The duet and the mini work fine if your external storage is usb. And you can buy the discounted previous generation mini for a fw400 port and full sized dvi (tho the new one comes with an adapter). Really, this shouldn't disuade you from a mini audio system.
It'd be pointless to have that much speed for a music server, tho. You're not going to push that much bandwidth for any music task. I use it for weather prediction
I used a sony picturebook for a year. It's a compromise I'm ok with. I mostly use my macbook on my desk, where I could just as easily use my mini. For everything else, the netbook is perfect.
I think the problem is that what they're doing is descriptive rather than predictive. And alarmist to generate funding. That worked really well, NOAA got $170 million for climate research in the obama boondoggle.
People said that about firewire too...
but even if they do, there are LOTS of good keyboards out there. You're not limited to what apple sells.
I like the smaller keyboards, honestly.