Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

Although the iPhone has some shortcomings, today's sales launch (and the surrounding ridiculous hype) does a good job of supporting some of the points in this future computing series. The iPhone is small and it packs a lot of power in that small package. Perfect, no. True portable computing, no. But it still represents a lot of power in a tiny package, and it is easy to see that people are very excited about it.

That's because it is bright and shiny and new, well designed and well marketed. But is is also because it is more than a phone. It does email. It does Web browsing. It does videos. It does music. It does all of that with a friendly user interface and on a screen you can see clearly on. It is inexpensive for what it does, and it may be one of the world's ultimate toys.

Still, it is a toy that does real work. People are excited by both sides of this equation, and they will continue to be excited by advances made in this area. Truly mobile, fully connected business computing will also have an aspect of the toy about it, especially for those used to older, bigger, multiple devices with less capability.

Looked at from this angle, the new iPhone might be the first in a long line of portable computing devices to really pique the interest of the user. It is already mainly there. The rest is just further miniaturization and innovative input-output devices. What we are seeing now is just the first step, though with too much hype and the ridiculous issue of falsely created scarcity. If Apple is just in it for the hype, we will need somebody else to step up and do the heavy lifting of creating the first truly portable business computing dynamo.

Still, this first step proves that people are interested, and will stay interested, especially if the marketers will quit treating them like morons. The public wants this, and they want much, much more. The technology is there to give it to them. Someone just has to take this matter seriously, and not as just a marketing prank, and begin to give people the ultra-mobile business platform of tomorrow.