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Computerworld - What is Macworld Expo without Apple? Next week, we're going to find out as the first Macworld Expo San Francisco without Apple in attendance gets under way. There'll be no massive Apple booth on the show floor, no Steve Jobs keynote, no new Apple product unveiling. (That happened last week with the iPad at Apple's own event.)

We've known this was coming for more than a year, ever since Apple back in December 2008 announced its opt-out just before the 2009 Macworld Expo. This came on the heels of years of the company's dropping the NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo, and the Apple Expo in Paris. At the time, there was speculation that the decision was related to issues with Jobs' health, but the CEO has rebounded since then.

Of course, there were plenty of business reasons for Apple to bail on Macworld, which runs Feb. 9-13 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Attending expos is a costly undertaking, not only in outright expenses but in opportunity costs -- couldn't Jobs and the rest of the senior staff be doing something more productive with their time? And Apple has more than proved that it can gin up the media coverage it needs with special events on its own turf, and on its own schedule. No longer does it have to shoehorn product development cycles into the January time frame -- though it can do so when it wants.

Even so, it's tough to wrap your mind around a Macworld without Apple. When IDG World Expo, the longtime organizer (and a Computerworld sister company that has gone through some name changes over the years), tried to run shows in Boston and New York without Apple, the events evaporated almost as quickly as the morning dew before the dawn.

Part of the problem was that people identified the expo with Apple, to the point of not knowing that it wasn't, in fact, an Apple-run event. I remember my first Macworld keynote speech: The first person on stage to speak was Colin Crawford, who represented IDG World Expo and Macworld magazine. Until a slide with his name and title appeared behind him, people near me murmured, asking who this guy was and what he did at Apple. It reminds me of something a friend of mine told me about walking down the street with Brad Pitt (true story): "When you're standing next to Brad Pitt, you do not exist."

For third-party vendors, attending these shows can be a big expense, with little immediate return (many don't even sell products on the show floor). After Apple dropped out of the East Coast show, most vendors also bailed, leaving the show floor with little but iPod case makers.