1. Apple had a couple big products they were going to reveal. Then the market tanked. So Apple decided they would hold off on the announcements. Steve Jobs might’ve shown up for a ‘Farewell’ address, but without any big Boom! or ‘One More Thing…’ to offer, it would look worse than if he didn’t show up at all.

2. It was this indecision that kept the announcement so late. This is like their ‘No new products this year’ announcement a couple months back. They tried to hold off on deciding until they were faced with a necessity. Announcing now gives the Apple engineers at those unrevealed products a chance to have some time off for the holidays instead of working overtime to make the keynote deadline. It also signals all us Apple fans that there’s no earth-shaking new product coming, so we can buy today’s products with some confidence they won’t be obsolete in 2 weeks.

3. ‘Never coming back’ is indeed a strong statement, but it is in Steve Jobs’s style, in line with the ‘floppy is dead’ and ‘OS9 funeral’ announcements. The man likes to make bold statements and decisive breaks with the past. But it also deflects bloggers away from ‘Is Jobs healthy, will he retire now?’ towards Harry’s main theme here: ‘Will MacWorld survive, what function does a big convention serve, and why did Apple say Nevermore?’

Whatever the reason, I’m sad to hear of it. Apple’s participation is the ‘anchor store’ of MacWorld, and MacWorld is a great time for small developers and Apple fans to get together and build excitement as well as community bonds. But this too is in line with Steve Jobs’s history: the man doesn’t seem to understand community and brother-love all that well. Maybe he does understand it very well at all, but his actions give the impression that he doesn’t, so he doesn’t seem to.

I never went to any of the MacWorlds, but found it fun to follow the speculation and rumors building up to them, and the podcasts and columns showcasing ‘Best in Show’ applications and peripherals.

–Harry