Phones satisfy the mobile convergence thing between organisers, phones, cameras and handheld games. Tablets satisfy the "computer as a bicycle" vision of Jobs and bring portable computing to the masses. But neither are really full featured enough for a developer or a college student.
When it comes to a full featured, keyboard equipped, programmable device there is bugger all that is light, powerful, has a long battery life and ships with a decent environment (posix, term, ssh) out of the box. Dell's XPS 13 DE delivers a bit of the picture but it doesn't have the quality bundled iWork apps that would appeal to a student and has worse battery life. They are getting there though.
The rest of the laptop market is hindered by shipping with Windows only and the difficulty of getting pre and post-sales driver support for the developers and students who require an environment like Linux. The industry has really fucked themselves trying to keep to the model of the glory days.
Hopefully Steam will help set things straight by creating a large mainstream market that more niche users like developers, students and scientists can benefit from.
Manufacturers are going to have to stop the race to the bottom and start building less models, higher quality and in bigger volume if they are to compete with Apple in price, quality and profitability. And they are going to have to explore well integrated Chrome OS and Linux packages and work on developing drivers with better performance and power efficiency.
They are fine machines, but if you don't care about subjective things, like how a laptop looks, how much it weighs (an extra pound or 2 never really genuinely matters to a use case), and you only care about getting exactly what you need (not want) for the lowest price, then there is no way you would ever buy a MBP. They are a product that we convince ourselves that we need or deserve because we lust after it, even when a cheaper alternative would do just fine.
I have bought macs for a while, but if I have to be really honest with myself there was always a cheaper alternative that was 'good enough', it's just that I subjectively want apple's products because they are 'nicer'.
Quite good for those of us that work across multiple OSs.
Just install GNU/Linux on VMWare with CPU virtualization enabled and get two OS in a laptop with the minimum of fuss.
And far less battery life.
I often run Ubuntu or Windows on my MBA with VMWare to compile some software. It's one of the best methods to soak your battery empty quickly.
I use GNU/Linux since 1995 and on a laptop still looks like 1995 to me, in terms of graphics card, battery, hibernation and wireless support.
My Asus, which was sold with a supported Linux hardware, does not hibernate.
In terms of battery life I am yet to find a laptop where GNU/Linux lasts longer than Windows.
Who would be more popular?
A) A rich guy who thinks he can buy friends, by inviting everybody to an expensive cocktail to an exclusive restaurant?
B) A guy who own lots of expensive high-tech and luxury car + his own house?
C) A guy with charme and charisma, who can make anyone feel special, or have a fun time, even in the dirtiest place?
Choose yourself. I believe you all experienced A,B and C already. But I would rely on the scientific evidence that C) has a higher long term chance of staying an attractor of popularity. (I'm sorry, I couldn't put the references together, but hope you understand)
Side story: A weird guy in my old class possessed a bluetooth wireless headphones with integrated mp3 player in 2006, a 3000EUR laptop and all sorts of other very expensive gimmickry. That didn't make him cooler at all. People still didn't like him and it just made him more vulnerable to attacks of the some of the more primitive pupils.
Trust me, you can buy social status. If you pay enough, you have the status.
> Someone can be butt ugly, poor and stupid, but still have the highest social status and popularity in most social environments.
Most social environments he exposes himself to, yes. Most social environments, no.
edit: parent comment has completely changed since I replied
In Marin, I see so many attractive women who settled for some fugly dude just because he has money. Maybe, that's what keeps guy's striving for the next Facebook?
I could go on and on about this subject, but I'll get clobbered.
My grandma taught me the saying "More money than sense." . It's proven incredibly wise
Devil's advocate: if that is true, then why are macbook pros such a hot sell? I'm typing this here in a college library's lobby. When I look around, I see roughly 3/4 of the laptop-using students are using a macbook pro, with a few macbook airs littered around. If I were to walk around and glance at what people were working on, it'd probably be something like 70% youtube/facebook and 30% using some word processor.
My point is that the consumer's decision to buy or abandon a product isn't solely driven by how good the product is, the value of the new item as a "status icon" also has to be taken into account. All you need to get the customer to justify that $2000 price tag is a culture of rabid consumerism and the garauntee that they will be cooler than their friends if they buy this extremely expensive laptop that does all sorts of things they will never ever use.
In your example involving the 2006 PC and the new iPad, I would argue that a huge contributor to the consumer's abandoning of the PC is because it's nowhere near the potency of a status icon as an iPad is.