And that's great for the consumer market. Between online and brick-and-mortar, the Apple Store can meet just about any need consumers may have.

Small businesses, though, are not consumers. To really meet small business needs, you have to be able to speak their languages and live where they live. Short of opening an Apple Store on every block in every small town across the country, the best way for Apple to do this is to show a little bit of humility and make it easier for independent VARs to offer Apple products.

This means making it a bit less byzantine to become and remain an Apple reseller, and giving resellers the opportunity to make fair profitability on selling Apple wares. VARs are used to making thin margins on hardware and making up for it with higher-value services. But now, it's often hard for them to get Apple gear for a price that's anything better than them going and buying it at the Apple Store themselves, making any markup at all impossible.

That has to change for VARs to get serious about Apple, and if Apple wants to advance in the small business space, it needs the VAR community--the folks who know their small business customers and their IT environments--to start building solutions that include or wrap around Apple hardware and software.

And these kinds of relationships should be right up Cook's alley--he spent a good part of his early career running a computer reseller business, as well as a long stint in IBM's personal computer business, which built itself into an SMB powerhouse largely through its channel partnerships.