I'd wager it's going the exact opposite direction. With cloud services, documents/bookmarks/media/apps/settings/etc can all be effortlessly in sync all the tim

I'd wager it's going the exact opposite direction. With cloud services, documents/bookmarks/media/apps/settings/etc can all be effortlessly in sync all the time between all the different devices so the question is just one of form factor. I don't want to give up any of my main form factors (phone, tablet, laptop computer, desktop computer) because there are times when each is significantly better than the other for the task at hand. But I don't want to be having to plug and unplug one into the other to make the whole thing work - I just want to grab/sit-down-at whichever is most appropriate for my context and get right to work (or "work"). It'd be different if a processor+RAM+GPU+enough-flash-storage-to-be-usable-in-a-mostly-cloud-environment weren't all shrinkable to a tiny chip that costs nearly nothing to make. But since they are [1], why should we have to deal with the hassle of docking/undocking and not being able to use our tablet (as a tablet) while we use our computer? Or have to unplug our phone (and not be able to use our "computer") when a phone call comes in? The one place I use such a solution is that all my (personal) computing happens on a tiny laptop that I occasionally plug into a larger monitor with wireless keyboard/trackpad. That works really well, but it's still a bit of a hassle. If that monitor had the smarts in it to actually be a computer and it was constantly up-to-date with all the data from my laptop, then I'd rather just have it be separate. Why not? So I think we'll continue to have separate form factors and they'll all only increase in "smart"ness. Anything else is going to be a tough sell to customers and have marginal cost savings, at best. [1] How much does it cost Apple to make the A5 chip in the Apple TV and the iPad 2 at this point? How much less would it cost them to make a chip that was just for handling networking/display/user input/etc? Barely any less at all — in fact it'd probably be cheaper for them just to keep using A5s because they've already got full OSes to run on them.