And now for more on the convergence front

Fellow ZDNet blogger, Ed Burnette, wrote about the death of the Mac today, not as an OS, but as a hardware platform. As he sees it, Apple is nailing the convergence trend I wrote about in my last post quite early:

In hindsight, Apple’s announcement yesterday that it was pulling out of the Macworld Expo should have come as no surprise. Ever since the 2007 Macworld where Jobs announced the iPhone, Apple’s emphasis has clearly been shifting towards consumer electronics and away from personal computers. To get the iPhone out the door, they took developers away from the OS X team & delayed Leopard 6 months. They even took the word “Computer” out of their company’s name. At WWDC this year the process accelerated — it was all iPhone all the time. And now, after 2009 Apple won’t even bother showing up at the Macworld conference.

Bingo. Sure, Apple has had a few misses, but in recent times has been spot on in terms of consumer trends (and business trends, for that matter). Apple has grabbed market share in the smartphone industry in ways that they have never been able to in the PC market. Do I care if Apple stops making MacBooks? Yes, of course, I love my MacBook. However, I can have a cheap, fast notebook happily running Ubuntu (or even a desktop/server at home) if I have a larger-format iPhone in my pocket. Imagine an iPhone with a clamshell design, a QWERTY keyboard (possibly implemented on an touch screen via software) with all its great multi-touch features and an App store for education. The possibilities are endless.

Go ahead, Apple, kill the Mac if you must...just give me a super-iPhone at a great price that I can use for 1:1 and I'll be a very happy guy.