Apple Computer RIP

IN AN ANNOUCEMENT PASSING almost unnoticed amongst the hyperbole of the iPhone launch, portly Apple messiah Steve Jobs let slip that the entertainment gadget company was bowing to the inevitable and dropping the 'Computer' bit of Apple Computer Inc.

The company will henceforth be known as Apple Inc, or AI (d'you see what they've done there?), reflecting its inexorable mutation from being a producer of overpriced, overhyped but attractive computers to overpriced, overhyped but attractive electronic gizmos.

But it's good to report that it's business as usual for the hordes of hysterical fundamentalist Macjahadeen gathered to touch the hem of Ayatollah Job's business-casual robes - the announcement of the iPhone was greeted with cheers from the audience. It's just a bloody phone, guys, get out more.

The hype quotient was also at its normal stratospheric height, Jobs describing the iPhone as "magic" and "super-smart" (unlike the millions of style victims who will queue to pay through the nose for one). It's also going to "reinvent" the telecommunications sector, apparently, in much the same way that the iPod "changed the entire music industry in 2001".

"Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," he told his adoring followers. "It's very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. The iPod changed everything in 2001. And we're going to do it again with the iPhone in 2007."

You'll notice he obviously didn't rate any of Apple's computers highly enough to be included in the "revolutionary" product list. How soon one forgets. µ