Produced by Boston-based IDG World Expo, Macworld/iWorld is a trade show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally Macworld Expo and then Macworld Conference & Exposition, the gathering dates back to 1985.
Macworld is the most widely read Macintosh magazine in North America and a trademark of Mac Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group. IDG World Expo is also a subsidiary.
The conference tracks are taught by leaders in their fields and require large admission fees. They last for a few more days than the Expo, which runs generally three or four days. Attendees can visit the exhibits, set up by hardware manufacturers and software publishers that support the Macintosh platform.
On December 18, 2008, Apple announced that the 2009 Macworld Conference & Expo would be the last in which the company participates. On October 14, 2014, IDG suspended Macworld/iWorld indefinitely.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
History
The first Macworld Expo occurred in 1985 in San Francisco. The conference itself was created by Peggy Kilburn, who helped to increase the size and profit of the event during her tenure (1985-1999). Among the speakers recruited by Kilburn were David Pogue, Steve Case, Bob LeVitus, as well as representatives from BMUG, LaserBoard, and other major user groups.
The San Francisco event has always been held at the Moscone Center. The Expo was also held in Brooks Hall near the San Francisco Civic Center from 1985 until 1993, when the expansion of Moscone Center allowed the show to be consolidated in one location.
Until 2005, the U.S. shows were held semiannually, with a January show in San Francisco and an additional summer show held in the Eastern US. The later event was held initially in Boston at the Bayside Expo & Executive Conference Center, later expanding with a dual presence at the World Trade Center Boston. From 1998 to 2003 it took place in New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The 2004 and 2005 summer shows, retitled Macworld Conference & Expo took place in Boston, although without Apple's participation. Other companies followed Apple's lead, canceling or reducing the size of their own exhibits, which resulted in reduced attendance compared with previous Macworld conferences. On 16 September 2005, IDG announced that no further summertime shows would be held in NYC or in Boston.
The show has also taken place in other cities:
- A Tokyo show, produced by IDG World Expo Japan, was held at Makuhari Messe and moved to Tokyo Big Sight in 2002.
- Macworld Expo Summit, a version of the show targeted at U.S. government customers, was held at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. as late as 1994.
- In 2004, Macworld UK, part of the IDG UK division of IDG, created two Macworld Conference events on its own: one standalone conference, and one conference adjoining the MacExpo trade show in London.
Since 1997, the show has been known for its keynote presentations (sometimes called "Stevenotes") by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
1987
The 1987 Boston MacWorld Expo was held on August 11 - 13. The most significant product introduction at the show was Bill Atkinson's HyperCard. More than 3,000 copies of the software were handed out. MultiFinder, Apple File Exchange, the ImageWriter LQ, EtherTalk, AppleShare PC and the AppleFax Modem were among Apple's product announcements. Promoters estimated 40,000 people attended the show. MacUser's review of the show concluded positively, saying that it was "revealing, exhilarating, and disappointing. While the Mac is clearly becoming the business machine of choice through much of corporate America, the show didn't have the sterile atmosphere that pure business trade shows have. Most of the time it was plain outright exciting. And the promise of the future that was always in the air was wholly positive."
1988
The San Francisco MacWorld was attended by 45,000 people and had 400 exhibits; Apple's primary announcement for this show was a new family of LaserWriter printers.
1991
Outbound Computers demonstrated the first Macintosh-compatible portable computers at the Boston show, preceding Apple's own introduction of the PowerBook by a couple of months.
1995
MacWorld Expo took place in three locations: San Francisco (January 4 - 7), Washington DC (April 26 - 28), and Boston (August 8 - 11). Apple introduced the "Power Surge" line of Power Macintosh computers at the Boston show, consisting of the Power Macintosh 8500, 7500 and 7200.
1997
In Boston, Steve Jobs gave a status report on Apple Inc. Steve was the Chairman and CEO of Pixar at the time. Steve addressed some of the comments that had been made about Apple: "Apple has become irrelevant", "Apple can't execute anything", and "Apple's culture is anarchy; you can't manage it". Apple's sales were $11.1 billion in 1995, $9.5 billion in 1996, and about $7 billion in 1997. Steve stated the falling sales were the fundamental problem. The beginning steps that Apple was going to take were: Board of Directors, Focus on Relevance, Invest in Core Assets, Meaningful Partnerships, and New Product Paradigm. Steve announced the new Board of Directors: Ed Woolard, Chairman and former CEO of DuPont; Gareth Chang, President of Hughes International; Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corporation; Jerry York (businessman), former CFO of IBM and Chrysler; William Campbell (business executive), CEO of Intuit, and Steve Jobs himself. Steve addressed their market focus. Apple was the dominant market leader for creative professionals. 80% of all computers used in advertising, graphic design, prepress, and printing were Apple computers. 64% of internet websites were created on a Macintosh. Apple was the largest education company in the world. Apple sold 60% of all computers in education. They sold over $2 billion in annual revenues. Steve said Apple's core assets were the Apple brand and Mac OS that had yet to be fully exploited. He also said Mac OS was still the best thing in the world and that Apple is about this operating system. It had over 20 million active users, thousands of developers, and was a $1.5 billion software industry built around it. He went on to say that Apple released Mac OS 8 two weeks prior and had already sold 1.2 million copies, four times greater than the forecast. To some surprise from the audience Steve announced the partnership with Microsoft, whereby Apple and Microsoft agreed to a patent cross-license for existing patents and patents issued within the next five years. Microsoft would also make a five-year commitment to release Microsoft Office on the Mac and would release the same number of major releases as on Windows. Apple in turn decided Internet Explorer for Mac would be the default browser on Macintosh, while also announcing its collaboration with Microsoft on Java compatibility. Microsoft made a $150 million investment in Apple stock purchased at market price and agreed not to sell it for at least three years. Steve introduced Bill Gates via satellite.
1998
In San Francisco, Steve Jobs gave an update on the PowerPC G3 chip that was announced on November 10, 1997. Apple built three systems around this chip: G3 Desktop, G3 MiniTower, and G3 PowerBook. The G3 Desktop sold for $1,999. The G3 MiniTower sold for $2,449. Apple had forecasted that they would sell 80,000 of the combined G3 computers. They actually shipped 133,000 computers in 51 days. If annualized, that would be 1,000,000 computers a year. Apple partnered with CompUSA to put an Apple store within their store. They had built 57 stores at that time and the rest were to be built by February 1998. In October 1997, before the stores went live, Macintosh computer sales were 3% of CompUSA's computer sales. In December 1997, Macintosh computer sales were 14%. The Apple Store (online) debuted on November 10, 1997. The online store had set a new standard for online commerce. Build to Order gave customers choice, simplified the inventory, and gave instant availability of components and configurations. Steve announced the "Pro" Add-Ins. Steve announced Mac OS 8.1. New features in Mac OS 8.1 were: Performance and reliability, HFS Plus file system, DVD Universal Disk Format, New Java (programming language) runtime, and Internet Explorer for Mac default browser. Mac OS 8.1 was free for Mac OS 8 owners and was available in February 1998. Steve formally announced QuickTime 3.0.
In May, Jobs introduced the iMac and the PowerBook G3.
The New York event inaugurated a competition (produced by Double Exposure) called the National Macintosh Gaming Championship, which challenged attendees to play games for a number of premium prize packages. Steve Jobs laid out his "Apple Hierarchy of Skepticism". The first level was Survival. They brought in a new management team, a new Board of Directors, and made a deal with Microsoft. The second level was a Stable Business. Steve covered the opening of the CompUSA stores and online store. The third level was Product Strategy. Steve covered the four product lines Apple would concentrate on. The first being the Power Macintosh G3. Apple had sold over 750,000 G3's to date. The next Pro product was the PowerBook G3. They had a 14.1" screen available. Steve announced they were bringing DVD Video to the PowerBook G3. The iMac would become the Consumer desktop product. The iMac had a G3/233 Processor with a 0.5MB backside cache, 15" Display (1024x768), 32 MB Memory, 4 GB Disk, 24x CD-ROM, 100 mb Ethernet, 12 Mb USB (2), and 33.6 Kb Modem. Steve announced they were upgrading the modem to a 56 Kb Modem. The iMac also included: 4 Mb IrDA, Stereo SRS Sound, and a keyboard and mouse. The iMac sold for $1,299. Steve announced the launch date was August 15, 1998 in the US. Steve spoke about the USB port. It was 30x faster than the old Apple serial ports. Up to 127 devices could be plugged into the USB port. It was Hot Plug-able. It had dynamic drivers. It was an emerging industry standard. Steve reviewed Apple's software strategy. It started with Mac OS 8 and Mac OS X. The modern features of Mac OS X were: Protected Memory, Virtual Memory, Preemptive Multitasking, Fast Networking, Fast File I/O, Fully PPC Native, and Runs OS 8 Apps. Mac OS 8.1 shipped in First Quarter 1998. Mac OS 8.5 would ship late Third Quarter 1998. Mac OS 8.6 was to be shipped in First Quarter 1999. Mac OS 8 Codename Sonata was to ship in Third Quarter 1999. Mac OS X Draft Spec was released during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in May 1998. Rhapsody (operating system) was being renamed Mac OS X Server and would be released late Third Quarter 1998. A Beta of Mac OS X would be shipped in First Quarter 1999. Mac OS X v10.0 would be shipped in Third Quarter 1999. Steve introduced Phil Schiller to show some of the features of Mac OS 8.5. Phil demoed the new search engine, Sherlock (software). Phil demoed a Network Copy Performance Test on a Power Macintosh G3 using Mac OS 8.5. The fourth level was Applications. Steve introduced Ben Waldman, General Manager of the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft. Ben announced that new iMacs would ship with Internet Explorer for Mac 4.01. Ben demoed Internet Explorer. iMac had been announced on May 6, 1998. Since that date, 177 apps had been announced for the Mac. Steve introduced Richard Wolpert, President of Disney Online. Richard demoed Disney Blast Online. The last level was Growth. By adding the Consumer market to the Design/Publishing markets and Education market, Apple's growth would become even stronger. Apple's unique assets were: The Brand, Installed Base, Design/Fashion, and Simplicity. Steve ran the "Simplicity Shootout" video.
The event continued in 1999 in San Francisco, and was terminated after the New York show in 2000 to make way for the Apple Gaming Pavilion.
1999
In San Francisco, Macworld was opened by HAL9000. Steve Jobs said his business cards finally arrived with "Steve Jobs, iCEO" printed on them. Steve announced a completely new family of desktop Pro products. The current Pro product was the Power Macintosh G3. It was announced in November 1997. They had sold over 1.6 million computers at the current time. This had generated over $3 billion in revenues. They set out four key goals for the next generation of the G3 product: Make the most powerful PC in the entire industry, Give the best graphics in the entire industry, Make the most expandable Macintosh ever, and Have the best design. The new 1999 G3's had 400 MHz using Copper interconnect technology, Cache 200 MHz, and Memory 100 MHz. Steve introduced Phil Schiller to demo the new G3. Steve had a conversation with HAL 9000. The new G3 had ATI Rage 128 graphics with 16 MB Graphics Memory. Steve called Phil back out to demo the new graphics. The 3D Graphics Library would use Open GL. Apple Inc. announced they had licensed Open GL from Silicon Graphics. Steve introduced Rick Belluzzo, Chairman & CEO of Silicon Graphics. The G3 held up to a GB of memory. a 100 GB of disk storage using IBM 36 GB UltraSCSI drives, four expansion slots using 64 bit PCI, I/O Ports using industry standards and high-speed serial ports and "plug and play". Ethernet ports meet that standard. A 100 Mbit is built into the motherboard. Gigabit ethernet was available on the G3. Universal Serial Bus also met that standard. Lastly, FireWire met that standard. Steve demoed FireWire. Steve brought out the new Power Macintosh G3 (blue and white). Steve brought out three new Apple Studio Displays to go with the G3. Apple's fifth goal was to deliver an incredible value to their Pro customers. They priced the G3 to start at $1,599. The four models ranged from $1,599 to $2,999. They were available as of January 7, 1999. Steve ran the "Secret Door" and "Open Minded" commercials. Steve gave an update on Mac OS 8.5. Since shipping in October 1998, Apple had sold one million upgrade copies. There were two million copies out on the market in the first 90 days. Steve announced Mac OS X Server. It started off with a Mach kernel. They surrounded it with file service for Macintosh, NetBooting, Apache HTTP Server, WebObjects, and BSD and Java (programming language). Steve demoed Mac OS X Server using 50 iMacs. Apple priced the server at $995 per server. They were shipping it beginning in February 1999. 1,355 new and renewed Mac applications were announced between May 6, 1998 - January 5, 1999. Steve introduced Ben Waldman, General Manager of the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft. Ben demoed Internet Explorer for Mac 4.5. He demoed the Mactopia website. Steve introduced John Carmack, Co-Founder of Id Software. John demoed Quake III Arena. Steve announced that Connectix would be releasing their Virtual Game Station which would turn the Mac into a Sony PlayStation. Steve had Phil come back out to demo the software. Steve gave an update on iMac. From August 15-December 31, 1998, Apple shipped 800,000 computers. This made iMac the number one selling computer in America. 32% of iMac's are first-time computer owners. 13% are Wintel converts. 25% of the former Macintosh owners are adding to their Macintosh's. 31% are replacing old Macintosh's. 82% of the first-time computer owners were connected to the internet. 66% got connected on the first day. 44% got connected in less than 15 minutes. 42% had purchased goods over the internet. 39% used Yahoo as their search engine. Sherlock (software) tied with Netscape at 8%, after being out for 90 days. In 1999, Apple was going to up the processor speed on the iMac to 266 MHz, up the drive capacity to a 6 GB drive, reduce the price to $1,199, and "one more thing" was colors. The new colors were blueberry, grape, tangerine, lime, and strawberry. These became available on January 7, 1999.
In Tokyo, Macworld was opened by HAL900. Steve Jobs went over the four key goals for the next generation of the G3 product. Steve introduced Phil Schiller to demo the new G3. Steve called Phil back out to demo the new graphics. Steve demoed FireWire. Steve showed the new Power Macintosh G3 (blue and white). Steve showed the "Look of Love" video. Steve gave an update on iMac. It was the number one computer in Japan. 46% of iMac's in Japan are first-time owners. 16% are Wintel converts. 38% were existing Mac owners. Apple lowered the price of the iMac to 158,000 yen. Steve showed the "Colors" commercial. Over 900 new and renewed Mac applications were in Japanese. Steve invited Ben Waldman to speak about Microsoft's new products. Ben demoed Internet Explorer for Mac 4.5 and Outlook Express 4.5. Ben announced the release of Internet Explorer for Mac 5.0 in the summer of 2000 with Furigana characters. For the next two months, anyone that purchased Microsoft Office would receive a 40% discount. Steve demoed Quake III Arena. Steve announced that Connectix would be releasing their Virtual Game Station by the summer or possibly the fall of that year. Steve had Phil come back out to demo the software. Steve gave an update on Mac OS 8.5. Steve said Apple would be shipping Mac OS X Server in April in Japan. Steve demoed Mac OS X Server.
In New York, actor Noah Wyle made an appearance during the keynote address, posing as Jobs in a reference to his role in the TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs gave a business update on Apple. Apple had announced a $500 million stock buyback. Apple had reduced its inventory to 15 hours. Mickey Drexler, of Gap Inc. joined Apple's Board of Directors. Steve spoke about QuickTime. Apple used QuickTime to make a Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace trailer. In the last few months, it had been downloaded over 23 million times. Apple had downloaded over 400 terabytes. Live Internet Streaming was added to QuickTime 4. There had been over 10 million downloads of the QuickTime Player. Steve announced QuickTime TV. Apple wrote a QuickTime streaming server that was free, no server tax. Apple partnered with Akamai Technologies to become a broadcast network. QuickTime TV had BBC World News, Bloomberg Television, Fox News, Fox Sports, HBO, NPR, The Weather Channel, and WGBH-TV. New content announced was ABC News, ESPN, Rolling Stone, VH1, and Disney. Steve invited Phil Schiller to demonstration QuickTime TV. Steve talked about Mac OS 9. It would ship in October 1999. It had more than 50 new features. Steve called Phil back out to demo Sherlock (software) 2. Mac OS 9 sold for $99. Steve gave an update on iMac. iMac would celebrate its first birthday on August 15, 1999. By the time it was one year old, Apple would have shipped 1.9 million computers. 89% of iMac users were on the internet. 33% were first-time buyers. It also would be the one-year anniversary of Apple adopting Universal Serial Bus. Since iMac was introduced, there had been 3,935 new and renewed Mac apps. Steve introduced Jason Jones (programmer), Co-Founder/Halo Project Lead of Bungie Software. Bungie was later purchased by Microsoft and Halo became an Xbox exclusive. Steve invited Ozzie Osborne, General Manager of IBM Speech Systems, to demo ViaVoice. Steve announced the new consumer portable computer, the iBook. iBook had a 12.1" TFT display, 800x600 resolution, ATI Rage Mobility graphics card with 4MB video memory, 300 MHz G3 processor with 512k backside LZ cache, 24x CD-ROM drive, 32 MB memory, 3.2 GB disk, 56K modem, USB, 10/100 ethernet, Full-size keyboard, and a 6-hour battery life. Steve demoed the iBook. The iBook would sell for $1,599 and would be available in September 1999. Steve showed four TV commercials for iBook. "One more thing", Steve demonstrated the new AirPort (wireless networking). It was a wireless LAN that ran at 11 megabits/sec and was based on industry standards. It was privacy protected with 40-bit data encryption. Steve showed the AirPort Base Station. It came with a 56K modem and 10/100 ethernet. Steve showed the AirPort card. The Base Station's range was up to 150 feet. The AirPort card sold for $99. The Base Station sold for $299. They would ship in September 1999. Steve showed a Base Station TV commercial. Steve demoed the iBook using AirPort. Phil joined Steve to demonstrate wireless networking by jumping into an airbag with an iBook.
2000
Steve Jobs gave an update on Apple Inc. During the previous quarter, Apple sold 1,350,000 Macs. Steve reviewed the Power Mac G4 and the Apple Cinema Display. Steve reviewed the iBook. During October and November 1999, PC Data said it was the #1 selling consumer portable in the US. 11% were first-time buyers. 17% were Wintel "switchers". 56% were the first portable in their home. 16% had already installed AirPort. 90% were on the internet. 70% had purchased goods and services over the internet. Steve reviewed the iMac. They came in five colors and three models: the $995 model, the $1,299 iMac DV, and the $1,499 iMac DV Special Edition. 30% were first-time buyers. 14% were Wintel "switchers". A combined total of 44% were new customers. 93% were on the internet. 62% got connected the first day. 57% had purchased goods on the internet. 66% did not seriously consider anything else. Steve reviewed AirPort. All Apple systems were "AirPort Ready". Desktop movies could be made using iMovie. 10% of the iMac DV customers had made their own movies. 32% had planned to create an iMovie. Steve showed 3 TV commercials. Steve unveiled Apple's internet strategy. Apple had four internet assets. The first one was QuickTime. There had been over 25 million downloads of QuickTime 4. Nielsen NetRatings for the month of November 1999 showed QuickTime had a 33% share. 30% of young surfers (under 21 years old) used QuickTime. Apple partnered with Akamai Technologies to become a broadcast network. Apple invested $12.5 million in Akamai. Apple's invested became $1 billion when Akamai when public. The second one was Apple's core OS. This included Sherlock (software) 2, Multiple Users, Keychain (Mac OS), and Auto Updating, In the previous two months, Apple had sold over 1 million copies. The third asset was apple.com. It received 1.5 million visited each day and 9.5 million visitors each week. The fourth asset was the Apple Online Store. It opened in November 1997. The store did over $1 billion in sales. Apple added a tab bar to apple.com. New tabs included: iReview, iTools (MobileMe), and iCards. iReview gave quality website reviews and rankings by Apple. Apple had 250 reviews as of January 5, 2000 and would have 1,000 reviews by April 2000. Mac users could append their own reviews to Apple's reviews. iCards was the "Apple" of internet greeting card sites. iCards could be viewed in normal email, not an enclosure or an URL. Steve demoed iReview and iCards. iTools was a new class of internet services from Apple created exclusively for Mac users. The tools in iTools included: KidSafe, Mail, iDisk, and HomePage. KidSafe was a breakthrough approach to protecting kids on the internet. KidSafe specified what kids could see, not what they couldn't see. Apple had a database of over 50,000 approved, safe websites. All the sites had been approved by certified teachers and librarians. Apple added 10,00 websites a month. KidSafe could also disable chat rooms, emails, and downloads. It worked with Mac OS 9 multi-user features. Email addresses were at mac.com. It was run by Apple, so it was reliable, private, and secure. It worked with all Post Office Protocol email clients. It had convenient features such as auto reply and auto forward. iDisk gave personal 20 MB of internet storage, hosted securely on Apple's internet servers. iDisk was an entirely new way to store, transfer, and share files. iDisk magically put its icon right on the Mac's desktop. Users would just "drag and drop" files to copy them to the server, or back. There was a public folder for sharing with friends. iDisk could be used with iCards to give personal photo cards. HomePage was a way to build a personal website in less than 10 minutes. Steve demoed iTools. iTools became available January 5, 2000. iTools were free. iTools required OS 9. Apple partnered with EarthLink to provide the best ISP for Mac users. This became a multi-year deal to be Apple's internet partner. Apple profited from every new EarthLink Mac customer. Apple made a major investment in EarthLink. Apple announced on January 5, 2000, a $200 million investment. Steve introduced Garry Betty, CEO of EarthLink. Steve announced Mac OS X. The goals for Mac OS X were: to have a single OS strategy, state of the art plumbing, killer graphics, designed for the internet, and a gentle migration. There would be a 12-month rollout. The final beta would come out in Spring 2000. Mac OS X would go on-sale in Summer 2000. Apple would be pre-loading it on all machines in January 2001. Steve went through the architecture of Mac OS X. It started out with Darwin (operating system), a super modern kernel. The next layer on top of Darwin was killer graphics. There were three components: 2D, which was Quartz (graphics layer); 3D, which was OpenGL; and media layer, which was QuickTime. The next layer was APIs. These were Classic Environment, Carbon (API), and Cocoa (API). One more thing, the completely new user interface. Steve demoed Aqua (user interface). Steve demoed the different graphic layers. Steve brought Phil Schiller on stage to demo OpenGL graphics. Steve demoed the Dock. Mac OS X had over 100 developed already committed. Steve introduced Bruce Chizen, ExVP of Adobe Systems. Steve introduced Kevin Browne, Acting General Manager of the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft. Steve introduced Rob Burgess, CEO of Macromedia. Steve introduced Richard Jones, President of the Desktop Division at Quark, Inc.. Steve showed a video of John Carmack, Co-Founder of Id Software. Steve introduced Carl Yankowski, CEO of Palm, Inc.. One more thing, Steve announced he was dropping the "interim" title.
In New York, the keynote was opened with "Here's to the Crazy Ones" video. The New York keynote featured the introduction of the Power Mac G4 Cube.
2001
The San Francisco keynote introduced iTunes and the PowerBook G4, Apple's first widescreen portable. The New York keynote included no major new product announcements, but did feature a technical presentation on the megahertz myth.
2002
The January 2002 Expo took place in New York City. The keynote speech introduced the iMac G4.
In October 2002, IDG World Expo announced plans to move the 2004 edition of the East Coast show to Boston. The day of that announcement, Apple declared its intent not to participate in the Boston Macworld Expo.
2003
The January keynote introduced the Safari web browser, AirPort Extreme, 17 and 12-inch PowerBooks.
In 2003, IDG World Expo renamed the New York trade show Macworld CreativePro Conference & Expo in an attempt to reach the creative market in the New York area.
2004
Along with the usual show in San Francisco and the return to Boston, a Macworld Expo was held in Paris. At the Paris Expo, Apple's VP of marketing Phil Schiller introduced the new updated iMac featuring a PowerPC G5 processor and other various updates, notably, the integration of the logic board and optical drive with the display.
2005
The San Francisco show was held January 10-14. The keynote introduced the Mac Mini, iPod shuffle, and iWork.
During the show, IDG World Expos announced Macworld On Tour, a series of small conferences in various North American cities. An initial conference, in Kissimmee, Florida, was later canceled. No future announcements for Macworld On Tour have been made. IDG announces Macworld East cancelled that there would be no Macworld East 2006.
2006
In January 2006, Intel Core Duo-based iMacs were announced to be ready for purchase. The conference was held January 9-13 and the number of visitors increased 6.8% from the 2005 event, to 38,441. The number of paid conference delegates increased 20% to 4,188 and the total number of exhibiting companies increased 25% to 367
2007
At Macworld 2007 (January 8-12), Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone mobile device, revealed the final name for the Apple TV (originally called by its code name iTV), and announced a change of name for the company from Apple Computer, Inc. to simply Apple Inc., reflecting its longtime focus on the user experience as opposed to the technology behind it.
IDG World Expo reported Macworld 2007 attendance as 45,572, a 19% increase over the previous year.
2008
At Macworld 2008 (January 14-18), Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air -- touted as the world's thinnest notebook computer; the Time Capsule device for use with the Time Machine application in Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", iPod Touch updates including Mail, Stocks, Notes, Maps & Weather, iTunes Movie Rentals, the Apple TV Take 2 updates with an all new interface, the ability to download TV shows, music, podcasts and rent or download movies without the need for a PC; and finally the iPhone/iPod Touch SDK launching in late February.
IDG World Expo reported that Macworld 2008 attendance increased 10% over the previous year.
2009
The San Francisco show went on January 5-9, 2009. On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that the 2009 conference will be the last in which the company would participate. The conference's keynote address was delivered by Apple's Senior Vice President of Product Marketing Philip Schiller, not Steve Jobs, as has been the custom for the past ten years. Steve Jobs issued a press release stating that the reasons for his absence were health-related, specifically citing a hormone imbalance.
At Macworld 2009, Apple announced the release of iLife '09, iWork '09, and the new 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro with built-in battery. Also, Apple announced that iTunes would begin to sell all music DRM-free, with a three tier pricing system per track: $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29 (or £0.59, £0.79, and £0.99 in the UK). This differs from Apple's previous model with only one price per track of $0.99 (£0.79 in the UK). Apple also announced that tracks can now be downloaded over cellular networks on the iPhone.
2010
On March 30, 2009, IDG World Expo announced that the conference would be moving from January (when it had taken place for 25 years) to February. They also said:
Macworld 2010 will further break from tradition by shifting the expo portion of the event to include a Saturday. The Expo now is scheduled to take place Thursday, February 11, through Saturday, February 13. This shift will provide all attendees, including full-time professionals, with more flexible times and convenient weekend access to the show floor. The Macworld conference sessions will take place Tuesday, February 9, through Saturday, February 13.
2011
The 2011 Macworld was held January 25-29, 2011.
2012
The 2012 Macworld/iWorld was held January 26-28. Just before registration began for the 2012 conference, Macworld announced that they would be changing the name to Macworld/iWorld in addition to broadening the focus to all iOS devices.
2013
The 2013 Macworld/iWorld was from January 31 to February 2, 2013.
2014
The 2014 Macworld/iWorld was from March 27 to March 29, 2014.
2015
The 2015 Macworld/iWorld was scheduled to be held from March 12 to March 14, 2015. but was cancelled by IDG.
Trade Show Displays Boston Video
Culture
During the Expo's first two decades, it became legendary for the parties that coincided with it, frequently with open bars, lavish hors d'oeuvres, and requisite T-shirts and other premium favors. Apple's developer parties featured high-profile entertainers like James Brown and Smash Mouth.
Several years after the start of the Expo, MacWEEK had launched its weekly trade magazine and simultaneously initiated an exclusive party known as Mac the Knife, named for its anonymous columnist that wrote the back page industry gossip and rumor section; after MacWEEK's demise, the party was thrown by Ilene Hoffman, until Mac Publishing, owners of the Mac the Knife trademark, forbade her from using the name. The party continued, with appearances by the Macworld All-Star Band, under a series of names that referenced the Knife.
Robert Hess of MacWEEK was the original keeper of the Macworld Party List, which kept track of each leisure event after the show. Prior to his death in 1996, he reportedly requested Hoffman to maintain it; the list was subsequently renamed the Robert Hess Memorial Events List. The list shrunk gradually as events became more sparse, and did not publish for the show in New York 2003, but has been published for subsequent San Francisco shows.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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