Paradigm shift: Content *consumption* vs. *creation*
What's gonna be at WWDC? Power Mac? PowerBook? iBook?
Blah blah blah. That's all ancient history. Think Different.
Back when PCs first came out, they were used exclusively for content creation. You did spreadsheets, word processing, databases, and graphics. You generally didn't view other people's work online (not very good networking back then). You saw printouts at meetings or whatnot. What was done on a computer was mostly content creation. This required big horsepower, lots of peripherals, lots of disk options.
Nowadays, it's completely different. Sure some people still do a lot of content creation, but most people (especially home users) do content consumption. You know--web surfing, reading PDFs, looking at pictures & slideshows, listenting to music, watching movies. Content consumption requires less horsepower than content creation (you can easily watch a DVD on a G4 iBook, but try creating one--it takes hours and hours of encoding time).
So . . . desktop and laptop computers have until now required lots and lots of horsepower. And they required lots of peripherals and drive types. You need monster hard disks to store DV video and gigabytes of songs; you need a CD/DVD drive to play or import music & movies. Heck, iBooks were a lot more successful than some super-thin-and-light laptops in the early 2000's because Apple put in a CD/DVD drive. Those early laptops without optical media drives were worthless.
But now it's 2005. You don't need optical drives (or zip drives or floppies) anymore. You get your data from a wireless network or a USB memory card drive. You download songs off of iTunes. (Maybe movies, too). This is content consumption. It's very lightweight computing.
So . . . maybe instead of desktops and notebooks, the home user will have one media server next to the TV/audio system, and a very lightweight "media player" for each member of the household.
The media server is where you need heavy duty processors, massive hard drives, lots and lots of connectors (audio, video, firewire, etc.), DVD burner, gobs of RAM, etc.
The "media player" is larger than an iPod, smaller than an iBook, with no optical drive or firewire ports. It probably does have a hard drive, to store your music and a movie or two. (Maybe DRM will go further--users of "media players" will check out a license for a song or movie from the media server, and then check it back in so sister Susie can use it.) Doesn't need gobs of RAM or lots of connectors; USB and Bluetooth/WiFi suffice.
This is a vision for the future. If not next week, then next year.
So, while Power Macs and iBooks will be around for a while, there will be a sea change to dedicated media servers and media players.
Media server = content creation. Heavyweight. Pricey. One per household.
Media player = content consumption. [EDIT: And lightweight content creation, like e-mail, address book, light word processing.] Lightweight. Inexpensive. One for each member of the family.
Desktops and notebooks will gradually fade away.
