For years now, the mention of the name "Phil Schiller" in reference to an Apple Keynote has solicited either a yawn or a laugh among Apple followers. It's not that Apple's Vice President of Worldwide Something-or-Other is particularly boring or particularly funny, it's just that these have invariably been the only two ways in which Steve Jobs has used Schiller over the years when it came to involving him in keynote addresses. If it wasn't Phil providing comic relief at MacWorld New York in '99 by jumping from the rafters with a wireless iBook in his arms, then it was Phil coming on-stage for yet another drab processor speed contest. Jobs would always run the Mac, Phil would man the PC, and not surprisingly, Phil always lost.
So when I heard that the Mighty Schiller would be delivering this week's Keynote address at Apple Expo in Paris, my initial interpretation was that the move signified that Apple had nothing to announce this time around. I mean, for Schiller to get an entire Keynote to himself, there must be so little to announce that it's not even worth Steve Jobs' time to get on a plane and fly over there. We're talking about such a non-event that "QuickTime updated from version 6.5.1 to version 6.5.2" might be the biggest headline coming out of the entire Expo. But wait a minute...let's see, there's got to be a reason why Steve isn't at least showing up for this particular keynote before handing the bulk of the snooze-fest off to Phil. Something to do with cancer surgery? Oh yeah, duh. Kind of forgot about that, didn't we?
You see, Steve couldn't deliver this Keynote even if he wanted to. And if any of the sites reporting from the Expo show floor are even partially true, then this is bound to be a Keynote that Steve is wishing he could have delivered himself. Last I heard, Jobs was planning on taking the month of August off to recuperate, with an expected return to Apple in September. But Apple has already announced that the new iMac will be G5-based and will ship in September, so if the new product is going to be announced on a stage of any size at all, it's got to be the Paris Expo -- and it's got to be Schiller doing the talking.
So when Phil takes the stage tomorrow morning, it'll be far from his first Apple keynote, but it just might be his first that actually carries any weight or importance. We have yet to hear word of whether the keynote might be streamed over the internet, live or otherwise, so we'll just have to wait and see how much or how little exposure Steve Jobs wants to devote to his longtime sidekick's debut in the limelight. And depending on how things go, it's entirely possible that Phil's speech itself might be nearly as interesting as what actually gets announced.
Got thoughts on Schiller's first relevant keynote? Dish 'em.
