the gateway drug

Gruber hit the nail in the head in his wrap up on WWDC:

This year, the emblematic session was titled “Mac Programming for iPhone Developers”. I’m not even sure what to say about that, other than to confirm that anecdotal evidence suggests that new-to-Apple iPhone developers are indeed very much interested in developing for the Mac now, too.

That last sentence really stuck with me. I’ve felt for a while that Apple has this overarching plan—get people (more specifically, Windows users) on the iPhone and they will eventually switch over to our desktops and notebooks as well. They started this with the iPod and the iTunes store. The next logical step was the mobile phone market, especially due to the popularity of this platform amongst today’s youth. The iPhone is the gateway drug to the world of Apple.

It looks like the plan is working.