GSMA, the organizers of the annual, massive Mobile World Congress, have announced a couple of new developments this morning. For one, the organization is to expand the developer-focused programme at the event to include new elements such as Macworld Mobile and the Brand App Challenge.

In addition, the organization has announced new speakers, including Sir Martin Sorrell, chief exec of WPP and HTC head honcho Peter Chou.

At Mobile World Congress 2011, the GSMA is partnering with IDG World Expo, organisers of Macworld, to produce Macworld Mobile, a mobile developer-focused event that will center around the iOS platform. GSMA says the Macworld Mobile iOS Developer Conference will provide full-day, in-depth training on the platform, with technical sessions, targeting tools and applications specifically designed for mobile application developers and engineers.

The GSMA expects more than 10,000 developers to visit App Planet, the “event within an event” at Mobile World Congress that centers around the mobile applications market, during the four days of Mobile World Congress. At the next event, App Planet will also feature new elements, including the Brand App Challenge, which is essentially a competition / networking opportunity focused on mobile application developers creating “brand apps” for a select number of global consumer brands.

Finally, GSMA has expanded its line up of keynote speakers at Mobile World Congress, announcing today that the following speakers were added to the programme: Daniel Hajj, CEO, America Movil and Telcel; Peter Chou, CEO, HTC; Vittorio Colao, Chief Executive, Vodafone and Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP.

They will join previously announced speakers like Randall Stephenson, Chairman, CEO and President, AT&T; Li Yue, President and CEO, China Mobile; Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google and Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter.

The event will be held on 14th-17th February, 2011 in Barcelona.

We’re looking forward to it.

The Grube talks about an Apple-less MacWorld and how it will be a pretty sad show without the regular one-ring circus that is the Steve Jobs keynote but that it won’t be absolutely horrible, with smaller companies actually getting some attention this time. My thinking? Nah. Big trade shows are going down and here are a few reasons why:

The Economy Who can spend a few thousand on airfare, hotels, and coference tickets? Not many small companies right now and big companies that might not care too much about conferences like MacWorld or even the Game Developer Conference or CES are loathe to send employees who will probably just get a nice steak dinner and lounge around watching pay-per-view instead of attending workshops. There’s a reason “going to a conference” has always intimated something untoward in movies and TV. What else do you do at a conference besides look for coffee and wish you were home?
Us and You Blogs and other news sources – Twooter, Booz, and Facetwoot included – give everyone a methodology for sharing interesting information. In the past, information sharing was one to many. Now it can be one to one. A Chinese company doesn’t have to wing its way to Las Vegas to show off its resistors.
The Next Generation These kids these days. You think they want to wander around a big hall full of men and women dressed in suits? No! They want cosplay and cartoons and video games. Birds of a feather conferences like PAX and ComicCon are different animals entirely and should be the next model for conferences like MacWorld: small, focused events in multiple cities, some events online. Tech conferences are like science fairs and with the crackdown on booth babes, they’re not even fun anymore.
Networking and Sales are Online The guys from Best Buy and Wal-Mart don’t need to go to CES. They get stuff shown to them all the time. The guys at B&H Camera don’t need to go to CES. They, too, have a set inventory and most of their hottest gear is announced regularly online. Sure, you need face-time sometimes but that face time can be done more efficiently and with less hassle.

A big tech conference is a hassle. Things are changing on that front, but I doubt we’ll see a MacWorld in the next decade. Thoughts?

Where were you 10 years ago today? Where were you July 21, 1999, to be redundant? (Me? I can guarantee that I was reading and refreshing wrestlezone.com.) In any event, you should know that 10 years ago Microsoft debuted Halo at MacWorld. Oh, how times have changed.

Reddit has a decent conversation going—Reddit is the last of the digg-like sites with still semi-coherent discussions—regarding the game’s impact and so forth. Chief among them: Halo was the first console first-person shooter to actually do things “right.” I think when saying this we’re tacitly acknowledging that GoldenEye was actually the first console first-person shooter to do things “right,” followed by Perfect Dark, which was more of the same, except with an at-times-terrible framerate.

Anyway, thank you, Halo. Your multi-player mode has given millions of young teens the opportunity to shout profanity at total strangers from the comfort of their bedroom. For that, we honor you.

Macworld is almost here and in true Apple fashion, the venue is done up in cloth-covered banners. Only a select, Apple kool-aid-drinking few knows what’s behind them. A new Mac Mini? A larger iPod Touch? A netbook? Other sizes of the new aluminum MacBook and MacBook Pro? We’ll find out on Monday! More teaser pics after the jump.

[PSGallery=1g40l1k84m]

AppleInsider & The Apple Lounge

My goodness. If the Mac Mini doesn’t recieve an update next week at Macworld, there will be some disappointed MacHeads. We’ve heard dual core CPUs, NVIDIA GPU power, SATA optical drive interface, and a new chassis. But wait! There is more!

The latest Mac Mini rumor states that the smallest Mac in the lineup will sport both DisplayPort and a Mini DVI outputs. This addition, along with the aforementioned specs, would make the Mini a formidable player in the budget computing realm. It certainly would shrink the gap between the Mini and the high-end Mac Pro. Only a few more days until Macworld until we find out what Jobs & Co. have in store for the new year.

Personally, I find it slightly repulsive that the industry is banking one way or the other on a man’s personal health problems (past or possibly present). But not really repulsive — more like “unfortunate” — for two reasons:

First, this isn’t Enquirer-style peeping into a private life. Steve Jobs is, if you’ll pardon the mac fanboy-sounding expression, more than a man. I don’t mean he is superhuman (a common misconception), but he is the face and one of the driving forces behind one of the most powerful tech companies in the world, and knows it. An Apple without Steve is not the same company for many people, and to be honest I wouldn’t blame them for cashing in when they hear he’s hitting the dusty trail.

Second, as for the rumor itself, it is neither new nor unsubstantiated. The man did have serious health problems before, and when he appeared gaunt last year the same speculations were aired.

Both stories credit sources inside Apple, and since the stories they present are mutually exclusive, it’s up to you to decide what you think, or if you even care. I’d say the Gizmodo side has more weight as it provides a better explanation for what’s going on. What’s CNBC’s explanation for the sudden about-face? Oh, they don’t have one. Apparently they are content with Apple spin saying everything is dandy.

Sadly for Steve and his family, the health of Apple’s CEO has passed over the last few years from a private matter to, if we’re honest, a shareholder issue, given his effect on the company. It may be less than sensitive to report on such things, but we’re not the Care Bear News Network, we’re tech journalists. We don’t get personal, we get exclusives.

As you well know, Steve Jobs won’t be at MacWorld next month; Apple won’t be at MacWorld next year. Speculation is rife online: is the the result of the recession? Is one show per year, the Worldwide Developers Conference, sufficient for Apple’s needs? Or, less scrupulously, is Jobs sick—and how does this affect stock price?

Thankfully, the Wise Men of Fortune’s little Apple blog, Apple 2.0, have put together a list of possible candidates as to who will replace Jobs when he calls it quits at Cupertino.

That Phil Schiller will replace Steve Jobs at MacWorld next month hasn’t gone unnoticed. Piper Jaffray—a famous investment bank that was slapped on the wrist to the tune of $25 million in 2002 for providing biased stock ratings—says that the move signals a “clear message that a leadership shift is underway.” Such evocative imagery!

In one scenario, Jobs would stay on as CEO, but would function more and more as a head of state than a head of government. Jobs gets the crown, but someone else gets the portfolio.

These are the names being thrown around: Timothy D. Cook, the current chief operation officer; Tony Fadel, senior vice-president of the iPod division; Ron Johnson, senior vice-president of retail; the aforementioned Phil Schiller, senior vice-presdient of worldwide product marketing; Jonathan Ive, senior vice-president of industrial design; and several other people no one outside of Wall Street has heard of.

For what it’s worth, Apple 2.0 thinks Tim Cook will get the nod, as evidenced by his placement on its little list.

All in all, yawn. Besides, it’s Sunday, and you should be watching football or fútbol all day.

I’m not going to CES this year nor am I going to MacWorld. I’m not doing this in protest or in a misguided attempt to seem “above it all” – we just had a new baby and I don’t want to subject my wife to two monsters of yawp during CES/Macworld week – but I’m extremely pleased with my decision.

I’ve been covering trade shows in some form or another for eight years. I know folks who have been covering them for twenty-five years or more. And everyone agrees: as of late they have become a waste of time, effort, and attention, yet there is something in the trade show that draws us in year after year. At CES it’s the sheer volume of crap to cover. At MacWorld it’s always been Steve.

Well, friends, MacWorld is now Steve-less and the personalities of yesterday – Bill Gates and I guess folks like Michael Dell – just don’t matter any more, so CES is also without a rudder. You went to MacWorld to see a rock star and you went to CES to see what you’d be using in the office next year. With the commoditization and easy OEM manufacturing of MP3 players, PCs, and laptops, however, you’ve probably already seen everything that will be at CES. And if you haven’t, you probably didn’t want to see it in the first place. Not to be blase, but there is little new under the sun in the era of the 40-second news cycle and blogs that release information consistently and constantly throughout the year.

First, let’s talk about MacWorld. MacWorld wasn’t an Apple show. It was a show about Apple. For Steve to show up year after year was actually a chore, and as Giz found:

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….Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Why else are trade shows useless? The cost.

My wife, before she was laid off, used to run trade shows for the financial industry. For the piddly little shows she set up, the costs were enormous compared to the pay off – usually in the $50,000-$100,000 range for perhaps 10,000 physical impressions, if that. By impressions I mean people literally walking by the booth, not stopping, not signing up for anything. Now imagine expanding that to MacWorld or CES size and you’re dealing with a return on investment in the single digits. You can spend $1 million to tell 610 WTVN in Columbus, Ohio about your latest MP3 player or you can send the player to Giz, Eng, or CG for $100 and WTVN will pick it up anyway. There is no reason to get in front of this audience anymore.

I know I’m ignoring the most important aspect of these trade shows. Trade shows, in general, are actually for the vendors. They go out to Vegas or San Fran, drink a lot, order some stuff from a catalog, and go back home. Good times. But what about the folks overseas? CeBIT is a ghost of a shell of a trade show and, like the rest of the world, it’s trivial to get good information online about what to order next year.

So good luck, MacWorld and CES. You had a good run. I’ll probably attend you next year and I have quite a few folks going this year from CG, but it’s force of habit more than overt value that draws me to your turbulent and truculent halls. The personalities are long gone and until someone comes along to take their place, the Adult Video show will probably have more and better stars to offer at their keynotes than you ever will.

Chances are that Apple will still announce new products at the event just without all the hoopla and festivities. We’re still going to send people to the event and so will other sites. That one keynote tends to be over publicized and extorted by gadget blogs anyway. It will be nice to simply get a feel for the new Apple wares without suffering through mind-numbing live blogging events.

Apple still needs a venue to announce new products. This keynote always tended to be where Apple announced the important products, but maybe Apple is tired of being tied down to these events. Without having this keynote, the company is now free to announce major products when the time is right; no matter when during the year.

Only time will tell what Apple’s departure from Macworld will bring. Good thing or bad, the company will still march on.

This is more like it! Apple events always spur rumors, but the build-up to Macworld ’09 has been uncharacteristically quite – except for the iPhone Nano rumor from yesterday.  So here we go with some real Apple rumors.

First up is the tireless rumor about Apple producing a low cost netbook. This time around, the analyst isn’t claiming any insider information, just good ‘ol fashion speculation based on the current market and economic conditions. 

That’s why he believes Apple will introduce netbooks next year that, like the company’s iPhone, will exist in an Apple-controlled “closed system” where software is delivered via the App Store, device restore is done from iTunes, backup is available through an optional online service, most likely MobileMe, and peripheral and add-on choices will be limited.

If Apple produces another netbook – they already have the Air – the scenario described above seems most likely. Apple wouldn’t want to erode MacBook sales with a diluted notebook, and anyway to capitalize on the App Store’s success would be a plus, as well.

The second rumor involves an updated Mac Mini debuting at Macworld which, to me at least, seems more likely than an Apple netbook. There was a time when the Mac Mini was declared dead, but those rumors were brushed aside. Just like the netbook rumor above, Apple needs a more tasty, low price computer and the Mac Mini might be the direction Jobs’ will take. This rumor, however, comes via an Apple corporate employee who sent the tip to Wired.

Basically, expect the new Mini to be modeled after the latest Apple notebooks. The tipster claims it will have an enclosure constructed of aluminum, eco-friendly components, and DisplayPort connectivity. Plus, it will sport Core 2 Duo options and the same GPU found in the new MacBook. Sounds like a MacBook encased in a box, really.

Hanging onto any Apple rumor is a great way to set one up for a large disappointment, but the Mac Mini claims seem most likely. The truth isn’t that far away as Macworld starts right before CES on January 5, 2009. We can’t wait.

Macworld is mere weeks and there really hasn’t been any substantial rumors besides this one involving a iPhone Nano. Ever since the original iPhone launched, Mac fanboys have been dreaming of a complete iPod-ish lineup that includes a small, nano version. It is widely known, and the source of many leaks, that iPhone/iPod case manufacturers receive basic specs and dimensions of upcoming Apple products so there are accessories available at the time of launch so this rumor might have some truth to it. The world has been yelling for a $99 iPhone and this small version might be Apple’s answer. Who knows.

The Steve Jobs’ Macworld Keynote is Apple Fanboy’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Boxing Day all rolled into an one hour event, but there isn’t one scheduled this year according to the Macworld Website. It’s kind of strange that with the event less than three weeks away that the site wouldn’t put the event’s main attraction on the schedule. Jobs isn’t listed under the speaker list, either. Hopefully we are missing it, or the site isn’t updated, ’cause Steve Jobs not preaching to his faithful is sure to send waves of speculation and doubt.

Macworld via MacDailyNews

Yesterday we wished happy birthday to the iMac, the personal computer from ten years ago that more or less saved Apple, leading the way to change the computer industry — as well as the music industry — forever.

We posted the video of Steve Jobs introducing the iMac and the nostalgia was palpable. But what were the reactions?

Reader Dan showed me this clip from a MacWorld from ten years ago, giving its first impressions of the new computer.

While the review is generally favorable, there are some parts that are humorous a decade on.

Most dramatically, this new consumer offering has no SCSI port, no standard serial ports, and no ADB ports. Apple has opted to replace these familiar connections with USB, a high-speed serial architecture that has suffered from slow adoption on the Wintel platform despite its technical advantages (see the sidebar “USB: Ready for Prime Time?”). Currently, no USB devices exist for the Mac.

I can’t wait till someone calls out the crap I write on here now ten years from now.

I swear, this is the last Macworld 2008-related thing I’ll write about. Then we can all forget it ever happened.

AppleInsider brought a camera, possibly more than one, to the show and snapped away. We had plenty of shots of the star of the show, the MacBook Air, but we didn’t strain ourselves to the point of photographing other vendors’ booths.

Think of trade shows like Macworld as an elementary school science fair: lots of people partnered up against their will talking about something that they understand maybe 95 percent of the time. Ask a question that pertains to the other 5 percent and boy are you in for a treat.

Four-page Macworld 2008 photo gallery [AppleInsider]

I’ve had the opportunity to talk with some of the top talkers in the tech world. My all time favorite has to be Patrick Norton. I like him because he talks fast and because he’s got that compelling X-factor quality that can’t be easily explained or understood. I met up with him at the xTrain.com booth to talk about what to me seems like irrational disappointment in this Macworld’s Apple announcements. You can get more Patrick at TekZilla.com, but if you buy a Drobo, you should definitely use promo code “CALI” at DroboStore.comno matter what Patrick says.

Click here to watch Brief #294

Granted, Apple may have dropped the price of its Apple TV while simultaneously adding much needed features (like HD support), but I have a less expensive alternative you might enjoy.

Head over to Monoprice, and buy a cable that’s compatible with your computer’s video out port. Connect that cable from your computer to your TV and you’ll be watching movies, HD or otherwise, on your big screen, all for the fraction of the cost of an Apple TV. (I have an iMac, which uses a mini-DVI port, so I needed this mini-DVI to DVI adapter before getting an cheap DVI-to-HDMI cable.)

Total cost: around $15 (I was able to buy the adapter for my iMac using a Best Buy gift card). $15 vs. $230?

Combine your setup with a little BitTorrent action and every night can be movie night, or The Office night or Lost night or…

Shocking low cable prices [Monoprice]

They were this close from getting me to stop pirating movies. Next year, maybe.

The just announced iTunes Movie Rentals isn’t a bad deal at all. For $3.99, you can download standard-def “new releases” (more on that in a moment) and watch them on your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod, and whatever else in the iTunes family. Older releases are $1 cheaper, while high-def version add $1 to the standard-def prices. Movie rentals expire 24 hours after hitting “play.”

The problem I have, and what I see as a big “oh, so damn close” moment for movie industry, is the timing of the releases. You have to wait 30 days after the DVD release of the movie for it to hit the iTunes Store. What’s with the time delay? Who made the decision, “Yeah, let’s hold onto our DVD sales for just a little while later”?

You know what would’ve been great and what would’ve have stopped my pirating ways? If the movies hit the rental store 30 days after their theatrical release. Don’t most movies make the bulk of their money in the first weekend? What’s the harm in, one month later, throwing the movie on iTunes and letting you rent it. I don’t even have to buy the movie. Nine times out of ten I’m fine with watching a movie just once,

Here’s my line of thinking: If the movies were on iTunes one month after hitting the theaters, which you know I hate going to, I’d have no reason to pirate them. What’s the point in downloading a crappy CAM or Telesync if I can get a DVD quality version in one month? At that point, the $4 rental price might as well be $0 and I’d be all over it.

But no, movie industry, keep getting dragged into the 21st century by the likes of Apple. Give me a decent alternative and I won’t have to download your movies (when they’re good enough to even warrant a download in the first place).

iTunes [Apple]

In his keynote at this year’s MacWorld, Steve Jobs just announced the latest iPod firmware, version 1.1.3. It adds the following features to the phone that you slide to unlock. Remember, if you’re one of those jailbreaking types, don’t upgrade just yet.

• The iPhone/iPod Touch SDK will be available in February, but there’s new software today like

• Maps with pseudo GPS that uses cellphone towers for your location.

• Webclips. Essentially bookmarked Web sites accessible on your home screen. Quick and dirty.

• You can customize your home screen, moving around icons as they wiggle.

• You can send txt messages to more than one person now. Wow, that’s long overdue.

• Smaller updates: Gmail now uses IMAP and you can view lyrics to songs.

Apple’s got a video demoing the new features here.

It looks like Wall Street isn’t too impressed with what Steve Jobs has showed off today. Apple’s stock is down some 8 percent today, trading at $170.41. What’s up, Wall Street? I mean, I have my own reasons why I’m disappointed with the announcements, but I’d like to know what The Street’s problem is.

Apple Stock Tanks During Stevenot [TechCrunch]