You're a saint for reading all this
As far as content, there was little, but the idea that he held up the iPhone and said, "This is like the Jetsons," makes me wonder what it is he really gets about the present and sees into the future. Similarly, the idea that he uses an iPad 80% of the time and loves it speaks to him not seeing much past the present.
It seems like a lot of Apple's moves lately have been seeing things they've created previously as puzzle pieces and thinking, "Oh, this looks like it should fit here, as well." They make safe choices that seem like they should be logical. This is the best analogy I could think of: It's like if you didn't know how to decorate a room, but you had a pillow your client liked on one side of a sofa, so you thought, "Well, I have no clue what the end product will/should be, but I need to do something, and putting an identical pillow on the other side of the room won't hurt. I already know the client likes the pillow." And then you realized the owner of the room liked eating toast in the kitchen, so you put a toaster next to her bed so she had toast, there as well. And you think you're onto some type of synergy.
I'm mainly talking about iCloud, the back-to-Mac mentality, etc. The Mac really needs some innovation besides iOS innovation, and now iOS even needs some innovation, as well.
They do things that seem logical but don't recognize the reality of what people do. And then they ignore the quality of applications people have used for a long time like iLife (Mac), QuickTime, iWork, and devote resources to things like Game Center on the Mac. They even get rid of useful cloud features they already had like MobileMe's syncing system preferences across Macs to add ones that are parallel to what is on an iPhone that people don't use in reality. Because, again, they see some power in this parallelism. People like the iPhone, therefore we're going to emulate everything about the iPhone everywhere.
Documents in the Cloud for Mac, for example, is implemented in this really austere way where it's not useful at all IMO, but it conforms exactly to the way Apple has dealt with documents on the iPhone. In reality, again, IMO, Google Drive is imminently more useful. But Apple seems to blindly follow a way that has worked before and keep implementing it as if they'll bulldoze their way into some new revelation of how computing works. I think they are bulldozing a path forward with their eyes closed because they have no idea where to go but if they hope really hard and do things that seem logical--things that market analysts might think up--they will keep succeeding.
Just like the person who keeps adding pillows and toasters to the room.
Apple hasn't made a smart move in a while. I admit they are great at consistency. They get products out the door. They market them. They sell them.
Again, to me, Cook is curator-in-chief of Apple's inertia.
I used to really "get" Apple. I just don't get now how so many more do. I got Apple when far fewer did.
The reason I keep using Apple products are not for features they've added in the last 5 years. It's for the remnants of what's still good. Part of me wants them to tend to those core parts of OS X and software packages. Part of me thinks they'll make them worse! I'm thinking of iLife and Quicktime, for example, as software that's gotten worse as Apple has improved it.
I wonder if Tim Cook would like an interview with me?