But more likely, the Expo will have to change. IDG World Expo, which has been the middleman between Apple and the people who come to the event for many years now, will finally have an opportunity to reinvent Macworld Expo free from any expectation or interference. witnessed the death of Macworld Expo in Boston and presumably learned a whole lot from that experience. I expect them to be incredibly creative in finding a way to reinvent Macworld Expo without Apple as a participant.

The Macworld Expo conference program is great. You will never find a better assortment of Mac luminaries than on that conference program. Could the conference survive with a different trade show? Or branch out into conferences in other cities? Should future maps to Macworld Expo just include the San Francisco Apple Store, which is a short walk from the Moscone Center, as a part of the program?

But here's the cold reality: It's gonna be a tough sell. The departure of Apple will in all likelihood do for the San Francisco show what it did for the East Coast version: Lead to a mass exodus of other vendors until the show is basically a conference with a withered, vestigial trade-show limb. I hope it doesn't happen, because I do think that the Mac, iPod, and iPhone markets are strong, vibrant markets that don't require close proximity to Apple in order to shine. But even in the best economic times--and these ain't those, friend--promoting a Macworld Expo without Apple is going to be hard.

I don't want Macworld San Francisco 2010 to be like . But that's still the most likely scenario, and it's a crying shame. I may understand Apple's motivation, but I can't agree with it. Macworld Expo and its community of users and vendors deserve better.