So, uh, what'll you be doing next week during the Stevenote? Because unless you've got tickets to the Big Show itself, we can tell you what you won't be doing: watching the Stevenote. Sure, we know it's tradition; every January, Mac freaks the world over who can't converge upon the Moscone Center for the real thing instead congregate in the homes of friends with satellite dishes, or in theater-equipped Apple retail stores or satellite-enabled classrooms or reseller facilities, all to work themselves into a communal frenzy of real-time Reality Distortion Field By Proxy. Fans without satellite access plunk themselves down in front of a QuickTime-capable web browser for a tinier and more pixellated webcast. Sure, neither option is as heady as absorbing the real thing from a few dozen feet away, but they get the job done.

Except that this year, Apple freaks not in Moscone itself are apparently going to have to go without their annual dose of live January Steveness. Faithful viewer Daniel Blanken pointed us to an AppleInsider article which reports that "for the first time in several years, Apple Computer may not provide a live feed of its opening keynote presentation at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco." That means no Steve live-via-satellite-- and no webcast, either. As far as we can tell, this info is legit; you can see a copy of the memo from Apple quoted in Berkeley's cancellation of its on-campus broadcast, for example. We'd tell you there's no reason to panic, but that'd be mildly hyporcritical, seeing as we've just spend the last two hours alternately clawing at the walls and breathing into a paper bag.

Why no live feed? Well, no official reason's been given, but AI originally claimed that it was Steve's doing; reportedly he canceled the live webcast and satellite broadcast because he was "miffed over a series [of] new product leaks." That makes zero sense, of course, since the folks who leaked product details are already being sued, and we doubt that the lack of a live keynote webcast will somehow make them see the error of their ways. Not that Steve's motives are always rational, mind you, but it seems to us that when it comes to matters of retaliation, the man at least knows whom to punish.

AppleInsider has since recanted that explanation, and now claims that, in all likelihood, Apple never planned a live feed in the first place, because they're "costly and yield few benefits to Apple as a company." Well, we're not going to argue the "costly" part, since we know all too well how expensive bandwidth can be (to say nothing of what the satellite feed might cost), but we'd think that keeping its rabid fan base as happy as possible qualifies as a benefit to Apple-- not necessarily a quantifiable one, granted, but Apple of all companies should know a thing or two about worthy investments whose returns don't necessarily show up highlighted in bright green on a balance sheet. We're also a little surprised that Apple sees no benefit in showing off how well QuickTime works as a live webcast medium. Heck, the company could have even done a faux-webcast entirely via iChat AV, whereby Mac users could connect to a limited number of one-way video chats to showcase the power of Apple's videoconferencing solution. Instead we get squat.

Like we said, though, only Apple knows how much it pays for live Stevenote feeds, so we suppose we have to trust their money guys to know what's what. If you're really brokenhearted about this development, there's still the faintest glimmer of hope, since as of Friday afternoon, at least one Apple retail store was reportedly claiming that the in-store Stevenote broadcast was still going to happen, but we're more inclined to believe that the retail associate who stated as such was just out of the loop. And even if there really won't be a live feed, apparently there will be a QuickTime webcast of the Stevenote posted after the fact, so at least we'll get to see Steve's Magical Mystery Tour eventually. Just think of it as a six-hour tape delay in case there's a really, really bad and complicated "wardrobe malfunction."