Is MacWorld dead without Steve Jobs?

As MacWorld closes and CES begins you have to wonder what it was like without the presence of Steve Jobs.

Steve has been having health problems for the past few years and has reached the point where he and Apple can no longer really hide them. The Apple PR Machine did push out a letter from Jobs explaining what is going on (I actually appreciate the honesty finally). But does not really explain where Mac goes from here.

So what is it like at MacWorld without Jobs? I asked many of my PR contacts, none of whom replied. Then I came across a nice little opinion rant from Nick Farrell (The Inq and Fudzilla) on just that subject.

Read Nick's Rant here.

A mate of the INQ was sitting in the press room the other day. He said he had the only PC in the place. All the other hacks were looking at him strangely as they sipped their Apple Kool Aid and cut and pasted the press releases from the various Apple suppliers into their various columns. Well that is thinking different.
But without Jobs showing up there was nothing really interesting to report.

Apple itself made such a dull announcement it convinced shareholders that the outfit had lost its way completely and share prices fell by 2.3 per cent.

Announcements that Apple is going to increase the amount of catalogue that is now DRM friendly was loved by the US press, but anyone with half a brain knew that Apple was behind other music suppliers on this score. Another thing they didn't notice was that the new agreement meant that most of the songs that are flogged on iTunes will increase by 30 cents, bringing an end the 99 cents deal.