourne, Australia, while another reported that he'd come from Dubai.
The Australian, a Mac reseller who only gave his name as "John," expressed a fair amount of frustration at Apple for springing the news so late (though his trip wasn't a total loss, since he was getting a decent vacation in the United States out of it). But he said he recognized why Apple might not need this annual happening, given the problematic post-holiday timing of Macworld.
He also foresaw one benefit to his overnight wait: "At least you can say I went to the last Macworld keynote ever." He didn't even know he could catch a Tony Bennett performance in the bargain.
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at robp@washpost.com. Read more at http:/
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