You get another gold star for that one there my friend.

This "war" is nothing more than Apple marketing and Jobs open letter was nothing more that a "neener, neener, neener...in your face, victory dance that let it be known that he now had the sales numbers behind him so he could decide the fates of ancillary technologies.

Apple and Jobs (Who is actually using NeXT, BTW?) came back from the dead not because of new technology. MP3's, CD ripping, file sharing had been going on for years. For most it was a mess. Tags were whatever someone thought they should be. It took hours to sort through shared files and make sense of them. "Free" programs for ripping, sharing, or managing MP3's were full of spyware and trojans, and the original artists were getting Bupkis.

iTunes changed all that for the masses. Jobs pulled it all together and basically said: "You will do it this way and no other". (The Germans have a marvelous phrase that roughly translates to that and when it is spoken, gets immediate attention.)

There are still excellent private collections organized independently and there are still private file sharing networks. But the stock and trade is now in iTunes.

This "You will do it this way and no other" business model worked and for an encore, Jobs/Apple applied it to the cell phone industry. Again no new technology, just an organization of stuff that was there already.

Because of the mess that the existing cell phone players made from providers controlling content and connection speed, competing standards like wap and xml, and various application environments, as well as the distribution nightmare that was J2ME... again this business model worked for the masses with the iPhone.

Everything an iPhone can do had been done by other devices for years. IPhone's technological contribution was pinch to zoom (woohoo ) and again tight control over content and delivery.

A lot of people, myself included have been wondering how and where this business model would be applied next. I have gone as far as to say I can't see it and it may mean Apple is about done as far as growth is concerned.

iTV? Nope, people are happy with their TV's. No mess to fix here.

iPad? Nope, this was more of a vanity exorcise for Apple. Unless more than what is already available for an iTouch or iPhone comes along, this may end up to be a huge waste of resources for Apple. Besides, people are happy with there Kindles and e-book readers. (The iPad's introduction is what first got me thinking that Apple is now desperate for growth opportunities. )

Tonight and tomorrow will tell us more but I fear from all this recent posturing by Jobs, Apple may be eying HTML as the next opportunity to apply this business model to.

We shouldn't let that happen and it is in everyones best interest to keep this from occurring. Because instead of corralling and managing existing technologies this "Do it this way and no other" approach would be applied to developing technologies instead.

History tells us that this approach will eventually fail. Unfortunately, just like in the past, much talent, resources, and energy will be laid to waste along the way...