The advent of iOS and the iCloud bode badly for the "IBM compatible"world.

I think there are a few big improvements required before people can rely on iOS devices the way they do Mac devices though. You can't for example backup an iOS device to independent local storage. You can't really do projects where multiple programs interact with a set of common files. If an iOS app crashes repeatedly, there's no way for you to solve the problem in iOS.

Apple has started from a good foundation though of rethinking the OS in its most simplistic form and by incrementally adding features, they can ensure that only the most intuitive and secure workflows are in place. iOS 5 has at least reached a point where you can own the device independent of a computer, which is a big step.

I'm not a fan of iCloud personally. I'd much rather use Airdrop, Airplay and wifi syncing than send data to a remote server. For example, if I record a movie on my iPhone and it comes out at 200MB, I'd rather not have to wait half an hour for it to upload to Apple's server and download it again on a computer. While photos and music are much smaller individually, the same applies if I have 100x 2-3MB pictures. I'd rather just sit my iPhone on my desk or have it in my pocket, click on my computer and have them transfer directly, not even via a router and with 802.11n, it goes over in seconds. I'd rather see Apple focus on that type of transfer over any other for syncing.

I wish they'd stop having sync limited to a single computer too. The amount of people I've seen scared to plug their iOS devices into someone else's computer out of fear that it will be wiped is far more than it should be. That number should be zero. If I have a song or movie I want to shove onto my friend's iPad or iPhone, I should be able to do it without a single problem just like I can with a Mac - that's the only way productive environments can work. IMO, they should remove the iOS auto-wiping from iTunes entirely and instead put in a manual wipe option like Disk Utility's erase option. Bi-directional data merging should be the default.

Hmm. Without my desktop and its computing power where would I store and access my 4TB of music,TV shows and movies? Possible that stuff could all reside on the cloud and be accessed by my iPad, iPhone and AppleTV but still, being able to manipulate the whole catalogue on my home desktop (the hub) is still a very attractive proposition.

The single computer sync is my biggest beef - ideally I'd like to be able to sync to both my laptop and my desktop fully and issue free, instead of just being able to sync to my desktop.