Last year Apple stunned, excuse the pun, the Mac world and announced it would no longer attend Macworld Expo or any other trade show event effective after Macworld 2009. Many reasons circulated why Apple would make such an incredible decision with most boiling down to expense. Apple didn’t need trade shows, trade shows needed Apple was the governing thought. While that may be true — Macworld 2010 attendance and vendor participation will reveal that answer — there really is more to the reason for Apple’s ignoring the industry standards of dog and pony shows. Three words: Steve Jobs ego.

It’s no new news to make reference to the iCEOs audacity as folklore is strong when concerning Jobs character. Apple does like to put spin on things no matter what the announcement and when it told the world that it was removing itself from the trade show circuit due to cost and the desire not to be forced for product release dates, it sounded “about right” on the surface. However, one has to scratch their head and wonder why not even a year after that announcement, Apple declared to the world, in a building on the same block Macworld is held, the iPad. Okay, so it must have been the cost thingy, right? Well, maybe, but for a company with tens of billions — ya, billions — of dollars in cash, this argument doesn’t seem that valid, either.

Digging deeper into the iPad launch, one finds many interesting facts. First, the gathering was by invite only. A typical Apple strategy. Second, only well known organizations received these invites. Third, the hands-on demonstration was limited, for example CNET was only allowed to have three of its members take a look at the device to prevent “inner cross-over”. Lastly, the public was visibly forced out and prevented from entry. In the end, Steve Jobs ran the show from start to finish down to who was allowed to sit in the halls of his majesty. Plain and simple, Steve is a control freak and he couldn’t command what IDG did with Macworld Expo. So, he pulled Apple out of it.

There are many examples of Steve’s ego getting in the way of catching a bit closer to Apple-related “stuff” such as when he pulled the less than flattering biography iCon from Apple Stores world wide. The stories are extensive how Apple would fail during Jobs’ day-to-day absence during his liver ordeal of 2008/2009. Since Jobs micro-managed everything, down to what color ties his lieutenants could wear (just kidding on the last one…I think) no one thought Apple had a chance without Jobs running the ship. Really, it does not take much to run the case for Apple leaving Macworld because Jobs doesn’t like how he can’t run the show.

I’m on record for loving Apple and its products and I admit many of the reasons I came back to Apple in 2001 was because of the many great things Jobs brought to Apple. Yet, I am also very vocal about what a pompous jerk Steve Jobs is, as well. From suing blogs due to printing leaked information and talking about how they are “breaking the law”, and yet he forgets about all those free long distance calls he made in the 70s using Woz’s Blue Box as well as “ripping off” Xerox PARCs mouse and GUI for the original Mac, to naming his company similar to the then worlds most popular record label and then telling companies with iPod-like names today to “change your name, it’s simple enough;” it’s tough to accept Jobs as the genius the world wants to paint him.

As long as Jobs has a strong product on stage with him, he’ll continue to ride his high horse with little worry of being jousted off of it. Yes, Jobs can give the pseudo finger to IDG and then show the world the iPad weeks before the revised Apple-less Macworld Expo but remember this, Steve, not all empires last for ever. Rome fell and so well you. How you want to be remembered in history depends how you treat those in the present.

One of my more interesting meetings at Macworld was the one at the Google booth. I had a good chat about the Google App and it’s difficulty with translated voice properly to text. The hint given was to wait a second or two after the beep on your iPhone so the application can get a signature of the white noise and clean that out of your command. Seems to help get more accurate results. Nice.

Now that tip was a great one and I searched for another like revelation and asked, “Why do I need Google Earth on my desktop when I can do everything it does in my web browser that requires less resources?” The first Google employee didn’t have a good answer and led me to another co-worker who was “better at Google Earth”. He, too, really couldn’t give a good answer and searched out yet another “better” suited Google employee. Would third time be the charm?

My Google Earth pro proceeded to show me the 3-D modeling of San Francisco and then of the GooglePlex, Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, and talked about the cool factor of all the 3-D. I stopped her and said, “Ya, I get the eye candy stuff, but what about practical needs?” I gave her an example. “Let’s say I have a crew of people I need to send to various locations in the Bay Area. I want to nest this into a folder called ‘Project 1′. I would like to create maps from point to point of these locations or even from a new location.” The Google Earth “pro” responded, “I don’t know how to do that in Google Earth but can show you how on Google Maps.” I assured her that I knew the procedure and re-iterated my original question. Why do I need Google Earth, then? Her answer? “I don’t know.”

So folks, from the mouths of Google, you really don’t need Google Earth and its heavy appetite for your system resources other than just to “goof off”. Google Earth really doesn’t perform any other useful function than its sister, Google Maps, can do at a whole lot less resource wise on your Mac or PC. But, it is up to you. If you like waste, then go for it. Me? I’m a practical guy and have already deleted Google Earth from my Mac.

While Macrumors.com live feed was hacked and spewed mis-information that Steve Jobs had died, Phil did alright in Steve’s place this morning at Macworld’s final Apple Keynote. Sure, he went WAY in-depth but that was largely due to the lackluster amount announcements. iLife, iWork, and iTunes multi-level pricing is about what we got this morning. Oh ya, you can now purchase music on your iPhone via the 3G network starting today, as well. Sure, iPhoto’s face recognition is way cool, as is iMovie’s ability to take the jitter out of your bumpy video, iwork.com document sharing is nice, and the Keynote iPhone App Remote is great, as is the 17″ MacBook Pro, but nothing earth shattering today. (I’m sure my high school teacher will kill me for that run on. Sorry Mr. Orlando.) Oh wait, yes, the 17″ WILL come in either “I can’t see a thing” gloss or the better matte option. I guess that rox.

Apple finished its announcement with Tony singing about leaving his heart in San Francisco as this is Apple’s last Macworld. And again, Steve Jobs is not dead. Well, he may be and the Board is just holding off on that news like his cancer and his hormone issue. But hey, that’s another story.

Since doors are opening late, I now have to figure out how to make up my 10:30 appointment. Stay tuned for more updates through the day.

Apple has always been well known for its commitment to education since its start over thirty years ago. Through that, many other companies have blossomed in the very arena Apple became a staple in. Today, a new company based on the East Coast is jumping into that arena but doing so more in the fashion of a Mötley Crüe concert where former drummer Tommy Lee performs his drum solo hanging over the crowd. Yes, Raybook is coming out in style.

Mark Williams, founder and CEO of Modality (parent of Raybook), sat down with me at Macworld over lunch to tell me a little about Raybook. Through the course of the conversation, I really found myself enjoying our lunch. Mark just seems to have that easy going feeling that rubs off on you like you’ve known him for ever. He told me of the company’s start and how he, as a professor in the medical sciences, found studying anything in the medical field difficult with the study aids available at that time. CD-ROMs and DVDs just weren’t a good stepping stone from the classic index style flash cards. Those flash cards themselves were large and bulky and made studying on the go nearly impossible. There had to be a better way and when he saw the iPod, he knew he had found that way.

He took a complex study, the brain, and made some amazing slides of it and wrapped it up with text book quality teaching to produce one excellent learning tool…all on an iPod. He distributed it to his students and it wasn’t too long before they were thanking him for this superb learning tool. “Students would come up to me and tell me, ‘I learned three new brain terms while standing in line for a latte’”, Mark told me with excitement in his voice. “Now,” he continued, “we have people asking us, ‘What iPod should I get for this?’” For students, Raybook is new jumping stone for an iPod.

After the incredible success of the medical “books”, Mark knew he had to take it further and bring his tool to a broader market. With the recent addition of the Brain Quest series for K-12 learners, Raybook is actively becoming a hallmark for great study. Other material includes my high school favorite, Mr. Notes, a.k.a. Cliffs Notes, Mosby, Netter, Stedman, BRS, as well as illustrated guides for medical students. While the Cliff and Brain Quest will be more familiar to most, the depth of knowledge here is incredible for such a young company. Mark wants to have hundreds of books online for immediate download by years end.

From public schools, to home schools, to colleges, Raybook is going to be boon for any student. With so many iPods lying around ones home now after years of upgrades, that old dusty iPod in your drawer now has a new use! Since each Raybook is pretty darn small, the density size of your iPod won’t even matter. In fact, the iPod nano is one of the supported models for Raybook. (If you’re wondering where the iPhone/iPod touch version is, it is being worked on via Apple’s SDK. Be patient.)

So how does this all work, you ask? Straight from Raybook’s page, “Raybooks combine text, images, and even audio and video, into a single package you can use on your iPod.” The web page goes on to say, “Study medical terminology with visual flash cards and audio pronunciations. Learn valuable skills by reading step-by-step instructions, then watching a video. Read about an out-of-the-way bistro in Paris, then pinpoint it on a map!”

Getting it onto your iPod is as easy as purchasing the book, downloading it, syncing it via the Raybook Manager, and — ta da! — using it. Once on your iPod, now you can study on the train, between classes, and yes, even while in line while waiting for a latte.

Sometimes only locals will know where the best BBQ is or the most scenic trail can be found due to obscurity. A place called “Tiny Town” is such a place at Macworld. A collection of small booths that are more like four kiosks pinned up together at each corner to make a square at their backs, was a place where gems were strewed within. Through the week, SvenOnTech will shine the light on some of these jewels.

The first precious stone we found was reQall. Basically a To Do list, reQall is much more than just basic. With a great interface for both the regular web browser and for the iPhone browser, reQall allows you to put your productivity into over-drive. With multiple methods for getting the information on your list, you won’t be able to rely on laziness as an excuse for letting your lists go to the way side. Supporting web, IM (AOL now, Skype, Yahoo, and others soon,) email, iGoogle Gadget, and phone, reQall pretty much covers all ends of adding items to your list effortlessly. As to the last one on that list, phone, is not as in iPhone but as just a plain phone call. By dialing 1-888-973-7255 (in the US, Canada and the UK also have call-in numbers,) you can check your list or add to it. reQall’s awesome voice-to-text technology works amazingly well. Sunil Vemuri, Co-Founder and CPO of reQall, had me sign up with the service right there at Macworld and then add my first item to a list. In the noisy halls of Moscone, I said into my iPhone, “Go to Starbucks”. Within a few minutes, I received an SMS confirmation of my addition. It read: Go to Starbucks. I was impressed!

Vemuri ran me through the rest of the features of the service. My first question to him when he showed the iPhone interface was if I had to wait for my completed items to reload the list reflecting the changes. Reason is, I use Tada Lists which does this and when you’re relying on EDGE or EDGE-less (due to no signal) connections, it can take a long time to get back to your list. I tire of standing in the store with my super-freaky-cool iPhone with all its advancements only having to be stalled by the slow connection. Vemuri assured me that reQall downloads everything and does not require a call back to the Internet to update your list locally. Smooth sailing through the store now, folks!

reQall works quickly, easily, and efficiently. The only thing it lacks from my point of view is nested folders to allow for various lists. For example, the grocery list could consist of various stores such as Trader Joe’s for groceries, Costco for bulk, and Lowes for hardware needs. Having items from all these stores in one list makes things messy and, IMHO, unusable. Thankfully Vemuri took note of my suggestion and maybe we’ll see it in the final version.

That said, reQall is in beta and it should complete its testing by Valentine’s Day so all you guys can make a list for your honey and not forget to get your special someone that special something on that special day. Once out of beta, reQall hopes to have a paid for version and a free version. No details were given as they have not all been decided on at the time of the interview but the free version will have compelling features insured Vemuri.

Update: We wanted to print this in which we just received from Sunil Vemuri, which reads: “One point of clarification, in your article, “Vemuri assured me that reQall downloads everything and does not require a call back to the Internet to update your list locally” The ability to function in the face of slow or unavailable network is something we are working on, but will not have this functionality ready by the February release. I’m sorry if I said something that suggested otherwise.”

Scratching your head over the Mac Pro update today? You know, the one where 8-cores are now standard on all Mac Pro’s and a bump to 3.2 GHz 8-core Xeon processing, a 1600 MHz front side bus and 800 MHz memory to just make sure things hum nicely for all those Pixar hopefuls. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, calls this, “The fastest Intel Xeon architecture on the market.” So why Phil is it out today and not next week at Macworld? Couple that with the update to Xserve and you must have to really stop and think about this.

First, Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs has never been a big IT guy. When the Xserve was originally released at Macworld a few years back, it was as if it were just some blip on his Keynote presentation and nothing more. So it’s no surprise to find Xserve on Apple’s homepage buried away from the mass to find out about. But the Mac Pro is a bit different. It’s up there on stage with Steve during Stevenotes and is the power horse behind the Mac. So why front page at apple.com and not Macworld? Mmm, maybe because something so much more exciting is on tap.

The rumored sub-notebook MacBook is pretty nifty in itself, but not big enough to one-up the Mac Pro to shove it off stage for a paired announcement. No, something grander is behind this supposed announcement. Many have talked about a very unique docking system, one in which the sub-notebook docks inside an LCD screen. Yes, like most of the iMac announcements, this would be pretty fantastic…and who’d care about the Mac Pro speed bump at that point? Umm-hmm.

And friends, that’s not probably half of it. With any of our Macworld predictions coming true, that too is enough to over shadow the Mac Pro upgrade. Add our newest prediction (that popped into my head late last night) and like that chef says — BAM! — you’ve got an unforgettable Macworld announcement. Again.

So while the Mac Pro improvement is nice, heck, very nice, it’s still not as great as what’s to come. Are you excited yet?

What happened? We finally got the iPhone and the previously announced iTV, now Apple TV, but that was it. No new iWorks. No new iLife. No new iMacs. No new Mac minis. No new MacBooks with updated Airport to match the speed of the quietly announced Airport Extreme with 802.11n Draft 1.0 support. Nope, nothing but the iPhone which no one could touch or buy until about the end of the year. I mean, it was so out of place walking to the massive Apple area and see, nothing. Some Apple TV demos and two iPhones behind a guarded case. What a let down.

As I wondered around the vast emptiness of the Apple booth, I saw a Leopard demo highlighting Time Machine. Then it dawned on me. Steve promised more details about features of the next version of OS X when he spilled the “preview” beans at WWDC. Yet here I stood only hearing the same old news. Nothing, not even a release date, was giving. Did the rest of Apple fall asleep at the wheel?

I’m not the only one brave enough to make public statement with the disappointment of Apple’s showcase expo. Macworld’s Rob Griffiths agrees with me and has already been blasted with hate mail for his honesty. Yvo at disgruntled-dutch.com gives the same reasoning with a bit more dig into other missing announcements. Browse other sites and you’ll find more of the same. Disappointment.

I left for BART that bitter cold day in San Francisco last Tuesday thinking, “What was that? It started off with the most incredible announcement I’ve ever witnessed and then like a big thud, the rest of the show, well, just sucked. What happened?” There was little buzz on the floor that I’ve felt from other Mac lovers in the past and even the vendors I spoke to seemed a bit tired and distracted. It wasn’t that they were trying to play up to the iPhone for the lack of their ado as the problem, but I think just the lack of anything else being at Macworld. I mean, it’s MACworld and this year there really was no Mac in it. It really reminded me of going to OS/2 conventions in its dying years. It was just plain odd…and so unlike any Macworld before it.