Apple Computer is gone

And in its place is simply Apple, Inc.

I guess Steve Jobs has finally achieved his goal of making a computer like a toaster. There are scaled-down computers in all of the non-computer devices his company sells, certainly, and even a version of OS X running on the wildly-talked-about new iPhone. But his point is a valid one: people don't care about the computer in the iPod or iPhone or Apple TV, they just care about the device itself--the toaster, if you will. So, de-emphasize the computer part of the company. Makes sense, I guess.

Nevertheless, it's too bad, since it was after all a Macworld Expo keynote he gave, and discussion of new eight-core Mac Pros, or new displays, or new iLife or iWork, or even the new version of OS X due soon, was entirely missing.

Instead, the vast majority of the keynote discussed the iPhone, which certainly looked nice while Steve spun his reality-distortion field. However, things are gradually coming out which are taking the blinding luster off the gizmo. Things like the apparent inability to sync the phone via Bluetooth, limitations of the Cingular carrier, but particularly the inability to run third-party apps on it, which is particularly disappointing since Steve made much of the iPhone running some subset of OS X.

Oh well, who am I kidding? AAPL is almost at $100 a share, people would give their left gonad for one, and I will probably want one too eventually.