What you're saying is true and yet at some level the current iPod/iPhone/iPad basically are all the same thing just with or without a cellular radio and/or with a different sized screen. Other than making AppleTV more than a "hobby", it is difficult to see what other "big" permutations of this theme are available for Apple to exploit (this would have been true with or without Jobs).
Meanwhile we have tablet/laptop hybrids, which Microsoft has been taking the lead on (facing a similar reaction to the early iPod, which history may or may not prove to be similarly ill-directed) and then virtually-deviceless-devices, which Google has been pushing into with their Glass project.
You can't count Apple out because of its infamous development secrecy (who knows what they might do next?), but visibly a lot of the cool potential Next Big Things in the gadget/device space seem to be forming at non-Apple companies.
Good point, I should have mentioned Asus. I own and love an original Transformer (TF101), but I still believe it is Microsoft who is likely to push the concept into the mainstream.
Having control of the OS gives Microsoft a lot of power Asus doesn't have with their Android hybrids. Also, as cool as the Transformer is, it still doesn't feel quite like a true hybrid device because ultimately you're still running mostly software that was designed with touch-only in mind, at least assuming you're using it to run Android and haven't installed Ubuntu/ARM or something.
Meanwhile we have tablet/laptop hybrids, which Microsoft has been taking the lead on (facing a similar reaction to the early iPod, which history may or may not prove to be similarly ill-directed) and then virtually-deviceless-devices, which Google has been pushing into with their Glass project.
You can't count Apple out because of its infamous development secrecy (who knows what they might do next?), but visibly a lot of the cool potential Next Big Things in the gadget/device space seem to be forming at non-Apple companies.