Surprise news came down the wire this week that Apple would be making Macworld 2009 its last. And perhaps the bigger news was that Steve Jobs would not be delivering his annual keynote at the big event. In turn that means gadgets hounds all over the world will have a bit more money to put into their budgets in mid-January since there won’t be any new magical Apple toys to consider buying. The keynote will instead be presented by Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Phil Schiller. It’s hard to imagine that anyone other than Jobs would announce a totally new product line like a tablet-based, touch-screen Macintosh or a Mac Netbook so I think expectations for this Macworld suddenly went way down. With this announcement from Apple comes another round of speculation that trade shows in general have seen their last days. I sure hope not but that’s a question that only time will answer.

I haven’t been to a lot of trade shows. In fact, 2008 was my first time at NAB. Forgetting about the food poisoning for a minute, I can’t think of a better week I’ve spent professionally. There, gathered in one town, mostly under one roof, was pretty much every tool that I need to work in my chosen profession. Software and hardware were abundant for me to kick the tires and take for a test drive. Cameras were there for me to pick-up and feel the weight so I know a little bit about what that shooter has to endure as he works with the thing on his shoulder for 8 hours. Classes were held so I was able to brush up on a skill or learn a new piece of software all together. I met a lot of new friends and conversed with a lot of like minded people. My first thought was … why haven’t I been here before!?!? The answer is expense. My company paid my way to NAB 2008 and it didn’t come out of my pocket. Air fare, hotel, food, drinks, taxis, entertainment … all those things add up when you are paying for them yourself. Yes it is a business write-off but that write-off has an initial up front cost that comes out of your own bank account or on to your own credit card. That cost can often be too painful. And that’s thinking about the cost of an individual just attending NAB so you can imagine the high cost for exhibitors. At NAB 08 both Apple and Avid chose not to have a booth. While both companies said they were choosing to spend their resources to reach customers in other ways the high cost of a trade show booth played into that decision. While Apple really wasn’t expected to have much in the way of new products at NAB 08, they are generally on a two year cycle with Final Cut Studio, Avid launched entire new product lines without having that NAB booth. Avid was in Vegas in force and while I haven’t seen any sales figures on the new products (does Avid even release sales figures?) the buzz around the Internet (and on my desktop) is that the new Avid editing products are their best yet. But while neither Apple or Avid had a booth at NAB 08 the show floor was still packed full of people trying out new products and networking with others in their industry. Companies were demoing like there was no tomorrow and trying hard to sale their wares. You would never have known from looking at the NAB 08 show floor that Avid and Apple had bailed. Attendance didn’t seem to suffer very much.

Will Apple be at NAB 09? While no one knows for sure, this week’s move by Apple to distance themselves from Macworld sure seems like they would be less likely to ever come to NAB again but their post-production product line is a different beast than consumer products. They don’t have to create a buzz around editing software the way they need to for a cell phone. If there was ever a built-in market to buy an upgraded product it is Final Cut Studio users. You don’t have an annual gathering of iPod fanatics but you do have such an event for Final Cut Studio fans, it’s NAB. 2009 should be an “on” year for an update of Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Pro. There’s been a lot of commentary on how Final Cut Pro is getting long-in-the-tooth in its current form and needs a big overhaul. I’ve written some myself. High-end Mac desktop sales have dropped recently and while this is partly due to a slower economy there’s really no compelling reason to buy a fast new Mac Pro if you are an exclusive Final Cut Pro user … at least not until you see some kind of roadmap for the future of Apple’s post-production offerings. That’s if you are Final Cut Pro only. If you use Avid or the Adobe suite you can still go nuts but let’s be honest, there seems to be a lot more Final Cut Studio installs out there these days than anything else. So if 2009 is the year for our next big Final Cut Studio release why would Apple not be at NAB 09 to announce it? Sure they seem to have a preference for staging their own events these days but never do you have such a huge gathering of users of such a niche product as NAB. It would seem silly not to announce it there. If you don’t want to spend the money on an expensive booth then do what Avid did and have your own event. But then how would customers be able to actually use the new software and lay hands on a keyboard and mouse? I wonder of Avid would have benefited a bit more from their Media Composer 3.0 launch if they had at least presented a small booth on the NAB floor with a slew of machines running the new software with high definition media. A lot of people could have scrubbed that timeline and clicked those buttons and seen the best feature of Avid Media Composer 3.0; it’s blazing speed. While expensive, it just seems so easy for Apple to have some kind of booth at NAB 2009.

I think Apple will be there. I think they’ll be there with a fast new version of Final Cut Pro, re-written for Intel-only to focus on the core of what editors need: speed and stability. I think they’ll be there with a Final Cut Studio that has tighter integration than anything Adobe has imagined. I think they’ll be there with a plan to put Final Cut Pro into the hands of more dedicated feature film and broadcast television editing enviroments with an implementation of Final Cut Server that puts Avid Unity to shame. I think they’ll be there with a warehouse full of blazingly-fast, newly-updated Mac Pros ready to ship to the thousands of Final Cut Pro edit suites around the world. If not for media creators then who really needs these expensive Mac Pros anymore? If for no other reason than that Apple has to update the pro apps. I think they’ll be there (I hope they’ll be there [I pray that they’ll be there]) with great new upgrades to the products that many of us make our living with and use on a daily basis … that is unless Steve decides to think different.