This is not about old tech being left behind, this is about the professionals being left behind. As a Mac user for over a decade, I need power systems and screen real estate for editing/work/etc. Sorry but HD rendering on MacBook Pro's or even a Core i7 iMac is painfully slow. My 12-Core Mac Pro (now 2010 parts, how's Apple leaving that old tech behind?), gets through my work, and time=money for my projects.
Tablet's and mobile devices are handy, but they will never, ever replace desktop workstations. This Apple notion that the desktop is dead in a "post-PC era" is so ludicrous it's amazing. Five years ago, if such a statement had been made from a non-Steve Jobs source there would have been angry mobs. Since Jobs pushed it, and since the company has made billions on cheaper MacBook Pro's, iPhone's, and iPad's compared to the PowerMac G4/5's and three CCFL LCD's that once garnered Apple praise from the design industry, it must be true. I had 2 23" Apple CCFL LCD's that lasted 7 years, I replaced them with the [then] 24" LED LCD's that were basically iMac panel's in a smaller form factor. The cables are so short I had to buy Mini-Display Port and USB extension cables to reach my Mac Pro. Add the external monitor needed for my work, and no, iPad's and ultrabooks will never cut it. Not any time soon. I couldn't imagine working on anything smaller than 24".
Just because a company neglects a market while making money on the mobile market (which has always been lucrative) doesn't mean OS X and pro-systems are dead. There will need to be room at the table for both, period.
As for OS X, it's disgraceful that OpenGL 4.0 Core support is lagging, HFS+ is in dire need of a replacement (and shame as Leopard beta's had ZFS but Apple was late in the game with SunSystems), 10.8 has improved memory management but still needs work, and the iOS features HAVE taken engineering focus away from improving an overall OS X experience. Lion was a disaster, and I've been a developer for a long time. I cannot believe they removed full support for iPhoto image retrieval within the app via "Time Machine", I couldn't care less about Facebook integration, and not supporting full 64-bit systems on 10.8 with an EFI64 is disgraceful as many Mac Pro's were advertised as full 64-bit. This will lead to issues for Apple, who seems as of late more focused on spending their billions in cash on lawsuits than innovation.
When Jobs returned to Apple, he cut back and focused on four segments:
When Jobs returned to Apple after the departure of John Sculley, he quickly realizes that product development had gone out of control and the company was spending resources on huge variety of products without any focus. Jobs cut through the red tape by deciding they should narrow their focus to four targets, and drew a grid to illustrate it. On the x axis he included "professional" and "consumer" users and on the vertical he had "desktop" and "portable" computers. This simple grid was able to focus resources on designing features for specific users, rather than target a product at the entire market.
This has not changed. Apple simply brought on consumers with iPhones and iOS, the professionals never left, Apple decided on shaking them when he told pro's after buying "Shake" "their opinion will no longer be needed."
This idea that desktops and such are done is an Apple concept. While the mobile market has grown, it's important to analyze the figures not my numbers but in relativity to markets and other vendors. So Apple is now a consumer company, professionals and businesses will have to spend their millions on system and software license upgrades else where.