MacWorld Snoozefest Signals Apple's Decline

Apple's keynote address at the MacWorld expo yesterday felt a lot like the end of an era to those who managed to keep their eyes open during it, Dan Lyon writes in Newsweek. Marketing chief Phil Schiller's "almost unbearable" rollout of various new software features instead of thrilling announcements from Steve Jobs left Lyon feeling like Apple is growing soft.

"For the first time in recent memory, Apple has nothing interesting to sell," writes Lyon, who speculates that the company's decade as the hottest firm in consumer electronics may be drawing to a close—and that Jobs' absence may be because he simply didn't want to get up there with nothing interesting to say. "You get the sense that these guys have just worked themselves into exhaustion over the past decade and now just need a break," Lyon notes. (More Apple stories.)