I think he used laptops as metaphor for web (social networks, blogs, etc). There are so many ideas but none of them is yours. The more your mind is surrounded with other people ideas, the harder it is to come up with something original and fresh.
That said I believe there is a fine line between aping someone and getting inspired by someone, and that is something you have to navigate on your own. I don't know why, but I always think about Steve Jobs ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU) whenever I face something like this. It's like a metric. What can I learn from this which applied to my work makes it great?