I quickly realized that Apple's consumer strategy is not unlike IBM's enterprise strategy; both see their future as facilitators, by which I mean each wants to be the premier middleware vendor for its marketplace. IBM claims that by using "WebSphere Everything," companies can connect and integrate any enterprise application and any data to any other application or Web service, making the actual apps themselves far less important.

Apple is doing something quite similar. iLife becomes the middleware that works with any digital camera, any DVD, any video camera. It downloads almost every music CD, it works with every musical instrument, and now it allows you to create your own software portal with iWeb. And iWeb does not require Apple feeds; it will work with any RSS technology.

In essence, Apple is saying, "All of that consumer electronics gear is unimportant. Get the equipment you want at the best price. We'll take care of the hard stuff that makes using it worthwhile."

If Apple can convince consumers that the Mac is the link that allows them to easily access all of their electronic gadgets, they will have pulled off quite a coup. By blending high tech and consumer electronics like nobody else, Apple reduces vendors like Hitachi, Samsung, and Sony to mere hardware shadows, waiting to be commoditized.

And on the high-tech side, any pretense that Redmond knows how to appeal to the consumer with its Windows Media Center, another facilitator wannabe, was blown away by what Jobs showed off at this year's show. Like IBM, Apple appears to understand that in a world of cheap labor and commoditized products, service becomes the competitive differentiator.