Today, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld, and unveiled four new products. Some were disappointed. Others were in awe. But instead of going through each product individually, I want to look at the big picture – the overall theme of Macworld this year. Clearly, the theme this year was wireless. It was portability. It was moving away from the desktop computer as we know it.

At the beginning of this year, I predicted that we would see technology becoming more portable, as well as moving towards the living room. Desktops were to become machines only going to be used by content-creators and scientists doing high-end work. And indeed, in just the first two weeks of the year, we have seen the 8-core Mac Pros get brushed aside, for the announcement of the AppleTV 2.0 and the MacBook Air – the products that target portability and the home theater. What many considered a mediocre keynote, could possibly be the beginning of the next 5 years of technology. I want to talk about the three main themes that I observed from this keynote.

The Computer is NOT the digital hub

Remember 2007? Everyone was talking about how the computer was the center of the digital hub. You would take pictures and import them onto your computer. You would download music, and then sync them to your iPod from your computer. And if you wanted to watch content on your TV, you would have to get it from the computer. This year we saw a completely different focus. “The computer is no longer required”. AppleTV 2.0 isn’t a portal into your computer anymore. Now it is a portal into the Internet. You can buy music, download podcasts, rent movies, watch youtube videos, and look at your flickr photos all from your couch with the new AppleTV. This is really a revolution. Apple has made it so easy to browse through content from your TV and download it instantly. The computer no longer has to be a middle-man.

Wireless, Wireless, Wireless

The shining star of Macworld this year was the MacBook Air. It made me stop and think of just how much my life has gone wireless. Networking. Transferring files. Internet. Printing. Most of the things I do on my laptop today, I do wirelessly. And with the introduction of the Time Capsule, a companion to Time Machine, you can now backup wirelessly over the network with 802.11n networking speed. Also, Apple is innovating with technologies like Remote Disk, which allow you to access an optical disk wirelessly from over the network. We are beginning to see wireless in more and more things, and portability is becoming an even more important factor in consumer electronic devices.

Software, not Hardware

This Macworld, we saw three of Apple’s four product lines get software updates that expanded the functionality of the products. What is this showing us? No longer does there need to be a hardware change for new features to be added. Locations was added to the iPhone. Maps and Mail were added to the iPod Touch. And Movie Rentals, along with a new interface were added to the AppleTV. As software makes our devices more useful, people will start becoming more accustomed to paying for quality software that makes their lives better.

Macworld 2008 was a great look into the future of this year. The world is moving away from the desktop computer, to the living room. The world is becoming more and more wireless and portable. And finally, innovative software is being released that enhances the functionality of existing hardware. While we may not have seen anything mind-blowing, we definitely got a look at the future. And it looks like Apple is right on the forefront.