Did Anyone Else Forget Macworld Expo is Next Week?

For a Mac user, there is a special, magical time of year called Macworld Expo. It’s the Mac geek’s Christmas. It’s the event where, once a year, the fearless leader Steve Jobs (or in a medical absence, Phil Schiller) takes the stage and wows us with new shiny products with Apple logos on them.

Except…Macworld is in February this year? Apple isn’t attending this year? David Pogue, the journalist, is delivering the keynote address instead of Steve Jobs? Is this the Twilight Zone?

Look, last year, during Steve’s medical leave of absence, Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing, took stage, delivered a couple products, nothing earth-shattering. Then he dropped the bomb that Apple wouldn’t be attending in the future. Tony Bennett came out to patch things up by singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

In the fallout, the Expo organizers pushed everything back to February 2010 (probably to give a little bit more time to strategize and so they wouldn’t be buried in the press by CES).

The reality is, I was so focused on Apple’s own iPad event and its aftermath that I forgot all about Macworld Expo. Am I the only one? I doubt it. I honestly can’t think of a single reason the consumer side of me should be salivating over Macworld Expo. 

Every Mac Geek’s Christmas was postponed a month, then Apple came in and saved the day with the iPad. Apple is simply enough of a juggernaut now that they don’t need the expenditure of being at an Expo for a week to grab the attention of the world. They just need to send out vague invitations a week early.

I’ll keep an eye out for anything interesting coming out of expo, but I have a feeling it, too, will succumb to its sibling’s fate. You do remember Macworld Boston, right?