Chunkier sidekick to replace Jobs at Macworld

Apple has officially announced that January 2009 will be its last year at Macworld (confusingly Macworld will continue without Apple), stating in a press release,

“… this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote…”

Philip Schiller depicted left has featured in a number of Apple keynotes previously. Steve Jobs has (brainwashed) captured the imagination of their customer base with ‘awesome’ (can everyone please stop using that word?) keynote speeches, those who’d fall asleep during a Microsoft keynote actually look forward to Steve Jobs appearances every January.

Apple asserts that they’re scaling back, with this being another event that they’re dropping to do so. Interestingly Steve Jobs won’t be taking the last ever Apple appearance at Macworld. This may spur on more rumours of CEO Jobs’ health, could this send Apple’s share price diving or will it build enough media attention to improve their standing? Has Apple created too much of a following?

At their last event where they shined the spotlight on notebooks generating huge amounts of media attention over a few laptops and a monitor, probably leaving other laptop manufacturers a little irritated that their competitor could fill an entire conference room with successful tech journalists and have them all happily advertise Apple’s updated line.

All we know is, Januarys just won’t be the same without the Steve Jobs, his turtleneck, minimal vocabulary and the notorious “just one more thing”.