Mac opinion. Punditry. Whatever.

It’s amazing. Even without the benefit of iCal or blogs, the ancient Mayans managed to come within a hair’s breadth of correctly predicting the end of the world.

It came not in December of 2012 as they calculated, but a mere four years and one week earlier. Tuesday, in fact, when Apple announced that Steve Jobs would not deliver the keynote speech at the 2009 Macworld Conference and Expo, and that the conference would be Apple’s last as a participant.

Amidst the great wailing and gnashing of teeth came predictions across the Mac web that the Expo was doomed.

And maybe it is.

It’s certainly the end of an era, but things like the Internet and a couple hundred retail stores will do that to a tech conference. Whereas Macworld was the biggest megaphone around a decade or so ago, Apple has made a point since it opened its first round of stores that it got “Macworlds worth” of traffic through its retail outlets — first in weeks, then in mere days. The resurgence in popularity of Apple means the company can generate keynote-like attention at will — and on its own schedule. If Apple had waited until next month’s keynote to unveil its new line of laptops, do you know how many of them it would have sold during the Holiday shopping season? That’s right: none.

Apple is not fond of giving up control of anything, but for years, it had to where the calendar was concerned. It had to wait until Expo to introduce new products (or rush them to market before they were ready) and if it didn’t, the company risked the wrath of the press and rumor-mongers who would immediately deride the event as a disappointment.

Even if the move makes sense from a business perspective (and I don’t disagree that it does), the timing couldn’t have been worse if it had been intentional — and there are those who would say it was. I agree with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber that Apple needed to make both announcements at the same time. If they had simply said Jobs wasn’t delivering the keynote with the intention of dropping the other shoe after the show, the reaction would surely be that Jobs’ health was the issue. But would it have killed Jobs to deliver one more keynote — especially at the 25th anniversary of the conference?

I think the answer to that one can be seen in the special attention — or rather lack of it — that Apple paid to the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh. During that keynote, Jobs replayed the famous “1984″ Superbowl commerical in which Apple introduced the Mac. But even then, the gesture was not a look back, but a look ahead, in which the sledgehammer-slinging runner was digitally altered so she was wearing an iPod.

Maybe there was some kind of message to IDG in the announcements; maybe it was payback for some past slight, whether perceived or real. But my guess is that Apple simply works on its own schedule, for its own benefit — and if IDG or the other developers that exhibit at the show are impacted, well, that’s life.

So what happens to Macworld now? The easy example to cite is what happened to the summer show, when Apple pulled out of the Expo after IDG decided to move it from New York back to Boston. That event withered quickly then died. Is that the destiny in store for Macworld San Francisco? Certainly not if Paul Kent, the IDG executive in charge of the conference has anything to say about it.

Under Mr. Kent’s leadership, the event has grown dramatically over the past several years, both in size and quality. And while I’m sure he and his team don’t look at this as good news, I’d be very surprised if someone hasn’t already unlocked a secret drawer somewhere they hoped they’d never need to open and pulled out plans that have long been in place for just this situation.

The real shame in this is that in a perfect world, Apple’s absence shouldn’t affect the show very much at all. The conferences are just as valuable, the exhibitors just as compelling. All Apple has ever really offered to Expo attendees is the promise of new product announcements, the possibility of “just one more thing” and a place to display them, if you could work your way through the crowds. If anything, Apple’s absence gives other developers a better chance to grab some attention, if — and this is a very big, make-it-or-break-it if — IDG can convince attendees that a Macworld without Apple is still something worth coming to.

More likely, Macworld will have to morph into something else — probably something smaller, maybe even something mobile. In the long run, that may be a good thing, but it’s going to be an enormous challenge.

The good thing about an end of an era is that it usually means another one is beginning. Like it or not, Apple has ended the era of Macworld as it’s been. Now it’s up to IDG to define what Macworld will become.

[You can also now find this article on The Mac Observer website.]

At first glance, it seems like another typical Mac tempest in a teacup — a “helpless indie developer being ridden roughshod by the big bad monolithic control freak Apple.” Like Macworld media blacklisting and the Proteron LiteSwitch and Konfabulator incidents before it, it’s a cause celebre that unifies the Mac web, but makes them look petty and childish once the sobering light of scrutiny is shone upon it.

[The rest of this article appears on The Mac Observer/iPodObserver. Please click here to read it. --Ed.]

In a post for TUAW, Erica Sadun focuses mostly on the unlocking prospects of the iPhone 3G, but comes to the same conclusion I did.

“The 3G iPhone that goes on sale Friday, represents nothing more than last year’s iPhone–that finally got delivered a year late.”

Shawn King also nails it in a post on Twitter: “I think 3G is for those who don’t already own one. Next model for those of us who own the original.”

Amen to both.

Spot on analysis by Macworld’s Peter Cohen about what’s likely to happen to iPhone developers who think just putting their software on the iApps store will magically make everyone flock to it.

I wrote an article for The Mac Observer and iPod Observer today that points out that if you don’t live in an area served by AT&T’s 3G network, you’ll wind up paying extra for service you may never enjoy. The bottom line: if you already have an iPhone and you don’t live within a 3G network, you’re probably much better off just hanging on to your current iPhone.

Here’s a link to the story: leave some nice feedback if you feel so inclined.

In his “iPhone, Therefore I Blog,” er…blog, The Chicago Tribune’s Scott (hmm, his last name doesn’t seem to appear on his own blog post) reports the earth-shattering, riot-inciting news that AT&T will require current iPhone owners to hand over their old phones in order to get a 3G version.

Naturally, Scott (and his commenters) are up in arms. “To be told that I need to turn it in to qualify for my next iPhone,” writes Scott, “is a slap in the face that hurts more than a strong San Francisco wind on the Golden Gate Bridge.” (I’ve never been slapped by Golden Gate wind, but from Scott’s description, I infer that it hurts quite a bit. Wait, maybe not, since Scott also describes the situation as “almost hurtful,” so perhaps the wind on the bridge isn’t so strong after all. I’ll admit to being a little confused on this point.)

Luckily, it is clear that Scott is a journalist so, as he is quick to assure us, “I definitely didn’t misunderstand in this case.” OK, that makes it seem like he has a history of misunderstanding in other cases, but let’s forge on. He “finished an exchange with an AT&T spokesperson,” he tells us. See? As a professional journalist, Scott waited until the exchange was finished before reporting on it. I suppose he could have checked with a second AT&T spokesperson (we could call that something like “verifying through multiple sources” if we were so inclined), but he was probably coming up on deadline or something. And I’m sure this spokesperson was emailing Scott through his official att.com corporate account, so why assume his or her story needed checking, right?

Anyway, Scott (and his commenters) are righteously indignant about the sleazy underhanded tactics AT&T is using to steal our full-priced, un-subsidized iPhones from us. Scott bravely advises all his readers to make sure to let “anyone who doesn’t read this blog” to know about this “breaking news story,” regardless of the hoardes of page views it may inflict on his blog (and its advertisers). Now that’s selflessness.

Oops. In navigating my way to the blog’s home page in search of Scott’s last name (Kleinberg, it turns out), I discovered that Scott has exhibited another mark of the true journalist: follow through. In his third posting on the topic (the second having been posted on the bus on the way to work — what a trouper, that Scott!) he explains that “whew!!” (both friendly lowercase and two exclamation points — Scott knows how to connect with his readers!) “False alarm.”

It seems that Scott’s trusted (but solitary) source was wrong after all, in spite of Scott having both “checked and rechecked.”

It’s only folks who buy their iPhone after May 27th who have to turn in their iPhones, and that because AT&T will give them a brand new iPhone 3G. Wow, we can all share a good laugh at that one!

Naturally, Scott doesn’t included the update in his original post where it might disrupt the flow of his prose (or educate his readers). He writes a new post where far fewer people are likely to be bothered by having to read a correction (journalists hate those.) Unfortunately for Scott, it looks like some cranky editor (journalists hate them, too) has made him add the update to the original post. Sorry, Scott.

And finally, in what appears to be his very own catch-phrase signoff (another sign of a professional journalist), Scott tells us all: “Thanks for calling.”

No, Scott — thank you!

The latest installment of MacJury went live on Friday. In it, host Chuck Joiner and a panel including Jean MacDonald of SmileOnMyMac, John Moltz of Crazy Apple Rumors and Macworld, Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer and yours truly pontificate about what we expect to see and what we’d like to see announced at this year’s WWDC Keynote (scheduled for today as I write this).

It’s a show with a short shelf life, but in my opinion one of the most fun segments of the series so far. I mean where else will you hear ponies and pink MacBook Pros thrown out as possibilities for a Steve Jobs keynote?

If you’d like to give it a quick listen before the keynote, you’ve got just enough time to download it and hear it before Jobs take the stage. Even more fun, though, might be to listen to it after the announcements and see just how far off base we were.

My thanks to Chuck and the whole panel for making this show so much fun. You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or listen to the show directly from the MacJury website here.

Well, at least now we know Gene Steinberg is a fan of MacJury.

Also interesting that he doesn’t even address his premise until the 13th paragraph of a 15-paragraph article.

In a post on his “Zune Insider” blog, Microsoft’s Cesar Menendez says reports that the company will include content blocking filters in its media player. “I am setting the record straight in stating clearly that we have no plans to add content blocking features in Zune,” Menendez said.

We cited a New York Times article that claimed Microsoft would add software to the Zune that would prevent media from playing unless it could verify that it had been legitimately licensed for playback on the device.

“We know you guys are following this discussion closely, and wanted to be absolutely clear on this issue,” Menendez wrote. “We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.”

In a comment on the same blog post, the Times’ Saul Hansell responded that although Microsoft did not say it had committed to implementing the filtering software, it had committed to “explore filtering.”

From Hansell:

Here is what Mr. Sohn, the Microsoft spokesman, told me yesterday when I asked him about what Mr. Perrette said: “I don’t think they are wrong, but we are not going to characterize those discussions.” Later he added, “We have agreed to work with NBC across a range of topics, and protection of copyrighted material is certainly one of them.”

It’s possible that Microsoft is just playing semantics here, but the indication that it understands the backlash that content filtering would cause among users is a positive one.

There are few things as satisfying to me as taking a really dumb argument and ripping it to shreds with logic and facts. If that stupid argument is delivered with pomposity and arrogance, it’s all the more fun.

Few people have elevated this to the level of sport as well as John C. Welch. A hunting analogy comes quickly to mind, but the more I think of it, the more I realize it’s not so much the hunter-with-rifle-tracks-deer kind of hunting as it is the lion-in-the-plains-gets-gazelle kind. It’s graceful, masterful and can sometimes make you wince at its brutality.

The clueless gazelle this time out is Matt Freestone of Windows Connected, who is clearly talking out of his nether regions in a post that creates a fiction presented as a comparative piece about the compatibility of Mac and Windows operating systems on older hardware. John breaks down his arguments and counters them with beautifully presented facts. Think of it as poetry without mercy.

The piece is worth reading just as a lesson in persuasive writing, but it’s also entertaining as hell. You can almost see Freestone’s arguments squirm under Welch’s attack. In fact, there’s really only one difference between this and a nature channel documentary: in the documentary, I sometimes feel sorry for the gazelle.

The must-read article is on bynkii.com.