You’ve heard it time and time again. Apple won’t enter the low-cost PC market because they don’t want to produce “junk.” Steve Jobs said that himself as recently as the last phone conference with financial analysts in October, when asked whether Apple planned to release a netbook.

Since then things have changed in the marketplace, and these new facts can’t be lost on Apple.

One of the few success stories in the consumer electronics world just happens to be the netbook, which is showing a roughly 160% sales improvement. Where the cheap note-book was once consigned to emerging countries, the current shaky economic climate has forced both consumers and businesses to embrace cheap gear.

This means, for example, that discounters, such as Wal-Mart, are doing very well, whereas the higher-priced retailers are suffering.

There are reports that Apple, which has traditionally played in the mid- to high-priced PC marketplace, has been forced to cut back on production because of reduced demand. Of course, until Apple actually reveals its financials for the current quarter — and that’s about a month away — the truth won’t be known.

But you have to think they are watching developments real carefully, and they also have products in their test labs ready to deploy if the situation warrants it.

Take the netbook. It may no longer be the “nascent” category described by Jobs, and thus you can safely expect Apple’s entry into the market perhaps as early as Macworld 2009. Even if the news comes from marketing VP Philip Schiller, it will still carry plenty of weight, and that’s not not intended as a bad pun. However, it seems doubtful that Apple will price these tiny note-books as cheaply as the major players in that business, such as Acer and Asus. Figure on something between $499 and $599, perhaps based on the iPod touch in terms of the internal workings.

Indeed, an Apple netbook might surface as a “Pro” version of the touch or iPhone, with a bigger LCD display and sporting a traditional keyboard, although you can expect plenty of Apple elegance.

There are also published reports claiming that the long-neglected Mac mini is in store for a major upgrade, perhaps with an even tinier form factor. Would it truly become the world’s smallest personal computer? Well, if Apple can pack in the guts of the latest generation of MacBooks, including NVIDIA’s terrific GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chip, you can bet this will be a great way to enjoy the Mac experience and not spend a whole lot of money.

Now I don’t pretend to know what this thing might look like. It could simply carry the same form factor as it does now, though one photo I saw looks like a slightly thicker Time Capsule with a optical disc slot. Call that half a mini, so would it be a mini mini?

Regardless, I would hope they would seriously consider making the thing relatively easy to upgrade without the need of specialized tools or putty knives and tiny, flexible fingers.

In any case, the next question is pricing. Today’s cheapest Mac mini is $599, which is actually quite reasonable, and perhaps its successor would cost the same, with more powerful guts. On the other hand, Apple can certainly afford to deliver one for $499, since that was the original price for the mini, and I bet they’d fly off the shelves, assuming there’s also a decent ad campaign behind it.

Despite the benign neglect, today’s Mac mini has a loyal audience among educators and small businesses, and they even serve duty as Web servers, though they’d probably have to be outfitted with speedier hard drives.

One of my clients, Ken, switched from a Power Mac to the first-generation Mac mini shortly after it was introduced, and he just loves it. However, its hard drive failed recently, and he faced the question of whether to just upgrade to a newer model or fix the old one. In the end, the ongoing business slowdown convinced him to choose the latter, and he hopes to be able to stay put for another couple of years before he buys a replacement.

Now before some of you suggest that Apple can’t get its collective heads around cheap gear, don’t forget that you can buy an iPod shuffle for $49. They certainly have the financial wherewithal, design expertise and negotiating power with suppliers to shave production expenses to the bone. Besides, I don’t think Wall Street or Apple’s stockholders would be terribly upset if they trimmed margins on their new hardware in order to build volume in a very difficult market situation.

So there you have it. These are indeed my predictions for Apple’s major product introductions for the first part of 2009. Yes, maybe Snow Leopard will make its debut too, ahead of schedule, but right now job number one for Apple is to maintain growing Mac sales, and if it requires lower prices and more entry-level gear, they’re surely up to the task.

As I’ve reported over the years, I’ve never had a Mac OS X update come back to bite me. On the other hand, I can tell you that one friend, a client named Don, encountered an installation glitch when I ran the 10.5.6 update on his brand new MacBook.

Normally, running Software Update on new Apple hardware is a trivial matter. Even if the computer was built but a few weeks before it was shipped to you, you can expect that there will be a slew of updates awaiting download and installation. So just add that to your expected installation experience.

In this particular case, Apple’s Installer app hung on the “Configuring installation” prompt. It turns out this issue appears if the file download process was somehow aborted before it finished. For some reason, Installer launches anyway which is, of course, incorrect behavior. The update should actually resume — or attempt to resume — on the next attempt.

Apple’s published solution is simple. Go to your /Library/Updates folder, and delete the contents. That removes the fragmented file, so you can simply launch Software Update and let it do its thing all over again. Usually it succeeds. Indeed, this partial download glitch is evidently fixed in 10.5.6, but first you have to get there.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

All right, Paul Kent, head of the Macworld Expo, is doing his level best to put a positive spin on the loss of Apple Inc. He promises that the event will continue regardless, and that they are already promising great things for 2010.

That’s just fine and dandy, and you have to expect that sort of response. It’s not as if the Expo sponsors, IDG World Expo, are going to admit it’s all over and it’s time to get on with our lives. Instead, I fully expect them to attempt to fulfill their promise to keep the event going.

But let’s not forget what happened in 2002, when IDG decided to move the east coast event back from New York to Boston. Now I understand their reasoning, since dealing with the Big Apple, severe union-related restrictions and high costs, really made staging the affair a messy, irritating process. Unfortunately, Apple was evidently not evidently given final approval on the new location, since they opposed the move.

And so Apple pulled out of that event. In fact, the 2003 keynote was relegated to second stringer Greg Joswiak, rather than Jobs. Does all this sound all-too-familiar?

Now I don’t pretend to know what really went on behind the scenes between Apple and the Expo people this time out. There are published reports, not confirmed, that Apple was prepared to pull the plug as well on the west coast trade show back in 2002. It may even be true that they gave their notice then and there, and IDG made a last-ditch effort to salvage the deal.

Regardless of what really happened, not having Steve Jobs around to deliver the keynote in 2009 is just a strong message from Apple that they don’t regard trade shows as terribly significant to their marketing strategy. It quite likely has nothing whatever to do with the state of his health, and, actually, putting marketing VP Phil Schiller in charge isn’t a bad move. Phil is smart, and has a nice sense of humor. He can definitely be depended on to do a credible job with whatever material he is presented.

The other story is that another reason for giving Macworld Expo second rate status is that Apple really doesn’t have a whole lot of new stuff to introduce in January. The whole rigid scheduling of the event clearly put Apple in a bind, as they had to tailor their product release schedule at times to get the news out in accordance with IDG’s timetable and not their own.

Certainly, that wasn’t a bad idea with the iPhone 3G, where six months of solid coverage really helped that snazzy new smartphone hit the ground running. But it may have also forced Apple to release some products prematurely. Consider the 2006 release of the first Intel-based Mac note-books. While most of you had great experiences with those products, swollen batteries, hot surfaces and other issues might be blamed on the fact that Apple should have waited a month or two longer to iron out the kinks.

But they had to have something big to talk about at Macworld Expo, so there you go, and it seems clear to me that they chafed over being forced to accede to someone else’s schedule and not their own.

When they go it alone, Apple can have the press announcements at the appropriate time and be assured of fast, worldwide coverage from mainstream media. Some new products may simply be announced with a press release and a handful of briefings. It all depends on where they fit in with the company’s marketing strategy. But regardless, they call the shots.

As far as the Expo is concerned, remember what happened in Boston after Apple’s departure. Tbey tried for two years to sustain themselves, but, with declining vendor participation and sharply reduced attendance, they threw in the towel.

Now Macworld San Francisco might be a little different. For one thing, it’s the last Expo on the planet, and it’s also a great place to network and attend those important conferences from major developers that help you become more productive with their products. Or, perhaps, you’ll also discover new tools to explore further.

However, Adobe is now off the radar, and I expect other big companies will join them. Even though 2010 might be the year for the next Office for the Mac, would Microsoft bother to exhibit at the Expo if Apple wasn’t there? Food for thought, definitely.

Now I am going to really miss the Expo. I’m not a party person, but I enjoyed meeting friends and business contacts that with whom I had experienced long distance associations other than that singular event. The keynote was always enjoyable, but I also had a great time walking the exhibit floors, talking with people and sometimes just hanging out.

All that is going to soon come to an end, however hard IDG tries to put a positive spin on the situation. Without Steve Jobs, I’m not inclined to attend the 2009 Expo, and you can be assured I won’t be back after that either, however long it lasts.

All right, so if I heard someone tell me that Steve Jobs not only wasn’t going to deliver his famous keynote at the next Macworld Expo and that Apple itself would pull out of the event after 2009, I would tell them they were probably drinking too much Kool-Aid.

Yet, that’s precisely the news that was delivered by Apple this week, along with a refusal to comment upon the health of Steve Jobs.

Officially Apple says: “Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

“Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.”

You can also bet that, without Apple’s participation, the final Macworld Expo on the planet is officially on life support, although the executives who run the event are attempting to convince us that they intend to persevere with or without the company on which the whole shebang is focused.

Remember, for example, when IDG attempted to hold a Macworld Expo in Boston sans Apple. You know how long that lasted.

So what’s going on here, really? Did Steve Jobs have some serious disagreement with IDG and, in a hissy fit, decide to end the company’s participation?

As much as the mercurial Jobs might deserve the reputation of being easy to display anger, his tenure as CEO has shown that he moves with careful thought and deliberate speed. Apple doesn’t just make decisions that result from any single person’s emotions, but on the basis of carefully considered strategies.

As Apple has already said, this wholesale scaling back of participation in trade shows is part and parcel of where the company has moved in recent years. Regardless of what you might think as to whether Jobs is physically capable of delivering a keynote next month, the event itself has simply become insignificant to Apple as part of their overall marketing strategy.

More to the point, the world has changed. Mac users are no longer a tiny insular group of devotees, but comprise millions of people from all walks of life around the world. Indeed, when iPod sales first exceeded 100 million.

The report the other day that the majority of businesses are opening their doors to Macs clearly indicates Apple has become a mainstream manufacturer of consumer electronics products. In addition, with extensive mainstream media coverage and a growing retail chain, Apple is right to say that they don’t need a trade show to reach their customer base.

That may also be the real reason why Adobe pulled out of the Expo. That company’s sales figures remain impressive, so clearly it’s not a matter of money.

As far as Apple is concerned, I suspect that the WWDC, an event strictly catering to the developer community, will continue. This is an important way to evangelize programmers to build products for Apple, an also to deliver the information they need about new operating systems and development tools.

Indeed, you’ll probably still see a one and only keynote from a key Apple executive, probably Jobs assuming he remains healthy. For now, I have no real concerns about that, actually, although his decision to pull out of the Expo keynote has fueled the fires all over again.

From here, you can expect pretty much all new Apple product announcements to arrive in the form of press releases or special events tailored to the media, to garner as much coverage as possible. Of course, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on catchy TV ads and multipage spreads in newspapers and magazines doesn’t hurt.

After all, you don’t see a Sony Expo or a Samsung Expo, right?

With the expected departure of Macworld Expo, however, I have to tell you that I will miss the event. You see, at its heyday, we Mac users felt we were all special, having adopted the personal computer for the rest of us, the best one on the planet. It was also a place to network with like-minded people, and play with the latest toys not just from Apple but a host of other companies.

Over the years, we all wished that our friends and business associates would experience the same euphoria and switch to the Mac as well. Indeed, that has happened over and over again in recent years, and I encounter few people these days who aren’t seriously considering a Mac for their next personal computer purchase. The surveys have shown the very same thing.

But even if the Expo continues in a scaled down fashion for a while, it will no longer be the same. That’s also true about the “typical” Mac user.