Fred Wilson, one of the most prominent VC bloggers who blogs at AVC.com, had a post up talking how his desire to get a mouse and keyboard to control a Mac connected to a TV was futile. Instead, he downloaded a little app, Mobile Air Mouse Pro, for his iPhone/iPod Touch and solved his desire to have full control of a Mac connected to a TV, through his existing portable device. Software for an existing device proved more powerful than purchasing new, special purpose hardware to interact remotely with the Mac.
Software is more powerful than hardware.
Of course, for software to be more powerful, the hardware needs to have a modicum of speed, storage, standard protocols, and more. Great software won’t do too much to help useless hardware. When hardware has a baseline of power, much as it has in the desktop and laptop world for several years now, the improvements have been incremental at best. The real advancements over the past few years has been from software for programs like games, web applications, and utilities. Look for the future breakthroughs to continue to come from software.