Snow Leopard ("0 new features") makes more sense in light of this. They let the engineers concentrate on decreasing the footprint and improving performance, while the UI/design team was pulled off to work on the tablet.
If I recall correctly this was the goal Steve Jobs set for the first year of iPhone sales also. I'm not sure Apple will have as much success with the tablet right away unless they get very aggressive with pricing. The iPhone was a type of product people have always wanted. It was an easy sell being so ahead of its competition at the time. Apple has to cultivate a market for the tablet and convince people they want it.
Steve Jobs probably has at least one particular annoyance in mind that this tablet solves for people. But it may be an annoyance such that we're not even aware of it so much as a problem. It may be a "fact of life" to us.
With the iPhone, I was aware that there were many times I was annoyed that the data on my phone didn't match the data on my computer. I was also tired of carrying around an iPod and a phone and a PDA.
If the tablet has enough computing resources, then it could solve the data sync problem. I can simply have the "master copy" of all of my data with me, all the time. You can do this with a USB stick, but you can't do anything with the data in transit unless you stick it in a netbook. With tools like Bonjour, Apple should be able to make all of your devices and MobileMe seamlessly sync with a master copy of your data. You always have it at hand. If you have an idea, and want to make a quick note or a sketch, then you do it, and it's a part of your main data and not in some note-taking thing off to the side.
That would be a good enhancement to both a tablet and the iPhone. I've begun to use my iDisk in this fashion after the release of the iDisk app for the iPhone but that's basically limited to viewing (selected) file types. If all third party apps could read/write to iDisk it would be far more useful to me.
All the device needs for phone functionality is a blue tooth radio and a cellular radio, which is nearly free in terms of component cost, especially since a cellular radio would be required anyway for ebook and eperiodical functionality.
As of 2008, Apple sells 2.5 million Macs a quarter[1], which gives 10 million Macs per year. There's no way to sell 10 million units of a device that doesn't do anything your existing devices can't do. If the "tablet" is actually just a touch screen MacBook, then this makes sense.
Apple sold 3.05 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 17 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 10.2 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones in the quarter, representing seven percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. -- http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/19results.html
Why would tablets be the future of computers? At home I have a 22" widescreen standing on my desk, in what way would my computing experience become better by me carrying that around?
Why would Apple successfully design the thing the right way? They have a good track record, but past performance is not a guarantee of future performance...
Sounds to me like he's expecting them to have recreated BumpTop (the 3D multitouch UI for Windows) on OS X. It'll be hailed as innovative and revoutionary I'm sure.
Apple sold in excess of 10 million iPods last quarter, most of which were priced above $100. That's in addition to 7 million iPhones.
My own pet theory is that a new device will carry the iPod brand (e.g. "iPod Slate") and take the top price point ($399) from the Touch. They might not sell 2.5 million in the first quarter at that, but I can easily see sales ramping up to meet 10 million if the device is even remotely interesting.
The frustrating thing is that many Asians are starting to reverse their names when working with the rest of the world. If "Kai-Fu Lee" sends me an email, I'll have no idea how to address him ("Hi, Lee", "Hi, Kai-Fu", "Hi, Mr. Lee," and so forth). :-P
If it helps, chinese often address other chinese using their given name rather than the family name, otherwise it would be pretty annoying to address each other within the family. If it's a formal greeting, use the family name, otherwise use the given name.
Or is it "Dr. Kai-Fu"? That's the question I'm asking... how can I tell if my correspondent has already swapped his names in the belief that he's following the Western custom?
