I don’t see Apple doing away with the 13” laptop altogether, but the Macbook might not be long for this world. The 11” Air matches its price point, and feature-wise, it’s squeezed between the Air and the 13” Pro. It’s also the only plastic Mac left in the lineup, and looks increasingly out of place.
Macbooks sell really well, especially during back-to-school, so they’re probably not in a hurry to pull the plug until the Air proves it can meet that market.
The Mini isn’t going anywhere. It’s Apple’s small business server, and killing the XServe has solidified that niche. The Mac Pro definitely isn’t going anywhere — it’s the flagship workstation for serious graphics and video production work, and with Autocad returning to the Mac, there’s a whole new niche market where Apple will become a serious player.
For better than a decade now, Apple has promoted the Mac as the hub — initially with CD and DVD burning and printing as a big part, now with the ‘Net, Apple TV and iDevices as the destinations. I think they’d love a scenario where a family of five has an iMac, a Macbook Air, and a couple of iPads. The Mac and iTunes are still very much that hub.
Apple’s gazillion-dollar data center in North Carolina is a big question mark. More cloud-based services, especially full cloud-based backup, would go a long way toward making the iDevices stand alone, but Apple’s model is still to have them as a companion for the computer, preferably a Mac.
I think that's more because of Apple's insistence to use iTunes, than their willful decision to make typical PCs the foundation of their company.
I bet one of the big uses for that data center is for a way to do iTunes on the cloud, thereby eliminating the need to tether to a regular PC.
With Apple, as dayglored hints at, thin is in. Not just physical size, but thin-client type devices.