See, that's where you're wrong. Apple NEEDS to take a big leap.
Read this story.
http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=120123
The market expectation is well beyond the Mac fan base expectation. We want to hear about Intel notebooks and desktops and maybe some iPod products ... to people who've put hundreds of thousands of the dollars on the line, that's last year's news, it's all been factored into the Apple stock price.
To keep this amazing stock price momentum going, Apple doesn't need an incremental improvement in computing or a slightly better iPod ... they need the next Macintosh, the next iPod, something big and groundbreaking.
So is it going to be full HDTV systems? I have no idea. But Apple has to do something big and Steve Jobs knows this. But forget the rumors of the past week and just connect the dots.
Go back and read three years worth of rumors about Apple set top boxes. Think about Rendezvous and .mac and all the ways Apple has been moving towards integration ... then consider the sudden shift last year to the Intel platform. You think that's all about IBM's slow deliveries and Intel's power consumption? Please.
What the Intel move was about was preventing a head-to-head confrontation Apple couldn't win. Apple was moving towards it's own flavor of consumer electronics integration, then got a look at what Intel was doing with Viiv and figured it was smarter to switch than to fight.
And so Apple cut a deal with Intel -- a really good deal, one that includes becoming the showcase provider of Viiv-enabled systems. Does that mean Apple has to sell its own HDTV? No ... but at the very least, it would mean providing a form of OS X to CE manufacturers to use in these Viiv enabled systems.
So if you're a long-time Apple fanatic, what do you think is more likely -- 1) Apple surrendering the HDTV/consumer electronics marketplace to Microsoft 2) Apple licensing OS-X as part of Viiv to compete with the Windows Media systems or 3) Apple jumping head first into this market and selling their own top-to-bottom, platinum Viiv solutions?
Given what market analysts are saying about Apple's stock price, Apple's new relationship with Intel, widely-accepted rumors that a set-top box is on the way and the absence of any other big, groundbreaking rumors in what needs to be a monster MacWorld to keep the stock flying, I'm inclined to believe that O'Grady (at least partially) has it right.