[oil pan 4]

True power and watts are the samething.
Apperant power and VoltAmps are the samething

True power or wattage is when amps and volts consumption happen on the same order of magnatude at the same time.
Since electrical power, alternating current in north America switches directions 120 times a second. In that time voltage at a 120 volt wall socket goes from 0 to 170 to 0 volts each time. And yes you do get 170 volts at a 120v outlet, but you also get 0 volts too.
In a perfect world with a power factor of 1 every time that alternating current going to a device hit the peak voltage the amperage draw would peak in the same instant and go back down at the same rate as the voltage. The amp draw would perfectly follow voltage.
This perfect unity of voltage and current flow only happens in purely resistive loads such as light bulbs and base board heaters.

In a world where you have AC motors, transformers, solid state switching devices somthing rather odd happens. Peak or peaks in current flow start to lag behind the peak in voltage.
This is really bad for a laundry list of reasons.
As the voltage peaks, current being drawn by a device keeps rising, this continued increase in current draw can be happening while the voltage of a cycle is drawing down.
This is when current flow peaks and voltage peaks shift out of line with each other.

This shift is called power factor.

Watts are kind of like a measure of the work your boss sees you do. The VoltAmps are your job plus all the other crap you have to put up with and do to get your job done.
That is about the most easy and least accurate way to breake it down.
I have other comparisons that break watts and voltamps down using drunk loggers or trains pulling traincars.