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FORTUNE: Apple 2.0

Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports on Mac news from outside the reality distortion field.

Pogue rocks Macworld with “Where is Steve?”January 7

David Pogue, New York Times tech columnist, creator of the Missing Manual series, and frustrated Broadway producer, led his Macworld Live! feature presentation in San Francisco Wednesday with a musical riff on Steve Jobs’ non-attendance.

Playing the electric piano and accompanied by former Cirque de Soleil bassist J.F. Brisette, he sang, to the tune of Oliver’s “Where is Love?”

“Where is Steve? Give us something to believe! Should we trust Apple’s press release — or are we all naive?”

The performance drew knowing laughter and applause from an audience of several thousand in the basement of Moscone Center’s North Hall. But the hit of 90-minute presentation were his three guests:

• Matt Harding, whose YouTube videos dancing at exotic locations around the world have been downloaded 17 million times. See, for example, Where the Hell is Matt?
• Matt Bledsoe and Tyler Hitch, creators of the You Suck at Photoshop series, downloaded 20 million times.
• Ge Wang, the creator of

iTunes music: The cost of removing Apple’s copy protectionJanuary 7

When Apple announced Tuesday that it was finally lifting the so-called digital rights management (DRM) restrictions that iTunes music customers found so onerous, it left one thing out: the cost of doing so — in money and, as we learned overnight, time.

“We are thrilled to be able to offer our iTunes customers DRM-free iTunes Plus songs in high quality audio,” said Steve Jobs in a press release.

“It’s really easy,” said senior vice president Phil Schiller in his Macworld keynote address, “to go in and convert your entire music library” with one click.

He didn’t mention that it would cost you 30 cents per song, 60 cents per music video, and 30% of the cost of an album to do it.

Leave it to Apple (AAPL) to turn the lifting of restrictions into a profit center. If users convert every one of the 6 billion songs purchased from the iTunes Store over the past six years, a rich new revenue stream will flow toward Cupertino. Techcrunch’s Erick Schonfeld calls it a “$1.8 billion music tax.”

Analyst: Steve Jobs is still in chargeJanuary 6

Boring is good, says Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster in a report from Macworld 2009.

“Today’s Macworld keynote was underwhelming as expected,” Munster wrote in a note to clients, a development he interprets as “a sign that Steve Jobs remains primary spokesman and active leader.”

The biggest news at the show, he says, was the updated 17″ MacBook Pro and two software updates: iLife and iWork. (See Live from Apple’s last Macworld)

That’s a far cry from the kind of product Steve Jobs regularly introduced at Macworlds past, including the iBook, iTunes and the iPhone.

Always the optimist, Munster believes that the lack of any big news Tuesday actually adds clarity to the confusion surrounding Jobs’ decision to skip the show.

“If Phil Schiller had made a significant announcement, we would have seen that as a sign of a changing-of-the-guard, but that was not the case. In other words, Steve Jobs remains the primary spokesperson for the company and we expect him to continue to appear at special events for all major product announcements. More importantly, this is anoth

Live from Apple’s last MacworldJanuary 6

This is a live blog of the valedictory keynote Steve Jobs decided not to give — sending Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller to Macworld 2009 in his place.

Schiller’s remarks began shortly after 9 a.m PST (12 noon EST),

Posts are listed in reverse order, with the latest posts on top. All times are a.m. PST.

The headlines: Expectations were low, but even those were largely unmet. There was no Steve Jobs cameo, no Mac mini, no new iMac, no Snow Leopard ship date, no memory upgrades for iPhone or iPod touch, no new iPod shuffle, no revamped Apple TV or Time Capsule. There was a new unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro with an impressive (if non user-removable) battery. There are new price points for iTunes music and 10 million songs are going DRM-free, if you are willing to pay extra for them. And iWork is making collaboration on the Web a little easier, but it’s still in beta and it’s no Microsoft (MSFT) Office — or even Google (GOOG) Apps — killer.

As one wag put it afterward, Tony Bennett got a standing ovation. Apple, not so much.

Apple (

Analyst reinstates Apple — for nowJanuary 6

Oppenheimer & Co.’s Yair Reiner turned heads on Wall Street three weeks ago — in the wake of Apple’s surprise announcement that Steve Jobs would be skipping Macworld 2009 — when the analyst downgraded the company and refused to set a price target for its shares until he got some answers. (See Analyst sounds warning.)

On Tuesday, Reiner reinstated Apple (AAPL), upgrading the stock to “outperform” and setting a 12 - 18 month price target of $135 a share. (The stock closed Monday at $94.58, up 4.22% for the day.)

But in a long note to clients, Reiner made it clear that while Jobs’ open letter Monday offered some reassurance, he remains skeptical.

“We don’t know what ails Apple’s CEO, and we’re not ready to assume that a problem with a ‘relatively simple and straightforward’ remedy is a pr