The future of Apple in three words. Screen plus app.

With cloud city being turned on, Apple can deliver services just about anywhere. What services might those be?

Yes, videos, streaming music. App downloads. iPhone backups. Location-based advertising knowledge. Blah blah blah.

Still, in looking across the breadth of Apple hardware, software, services, support, innovation and history, it all meets at the intersection of:

visual presentation and intuitive interaction

For the foreseeable future, that will manifest itself in screens, UI, data, data presentation, download, access and streaming.

So, yes, I do expect there to be an Apple Television -- an actual television, not a box. The mouse will be the remote.

And Apple screens, possibly based on iOS in automobiles, in fast food outlets, on elevators, on screens underneath the atrium in big office buildings. Just about everywhere.

I have said many times that iPad is the world's biggest (virtual) storefront. We enter through iPad to shop, to try and buy, to design. Anything. That will serve as the metaphor for the direction of Apple.

Visual presentation via screens. Touch controls (hand/mouse/remote/other) based on its proven UI and standards. Monetizable data sets, presently in the form of apps.

• reading
• watching
• writing
• locating
• learning
• building
• buying
• designing
• confirming
• paying
• creating
• voting
• opening
• on
• and off

Apple provides the gateway (device/screen), the platform (iTunes, App Store, Cloud City), and the presentation mode (app and OS).

That's the direction Apple is heading in. Yes, it's obvious. But, they are ahead of anyone else and the potential market is so vast as to likely be incalculable. So I thought I would mention it.