The Mac As Just Another i-Screen in an iWorld. NO THANKS.

Today Apple announced a move that, on first blush, seems to push the Mac, its seminal and defining product, into the iWorld. You know, the world of Apple-controlled, closed, manicured gardens a la iPhone, iPod, iPad, and iTunes.

There’s going to be an “app store” for Macs, and the iPad OS is going to be integrated in the next release of the Mac.

If anything, ever, will make me leave Mac for good (and the companies I’ve started have purchased literally thousands of them), it will be the integration of the Mac OS into Steve Jobs’ vision of where mobile is going.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this once I’m well and truly smart on the announcements. But given the trajectory of Apple, which is now driven far more by iWorld than by Mac, I’m not holding out much hope for the Mac continuing to be a computer in any real sense of the word. You know, where a computer means you have choices as to what apps you run on it, what apps get developed for it, and how you express yourself using it.

Feh.