I think the excitement has waned but it has nothing to do with Jobs passing and everything to do with Apple's erratic and static progress of late.
Their software apps simply aren't being updated. The various Mac lines have gotten little more than spec updates for the last few years. The iPhone, thank goodness is still somewhat fresh even with most internal updates because it is still so far ahead of the game in many ways. The iPod line has been the same for 16 months now.
The other side of the coin is there are indeed exciting developments in other places and it sort of brings you down when they are getting them and Apple is just sitting there.
This is a prime example of what has got me a bit down about Apple.
It isn't even that new. If Apple had something similiar in the pipeline but needed to be a few months behind to line up the ability to make MILLIONS of them instead of a a hundred thousand, Apple fans like myself can understand.
Instead we have several new watch faces.
Now I know people might say it's a dying market, but it isn't. It is exactly the type of market Apple does best in with regard to being vertical and high margin. Apple doesn't do $20 sneakers. They do the best $200 running shoes as an analogy. If Apple had a GPS Nike+ running/biking app and wireless syncing enabled iPod Nano that allowed bluetooth headsets with good battery life, they could sell it for $200-$250 easily and the people most likely to buy it probably already own plenty of other iDevices. They could let Nike offer a heart monitor with it that works via bluetooth as well. Think about all the other very beautiful and expensive accessories Apple could offer to all those folks who buy $1000-$2500 bikes.
I don't even want to mention how many people I see out there running with older iPod Nano's or iPod Shuffles and $200-$300 Garmin watches. Apple helped create this market segment so the omission here is very telling in my opinion.
Apple towers used to start at $1500. It doesn't really matter if Apple can give you an iMac a similar price point because those used to start at $1000. Apple feels far too much like 1991-1992 right now when their products cost double to triple the competition but it was fine because they had the best solutions for many market segments. I'm not stating outright Apple is going to have some sort of deep troubles. They might just be the IBM or Microsoft of the next 5-10 years.
I was never excited or enthusiastic for those companies though.