The grand demo

This news just in, Steve will not be gracing Macworld Expo 2009 with a keynote. For the past couple hours, the blogosphere has been quietly buzzing with unusually tame speculation about the meaning of this announcement and its potential effects on investor confidence.

Overall, nobody seems unduly worried about the health or future of Apple's CEO, and a nice consensus seems to be settling in: Apple is right in dropping out because expos and trade shows are a twentieth century fad whose death has been long announced. In many ways, nothing could be truer and Apple has been continually dropping from trade shows since it started announcing it would no longer be participating in the East Coast version of the very same Macworld conference.

The cancellations have, in true Apple fashion, been sometimes unexpected and always inelegant. They were, however, nothing to be surprised about and it seems the Mac community is accepting them with rather good humour.

Beyond all these explanations, however, I believe there is very much a Steve Jobs-related reason for this keynote revamp. Indeed, not only is Apple dropping out, they are sending Phill Schiller instead of Steve to perform on stage.

As many commentators have pointed out, Phill is a brilliant man, an engaging speaker and has an overall likeable public persona. In many ways, he is as reassuring as Steve is inspiring. He is the proverbial "nice guy" who provides moments of release in-between the grand announcements, for the benefit of journalists frantically sending news to their headquarters during the keynotes.

Above all, Phill is not Steve. By sending Phill on stage, I suspect Apple is sending us a strong message: Steve is not the company, and the company is not Steve. By sending Phill on stage, Apple is showing they need not have Steve on stage to put on a great show over the year, grow their market share and launch great products.

This does not, in any way, mean that Steve is retiring. It does not, either, say anything about his health. Steve may, very simply, be somewhat tired of the keynotes and simply wish to take a little breather. Plus, it is true, Macworld no longer makes much sense as a trade show. What is does, however, is give tangible proof that Apple is more than just a keynote presentation and remind the public that they should keep an eye out for other forms of communication from Apple.

Slowly, progressively, Apple is laying the ground for the future. Saying that Apple has no "succession plan" appears to be very much a mistake. The first step in preparing Steve's succession is to dissociate the presence of Steve on stage with the release of new products. Only then will Apple be able to successfully articulate anything about the future because only then will the public be prepared to take any replacement, no matter how brilliant, seriously.

In a word, yes, I believe this cancellation is the first major step in planning Steve's retirement from a PR standpoint. It does not, however, mean that Steve is retiring. It merely means the company, and probably Steve himself, are thinking about the future. Any CEO should do that, and Steve's unusual personnality should not let us forget that he is a very serious, dedicated CEO in many ways.