Why a separate iPod division is good news for the Macintosh

Oh boy, here we go. Apple's gone and officially divided itself into separate business units for the Macintosh and the iPod. No longer just a successful side project, Apple's foray into digital music has now been elevated to the same status as its personal computing efforts. What's more, the new iPod division is going to be headed up by none other than Apple hardware guru Jon Rubenstein, who will apparently no longer be involved with the Mac at all. The death of the Macintosh must surely be just around the corner now, right?

Well, maybe not.

In fact, as a Macintosh user, I'm starting to think that this is the best news I've heard about my platform in awhile. My initial reaction a few hours ago was along the lines of "I'm not sure I like where this is going." But now I'm thinking that it's about time Apple went ahead and made official what had obviously already taken place within the company anyway. Apple had become obsessed with the iPod and iTunes, and in many respects, rightfully so. I mean, it's not every day that you find yourself absolutely dominating an emerging industry in which your success seemingly knows no bounds. Regardless of what circumstances have placed in you in that situation, you pretty much have to go for it. You have to take your shot. For that matter, you'd better have some talented people within your company who are completely obsessed with attacking that new market, and seeing if the company can't take it over completely.

But what is everyone else in the company supposed to do in the mean time? Work the crossword puzzle? Knit themselves a new pair of mittens? You can't ask the whole company to come to a screeching halt just so that portions of the company can take a shot at the moon. Clearly, you need separate divisions, separate leadership, even separate agendas, so that each of those divisions can each focus on their own affairs. When a company has two separate products with two separate audiences, why wouldn't both of those products be best served by their own divisions that are able to focus on their respective product exclusively? I'm even starting to wonder why they didn't do this earlier.

Many of us were troubled by Steve Jobs' comments a few months back that were somewhere along the lines of "digital music is our company's entire focus right now." Did he mean that no one within Apple's upper ranks still had their eye on the personal computing ball anymore? Did he mean that Apple had sent all its Macintosh-based employees on an extended vacation? Well, I doubt he meant anything quite so severe, but the implications were clear, and it really had to make you wonder if there wasn't cause for concern. After spending the past five years building the perfect computing platform, and after finally beginning to convince people to begin embracing it, you kind of had to wonder if the company had suddenly forgotten what in the heck it was supposed to be doing, instead distracted by the amazing set of circumstances that caused the whole digital music dominance thing to happen.

So that's why I'm thinking that this is the best news I've heard about the Mac in awhile. With the advent of a separate Macintosh division that doesn't have to deal with, hear about, or even think about digital music, hopefully Apple's Mac people can just get down to business and do what it is that they do best. To tell you the truth, there's been no hard evidence that the health of the Macintosh was actually being impeded by the company's iPod obsession. But now, we no longer have to wonder whether the continued delay of the next-generation iMac is due to some legitimate circumstance, or the simple fact that no one in the company's leadership had put any thought toward it lately. Now, we don't have to worry, because there's a division within Apple whose job it is to worry about nothing but the Macintosh.

I like it...I think. I'm going to hesitate saying anything more about it for the moment, because I really want to see and hear more from Apple about what these separate divisions are all about, before I'm really going to know how I feel about it. But on the surface it seems like the right, and even the obvious, thing to do. And while all the headlines are going to imply that the move is merely another sign of Apple's increased emphasis on digital music, I think that it could bode really, really well for us Macintosh users, as well.

We'll see where it goes from here.

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