I’m sitting in Terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport. But tonight at 6:30pm PT, I’ll be in Las Vegas at Steve Ballmer’s final Microsoft keynote at CES–and TIME’s Doug Aamoth and I will liveblog it one last time. You can join us at technologizer/ces12, and I hope you will.

Still, I came away from Wingfield’s piece unconvinced that there’s a new sea change going on in the industry that’s rendering CES less relevant than it has been in recent years.

Here’s why:

CES has never had anything like a monopoly on major product announcements. Wingfield points out that the iPad, iPhone, Kinect, and Kindle Fire weren’t announced at the show.  But Apple, at least during Steve Jobs’ second time around, didn’t announce any products, major or minor, at CES. (Its absence certainly leaves a gaping hole in the show, but it’s a long-running one.

And you could come up with a list of famous tech products going back years that weren’t announced at CES. As Wingfield says, the Xbox was announced at the show in 2001. But the Xbox 360 wasn’t announced at CES. And neither was the PlayStation 2, the PlayStation 3, or the Wii. Or Windows 95. Or TiVo. Or the PalmPilot. I could go on.

New categories of tech products have been good for CES. Wingfield says that TV and stereos–the products that got CES going back in 1967–are no longer driving change in the consumer-tech industry. That’s true. But CES seems to be doing a pretty good job of being a key event for other types of products.

It became the computer industry’s default big show after COMDEX died in 2003, which is why one of the biggest trends at CES 2012 will be ultrabooks. There are going to be scads of tablets and phones at the show, too, even though two huge mobile shows, Mobile World Congress and CTIA, are coming up. And the camera business’s big event, PMA, is co-located with the show this year. As technologies have converged, they’ve all made their way to Vegas for CES.

In some cases, the fact that companies avoid CES is a sign that CES is successful. Wingfield quotes an analyst who says that CES isn’t a great place to announce products, because it’s too noisy. He also says that the fact that the show has 1.7 million square feet of exhibits makes it hard for new stuff to stand out. All of which inevitably brings to mind that Yogi Berra line about the restaurant that nobody goes to anymore–because it’s too crowded. And it’s a complaint that’s existed for as long as giant, jam-packed conferences have.

In many ways, CES is a relic. When I started writing about technology in the early 1990s, there were two CESes a year. And two COMDEXes. And two PC Expos. And two Macworld Expos which were both much bigger than the current incarnation of that event. The world doesn’t need anywhere near that many humongous tech conferences anymore, which is why the winter edition of CES is the only one left from that era that remains humongous.

It too could start to wither away, either soon or someday. But most of the show’s weaknesses as detailed in the Times story are perennial problems, not emerging threats. Despite them, I see no evidence that recent CESes have been anything other than overwhelming successes, especially given the rotten state of the economy. I’m looking forward to landing in Vegas this afternoon so I can take the pulse of the 2012 edition for myself.

[Photo at top of post: Conferencegoers register for the first CES in 1967.]

Next Monday at 6:30pm PT, Steve Ballmer will give what Microsoft says is the company’s final keynote at CES. I don’t know whether he’ll acknowledge that fact, in either a serious manner or a lighthearted one. But it’s a safe bet that he’ll talk about Windows 8, ultrabooks, Xbox, and Windows phone. And I’ll be in the audience, along with TIME’s Doug Aamoth. We’ll liveblog the event as it happens at technologizer.com/ces12. Join us, won’t you? (And if you need a reminder, head there now: You can get an e-mailed notification when the event begins.)

Tony Bennett closes out the last Apple keynote at Macworld--to date--in January 2009.

The great thing about the Apple rumors published at Taiwanese component-news site DigiTimes is that you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes it has scoops that really are scoops. Other times–many times–its rumors are strictly fictional. You can neither trust it nor ignore it.

Today, DigiTimes has a story I know I like, whether or not it amounts to anything. The site says that a source tells it that Apple is going to release two new iPads in January, with super-high-res screens. But the part of the rumor that’s entertaining is that DigiTimes’ source says that Apple will announce its new tablets at Macworld/iWorld–the conference formerly known as Macworld Expo –which is being held starting on January 26th in San Francisco.

For those who came in late, Apple famously pulled out of Macworld after the January 2009 edition, saying that it no longer needed Macworld–or, really, conferences at all–to communicate with its customers. As a former employee of Macworld’s organizer, IDG, and a fan of the show, I was disappointed by the decision. But I couldn’t argue with the thinking behind it.

Nothing has happened in the interim to make DigiTimes’ new rumor sound more likely. The iPad 2 went on sale on March 11th, so announcing new iPads in late January sounds a tad early. And even if Apple does want to announce them around then, I can’t think of a reason why it would want to do so at Macworld/iWorld. The company is simply more comfortable running its own events its own way. Piggybacking on Macworld/iWorld would provide no particular PR boost, and would make Apple look indecisive.

Then there’s the little fact that the Macworld/iWorld schedule doesn’t seem to leave any time open for an Apple keynote. Nor do I see space on the show floor for a giant Apple booth. (Conspiracy theorists may choose to believe that IDG is covering up Apple’s plans with dummy events on the schedule and a fraudulent floor map.)

And just to make DigiTimes look even more erratic than usual, its new rumor involves a retraction of another (unlikely-sounding) rumor it was reporting just a few days ago: That Apple would soon be releasing a 7″ iPad.

If, all evidence and logic to the contrary, Apple does show up at Macworld/iWorld, I’ll be tickled. Decisiveness and finality are all very well, but so are old traditions. But for now, the idea seems all but utterly implausible. The chances it’ll happen? I’d say they’re about .000000000001%.

RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis at DevCon.

I don’t mean to be painfully Pollyannaish, but I’m almost glad that RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis didn’t announce any new products or other major news at the keynote during its DevCon conference in San Francisco, which I attended on Tuesday morning. A year ago, at the 2010 edition of the event, he unveiled the PlayBook tablet. I got all excited. When it finally shipped months later, it was tremendously disappointing.

This year, the upcoming products that matter for RIM are the first BlackBerry phones based on the company’s new QNX-based operating system–which Lazaridis did say will be called BBX, and which will presumably come out next year. If RIM had provided a sneak peak at them at DevCon, it wouldn’t have helped matters and might have hurt. All that really matters is that they’re great when they finally come out. Who cares how unfinished versions look in a controlled demo?

DevCon 2011, which continues today, has been mostly devoted to brass-tacks information aimed at people who write software for RIM devices. That’s fine; that’s what developer conferences are for. But I do wish that Lazaridis, or somebody, had laid out RIM’s vision as a company and as a maker of technology products. Instead, he began his keynote by briefly apologizing for last week’s outage and trumpeting some impressive-sounding sales stats. Then he dived right into technical stuff.

It’s pretty apparent what kind of devices Apple wants to make. I get what’s important to Google’s Android folks. Even though Microsoft’s Windows Phone isn’t catching on with consumers, the company has a strategy.

But RIM? I don’t have a clue about what it’s trying to do.

That wasn’t always the case: For years, it thrived in part because it had such clarity of vision. It wanted to build excellent phones centered around reliable e-mail and calendaring that delivered features that businesses cared about. It did. And then the world changed, and RIM failed to change with it.

I tried to piece together the things that Lazaridis and his colleagues and guests showed at the keynote to get a sense of what RIM cares about. The very first demos they did were of fancy 3D games for the PlayBook. There was some classically RIM-like businessy stuff, such as features designed to let a company prevent PlayBook users from cutting and pasting sensitive corporate data into personal e-mail. Lazaridis repeatedly said that QNX is the one way forward for BlackBerry developers–but an Adobe representative showed the PlayBook running AIR apps, and a segment was devoted to the tablet’s Android compatibility. Most of the keynote focused on the PlayBook, but I didn’t come away absolutely confident that RIM is committed to the device for the long term and won’t TouchPad it and return to being a phone-centric outfit.

It was all pretty jumbled. All I could tell was that RIM is afraid to commit to being anything in particular. It wants to do everything. Which isn’t working.

I winced in particular at the emphasis on fancy games. It seems obvious to me that nothing is more important to RIM’s fate than making excellent business devices. I’m not sure why any game enthusiast would choose a PlayBook over an iPad. But the fact that games led off the keynote may mean that RIM believes they’re key to its future of the company’s products.

Unlike many folks–the people I chatted with on Twitter about the keynote as it happened were amazingly cynical–I don’t think it’s dead certain that RIM’s goose is cooked. It’s possible that Lazaridis and co-CEO Balsillie have a strategy that they’re just not talking about yet. Perhaps they realize that the company’s recent history of stoking excitement for products isn’t nearly as important as making them great. They might be finishing up QNX BlackBerries that are so impressive that they don’t want to talk about them just yet for fear that they’ll kill the market for current models. I still believe that one exceptionally good new BlackBerry phone might change everything.

What I don’t understand is why RIM doesn’t seem to think it’s all that important whether anyone understands what it’s up to. In a conference call in June, Lazaridis said “RIM has taken a unique path and the reason why we do things might not always be obvious from the outside.” He’s right. But isn’t it vital that RIM customers, developers, and watchers understand what RIM is doing, and why? Wouldn’t DevCon be the perfect place to educate us? Wouldn’t it have been worth ten minutes at the start of the keynote? If you don’t bother to explain your strategy for making relevant products–or can’t do so–why should anyone believe you have one?

On Tuesday morning at 9am PT, Microsoft will hold a BUILD keynote that’s likely to involve lots and lots of new details about Windows 8, an operating system we still don’t know all that much about. I’ll liveblog the whole event at technologizer.com/win8. Hope to see you there–and stay tuned for other Windows 8 news this week as it develops.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2011/09/11/coming-on-tuesday-live-coverage-of-microsofts-windows-8-keynote/feed/ 4 Harry McCracken Windows 8 Revealed http://technologizer.com/2011/06/06/wwdc-live-coverage/ http://technologizer.com/2011/06/06/wwdc-live-coverage/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 08:54:38 +0000 Harry McCracken http://technologizer.com/?p=44465 ]]>

Our liveblog coverage of Apple’s WWDC keynote begins at 10am PT at technologizer.com/wwdc11. Come join me, Ed Oswald, and Techland’s Doug Aamoth as we get the skinny on OS X 10.7 Lion, the next version of iOS, and iCloud from Steve Jobs and company.

First a promotional message: I’ll be  at Moscone West in San Francisco on Monday morning at 10am PT for Apple’s WWDC keynote. I’ll be joined in our CoverItLive room by Ed Oswald, Techland’s Doug Aamoth, and, I hope, you. We’ll be at technologizer.com/wwdc11.

In the meantime, let’s review your answers to the predictions I asked you to make about the next version of iOS 5 which Apple will announce tomorrow. (It’ll also finish up launching OS X 10.7 Lion and announce iCloud.)

Without any further ado…

What new iOS features and improvements will Apple announce? I generally say that an Apple keynote prediction counts as an Official Technologizer Prediction if it’s been made by more than half of you. But the only items here that count under that system are improved notification system, over-the-air iOS updates, synching with iTunes over Wi-Fi, and automatic app updates. Everything else got less than fifty percent.

Here’s how the voting panned out:

(Yes, three percent of you believe that Steve Jobs will announce Flash support on the iPhone tomorrow. Or maybe you just misclicked.)

When will iOS 5 be released? 24 percent of you say September, 20 percent think this month, 16 percent think July, fourteen percent think “this fall,” thirteen percent think August, eight percent think “this summer,” and a handful have other predictions. (I’m guessing the plurality that say September are thinking it’ll come out at the same time as the next iPhone.)

Will Apple announce any iOS hardware at WWDC? Most of you think it won’t. But 40 percent say there will be something that isn’t an iPhone or an iPad. 36 percent think there will be a new iPhone. And one of you says there will be a new iPad.

Any other predictions? Here are some of the ones you made:

I think they will announce a new iPhone for a September launch. Very conservative I know.

Apple will announce unified media streaming across the “three screens,” TV, desktop, and mobile. This will be enabled by Airport Extreme moving to iOS and an update to Apple TV.

There will be digs at Android.

Sprint will be added as a carrier.

Airport and Time Capsule updates also.

The “one more thing” will be the new Macbook Air.

iCloud will be free for 90 days with purchase of new iOS device

Next version of iOS shows off integration with iCloud–iTunes,yes, but also seamlessness of using iWorks and other formerly desktop-only apps with iCloud storage to help iPad displace more laptops and make all iDevices (Pad, Phone, Pod Touch) more productive for the enterprise.

A search/find feature that indirectly competes with Google.

After the keynote, I’ll report back once more with a scorecard on what Apple ended up announcing and how closely it mirrored our guesses. Thanks to everyone who participated!