Apple surprised the tech world this afternoon with the news that CEO Steve Jobs won't be delivering the upcoming Macworld Expo keynote, and that this will be the company's last year at the annual conference. Among other things, the move raises questions about the future of the conference, an annual gathering of the Apple faithful.

We spoke this afternoon with Seattle journalist Glenn Fleishman, an editor of the TidBITS Mac news blog and co-author of The Seattle Times' Practical Mac column, who reflected on the meaning of the conference to the Mac community.

"If Macworld Expo is cancelled, I feel like the heart will have been cut out of the Mac community to some extent," Fleishman said. "I know that sounds a little overdramatic, but it's kinda true. As a journalist who covers the field, this is where I see colleagues and friends every year -- people that live even in and around Seattle who for various reasons I wind up not seeing here.

"It's a real source of community," he said. "There's no such community in the Windows world. There are people who use Windows and there are communities of interest in the Windows world. Linux may be a little more similar to Mac in that sense, even though it's more of a technical nature. But you don't have the same feeling of affinity."

Fleishman, 40, has attended Macworld for nearly a decade. For the record, he's still planning to go this time.