True, but I think Apple sees this fact as a fortunate artifact of history, rather than as a sacred cow that must be preserved at all costs.
Imagine a world in which Apple never created the Mac, but had instead been formed many years later, with the same people, processes, and design ethic. They'd still have become successful at selling iPhones, iPods, and iPads; nothing about those devices really depends on the Mac legacy, except for the fact that their OS happened to have been developed for the Mac first. In that world, if you walked into Jobs's office today and pitched him on the idea of launching a line of traditional personal computers, he'd say something sarcastic and tell you to GTFO. The idea wouldn't merit five minutes' thought.
I can still recall the shock when the first Windows compatible iPods where released. Ever since then many, many decisions have been made to favour the portable devices over the Mac platform.
Onto whatever makes sense at the time. iPhone OS development will work like game console development does now, where the dev tools are (again, for now) all hosted on Windows.
It makes as much sense for Apple to have their own line of proprietary PCs as it does for Sony. Even Sony understands that.
Imagine a world in which Apple never created the Mac, but had instead been formed many years later, with the same people, processes, and design ethic. They'd still have become successful at selling iPhones, iPods, and iPads; nothing about those devices really depends on the Mac legacy, except for the fact that their OS happened to have been developed for the Mac first. In that world, if you walked into Jobs's office today and pitched him on the idea of launching a line of traditional personal computers, he'd say something sarcastic and tell you to GTFO. The idea wouldn't merit five minutes' thought.
Hence the company's new name, sans "Computer."