I'm really interested to see how they handle this in the future. Apple is now selling the Air as a new product to Mac users (many people have an Air, and a MBP/iMac). If they consolidate the brands into one and they're essentially the same, they'll no longer "double end" some customers.

Exactly. While there will always be users who need optical support, it's just not practical. I consult with small businesses and consumers all the time and I rarely ever see a need for an optical drive when someone uses Mac hardware and software.

I can't wait until it's gone. Give me a lighter Macbook Pro with even better battery life.

Incredible.

I'm pumped for this and your theories are very interesting. The most exciting thing about this for me is that the platforms and devices for communication are being unified. I think it's awesome that you can call my Voice number from a landline and it rings on my PC through Gizmo5 and my cell at the same time, with voicemail being emailed or text messaged to me.
VOIP being a standard for communication with 3G/4G and Wifi everywhere. I love it.

Nice list. Is it just me, or does Delicious seem a little too.. "blah" for 2009? I use it for nearly all my bookmarks because the Firefox extension is so helpful, but there's really nothing innovative about it. I like StumbleUpon for finding cool stuff, and Diigo sounds like it could be a winner too...

Dave, I'm a daily Thunderbird user and I use Gmail as well for an account, which is tied to Thunderbird as well with IMAP. I've also had Office Pro 03 installed for years, and most recently 07. All of your points are right on and I agree 100% with you.

Outlook has tighter integration but overall I end up never using it. The RAM hit is about 60-80k, where Tbird comes in at around 20-25K.

I have 7 emails forwarding into 1 IMAP account, which filter into designated folders and 3 other IMAP accounts (one is a Gmail). Outlook is terrible for this. Everytime I click Send/Receive Outlook takes about 30-60 seconds until it's done. Tbird gets mail in about 2 seconds. Outlook 07 looks great and works nice too, but I keep getting draw back to Tbird, it just works so much better for my needs.

The only thing Outlook has is integration, especially at an enterprise level. And hopefully in the coming years Open Source will prevail and slowly eliminate proprietary formats and bloated software. Even Google is onboard is open formats. Go Open Office, Thunderbird and Firefox!

I agree with the first commenter that some companies may want to simply stay out of the loop of managing their data and worrying about running servers. However, I would definitely want some type of control over my data. A SaaS could provide backup of data all day long, but what type of data backup are they doing? A huge factor for me in deciding to use SaaS or Cloud software would be what type of data portability they offer. I don't think it would be smart to build your business on just any platform. What happens if the company increases SaaS prices? What happens if the cloud software company decides to stop updating software? Or what if a new software comes out that has a ton of better features? I don't want to be locked in to something ever.

Data portability is king. If I can pull ALL of my data out and import into something new within hours, I'd be willing to give different solutions a shot. I don't like when SaaS companies and Cloud software don't offer any way to transport data out. In my opinion, this should be the number one feature on any SaaS or Cloud software.

Great list! I LOVE Disqus and am a big fan. Any reason you chose intensedebate over Disqus for your blog?
Also how's Yahoo analytics? Never tried them as I've been a Google analytics fan for awhile now.

Anyways, great article!