I agree with the idea that using a client device as a window into a cloud machine with an arbitrary level of resources on demand is something we will and should move toward.

I strongly disagree with any suggestion that there is no point currently in building a more powerful Mac. Gamers are the best illustration of the phenomenon I'm referring to. Serious gaming is a large market of people who are poorly served by the Mac market and well served by the Windows market, and the difference is NOT that Windows (OS) is inherently better for gaming than Mac (OS) but entirely due to the fact that Apple won't build hardware configured to meet the needs of serious gamers and, worse, refuses to allow anyone else to build good gaming Macs, either. You can get bulky Windows laptops that are much better for gamers (yet no more expensive) than fashionably anorexic Mac laptops, and you can get even better gaming machines for no more money if you buy even bulkier (less-compact) desktops instead of laptops. Relaxing the tight size constraints allows you to provide much more power for the same price. Some people would rather pay for the power than the thinness.

Many developers are in an analogous situation: MacOS itself meets our needs better than alternatives, and Apple can clearly deliver high-end hardware build quality worth paying extra for, but they build hardware optimized for things that don't matter as much to many of us (thinness, elimination of unsightly "lines", minimal connectors, etc.) at the expense of things that matter a lot more. If they doubled the thickness, for example, they could give us more battery life and would have more room for less-compact, cheaper, previous-generation components, giving us more RAM and SSD for the same price.

I believe that thinness is extremely important for some products, such as a tablet (should be large enough for easy reading yet light enough to hand hold for long reading sessions), and a type of laptop for working on the go with a laptop always at your fingertips (frequent business travelers, college students). A MacBook (with more connectors!) would be great for that.

BUT, thinness above all else does not have to be the design ethos for EVERY product line. The MacBook PRO line could use the same OS, high-quality screens, battery mgt., wifi, etc., but be optimized for how much screen (offer a 17" again), battery (replaceable), RAM and SSD (large and upgradeable), and so on, while still being "thin enough". Although various business objectives (ex: wanting to be associated with wealthy, fashionable partiers, not workaday drudges) may make it not useful for Apple, the general idea that there is "no point" in machines optimized for power instead of thinness is wrong.