Like everybody else, I saw Apple's announcement that they would end their participation in Macworld Expo after Macworld Expo 2009 and was not surprised. The real issue about this and all trade shows is do they make sense in 2009, in an era when widely-available broadband Internet access delivers all the product information we will ever need?

I think Apple was right to take itself out of the spotlight at Macworld Expo after this, the 25th annual conference in San Francisco. Although it is a mecca for technical training and many other ancillary services for the Apple community, at it's heart Macworld Expo is a computer trade show. The timing is right for the end of an era in many respects.

However, the way Apple chose to announce their exit from Macworld Expo probably spends more community goodwill than is necessary.

Apple had the option of not announcing the end of its participation in Macworld Expo until the keynote presentation itself. If it has no great new products to show, it could have used the keynote to present a retrospective of what Apple and the community have achieved in 25 years, thanks in part to Macworld Expo. This would have given the most loyal members of the community a reason to stand up and cheer.

Apple would then have the opportunity to gracefully say that many good things come to an end, and this is the end of the trade show era.

Instead, Apple put a press release on its website that said things like: "Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple's Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world...." Maybe a thank you to everyone who helped Apple get to where it is today would have been appropriate.

The best way to declare victory in a keynote, of course, would have been for Steve Jobs to make the presentation himself. He could have said that this keynote is about you and not about us, if he wanted to say it. And people would have believed that it was so.

I'm sure that one of the problems with this approach is that some of those same people would have expected Steve to articulate a vision for the future that is somehow better than their memories of the past. But not all Apple keynotes end with visions of the next shining city on a hill.

I think I'll wonder for sometime about the reasons why Apple chose to end its relationship with Macworld Expo in this fashion. In the meantime the community needs to think about what the real value of Macworld Expo is, and whether it makes sense to continue an annual trade show in a single U.S. city.