"Much Bigger?" Such optimism in the PC industry is lethal. The personal computer's successes could the be the industry's undoing. Specifically, look at the the HTPC trend and the next-generation of "game consoles."
Also look at the price of PCs for their speed/power. At my place of work, we're purchasing 2.8Ghz P4s with 256MB RAM & 40GB HDDs for people who do Word, IE and a wee bit of Access (which is being converted to Web apps). We're having a hard time keeping the price of these Dells above the $1000 USD mark in order for them to be decaled for inventory. (Which is the ridiculous mandate of our Business Office). I'm personally seeing the need for an upgrade cycle grind to a halt. So for both consumer and business end users, there are ultra-cheap, razor-thin profit alternatives in the future.
Steve is gambling that Apple can escape that future by turning a small subset of those end users of content into... yep, prosumers. It's really a neat trick. Steve has always wanted the computer to be a creative tool and it justifies higher cost products to allow customers to create personal content.
This, I believe, is why Apple seems so disinterested in the lowest end of the market. A $400 Mac might increase market share but it couldn't be capable (dare I say "worthy") of allow us to create content.
Screed
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