CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

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. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

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

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

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Like most everyone else, I suspect, I was blown away by the MacBook Air’s reveal Tuesday. As a long-time fan of ultra-small notebooks (we still own and use a 12-inch PowerBook G4 in the Griffiths household), my initial reactions involved reaching for my credit card and loading Apple’s store in my browser. These feelings were reinforced even more by a visit to the Apple booth, where picking up the little machine probably doesn’t even count as exercise. There’s no denying that the design—curves everywhere, with nary a straight corner to be found—and lack of weight in this machine are truly amazing. It makes my 15-inch MacBook Pro look and feel like a lead paperweight by comparison.

But then—rare, for me—reason intervened and started posing questions that I should answer before purchasing the machine. “So what happens, Rob, when the hard drive has an error and you have to reinstall OS X?” OK, that seems easy enough. I’ll just boot off the Leopard DVD…oh wait, no, I won’t do that unless I fork over the extra $99 for the USB-powered SuperDrive. OK, so I’ll use FireWire Target Disk Mode…nope, won’t do that either, as there’s no FireWire port (and I confirmed with an Apple representative that there’s no “USB Target Disk Mode” option.) And I won’t be able to use that cool and oh-so-handy “borrow a drive from another Mac” feature, as the hard drive won’t be bootable. So barring the extra $99 for the SuperDrive, the only solution will be to boot from a USB2 hard drive that’s been prepared with a disk-based version of the OS X installer.

But really, how often does a hard drive get an error like this? Not so often, and $99 is a small price to pay for insurance, so the SuperDrive solves that problem. Time to order! “Not so fast, Griff! What about the hard drive space? 80GB isn’t much by today’s standards.” While that’s true, in a small ultra-mobile Mac, I’m willing to take the tradeoff in drive space. Even on my MacBook Pro, I’m only using 85GB of the 120GB space I have available. So really, this isn’t a major issue—besides, I fully expect that some enterprising soul will demonstrate that Toshiba’s new 160GB 1.8-inch hard drive works just fine in the MacBook Air, and they’ll probably do so within a day or two of the machine’s availability in two weeks.

So it’s time to order, right? I’ve been waiting for years, after all! “Well, just hang on a sec. There’s One More Thing you need to think about. You do realize, don’t you, that the battery isn’t removable?” What?

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From Wired:

An Apple insider told Wired today that the company’s new ultraportable, expected to be seen in public for the first time tomorrow, has an extremely thin profile and is shaped like a teardrop when closed — thicker at the top behind the screen, tapering at the bottom behind the keyboard.

“It’s unbelievably thin,” said the source.

The device is made of aluminum and glass, and uses the same design language as recent Apple consumer products: black on silver.

Sadly, we don’t have details on pricing, specs or availability. Expect reality to disagree with our photoshops.

Is this cable-free design the face of things to come? Our own Charlie Sorrel pointed out earlier today that the rumor mill hints of a new MacBook utterly devoid of cables. However, he wouldn’t speculate on its physical dimensions. But now we’ve got the, uh, skinny on what this new ultra slim, ultra portable actually looks like thanks to one source who says they saw this device in the wild.

Steve Jobs is widely expected to reveal a new MacBook at Macworld on Tuesday morning, and with the rumored name being “MacBook Air.”

Most people are expecting a conventional sub-notebook — a super-thin, lightweight laptop that ships without an optical CD/DVD drive. The MacBook Air may also dispense with a wired Ethernet port, according to rumor. It will be a purely wireless device, relying solely on Wi-Fi or other wireless technology for its connectivity — hence the “Air” moniker.

But the Air seems more like a ultra portable with a physical keyboard and multi-touch screen, according to our source (who we promised not to name but confirmed works at an Apple third-party vendor).

We’ll see tomorrow.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Yeah, POLLUTION. Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Anyway.

The rumors state that the new, ultra-thin, ultra-light MacBook would sport the name, “Air.”

For more check out live coverage of MWSF.

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