[Edit: I feel I need to qualify this response. My problem is that it feels like it's been a while since Apple wowed us with a bit of true innovation. Yes, they certainly lead the industry in innovation, but it just seems like with every new report on Apple's current goings-on, that we've started to see stagnation. Perhaps it's a problem with the consumers and fans expecting too much from a company. And perhaps it's a problem with a company having conditioned a marketplace to expect such great things on such a rapid cycle. Maybe I and the rest of the world just need to step back and stop to smell the roses...]
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "it just seems like with every new report on Apple's current goings-on, that we've started to see stagnation."
What you're really seeing here is a popular meme doing the rounds. No quantitative stuff. No hard data. Just a lot of bloggers and chattering types saying the same things - opinions based on opinions based on opinions.
Big new products are rare. Prior to the modern smartphone and tablet revolution the personal computer space had been dominated for years by desktop and laptop PCs. The first desktop was built forty years ago! Granted the more recognizable home computer would come in the 80s but the basic paradigm of a screen with a keyboard attached is now as old as the hills. Laptops in the form we would currently recognize are from the late 80s/early 90s! If we allow that netbooks are basically a minor blip and sub-notebooks in general never really changed the world, prior to the modern smartphone and tablet the basic paradigms of personal computing had been solidly in place with almost no major shifts (in terms of the devices - I'm not saying the rise of the internet wasn't a big deal) for the better part of 30 years!
Think about that for a moment - 30 years separates the laptop from the modern tablet and the modern tablet is now about three years old. One tenth of the time that elapsed between the birth of the laptop and the launch of the iPad has since passed... one tenth! And we're already asking for a major new personal computing shift-around!?
Right now the big advances are coming in apps and services and Apple's part in that is as a platform more than anything else - the App Store, the iPad and iPhone - these are keystones in allowing partners to innovate. Apple is playing a different role but don't imagine they aren't in the game.
We're seeing a rise in wearable electronics but most of those are far too niche right now for Apple. Apple may one day make a smartwatch - in fact I would put money on something in that space being a major new product from Apple pretty soon - and they're likely to have a head mounted/HUD type product under development (we're still a LONG way from that breaking into the mainstream though and Apple doesn't tend to play in niche areas these days), but until a big new technological breakthrough (bendable screens are a part of this but it's battery tech that's holding back new form-factors in portable tech) it's not likely we'll see a shift like that between laptop and tablet for a little while.
So what might we see?
I said that a smartwatch type of devices is a good bet. This technology is still maturing and Apple will wait until it can do something that radically improves on the current smartwatch experience. I think maybe within the next two years we'll see an Apple branded wearable device of some sort.
Apple is, for a large part, a media company now and the living room is where most media is still consumed. I'm not convinced that Apple will launch a TV - I just don't see why they would when a small, cheap set-top box can do the job when plugged in to a standard HD TV, but a bigger move into the living room is almost certainly on the cards. This is hard. Google has tried and failed spectacularly. TiVO is dying. Of all the big players MS is, perhaps, the best placed in this fight with the XBOX in hundreds of millions of living rooms. But after them Apple has a great chance here because the Apple TV is in millions of homes despite being a fairly basic package - with Apple's dominant iTunes Store and huge base of iPad users, a big push into the living room is by no means beyond them.
Beyond that, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.
