Apple performed a complete, ground-up redesign of their entire iOS UI layer from drawing board to shipping product in less than a year. Evolving a platform isn't a quick or easy task. It took Google maybe 3-4 years to pivot Android into a truly effective iOS competitor, and MS took even longer to respond because they had to start again from scratch. However adding a digitiser and better keyboard support, if they ever bother, would take a few months work. Even for much more ambitious projects Apple has demonstrated they are at the top of their game and as agile as ever, or as anyone else.
They may well add the digitizer, but I don't think Apple will bother with better keyboard support than they already have. I think they view laptops and tablets as being complementary devices. A digitizer might make a tablet a better tablet, but a keyboard just turns it into an inferior laptop.
As tablets do evolve Apple's advantages in market share, app ecosystem dominance, software development and their 64-bit processor technology head start all place them on the strategic high ground in all the ways that matter.
> Apple performed a complete, ground-up redesign of their entire iOS UI layer from drawing board to shipping product in less than a year.
Well, but that's mostly redrawing the existing widgets, it looks different, but works like how it used to work. (They added some stuff like the control center on the bottom, but they haven't really _changed_ how things work.) Also, I don't consider it to be a successful restyling (it's less straigthforward to figure out whether an icon is a button or not, and so on), but that might also be a matter of taste. What I'm trying to say is adding a digitizer to iOS does not mean that you only need to write drivers and design the hardware -- you need to change some UI paradigms. And that's hard. Windows classic desktop is now touch and digitizer-enabled in the case of Surface Pro, but the whole thing is not too useful.
Apple is in a difficult position exactly because iPad Mini is so successful at the moment. Eventually large phones will devour that market as one mobile device (large phone) is usually better than two mobile devices (phone+tablet), or at least that's my prediction. They must target the same use case what Surface is trying to target: a super-lightweight laptop replacement what can sometimes be used as a tablet but renders your old, clunky laptop mostly irrelevant.
I don't think it'll get devoured. iPad in general has had enough of a headstart to have an ecosystem grow around it. Whether individual consumers will leave iPad mini for one larger combined mobile devices, perhaps. But I think we'll see a trend of iPad minis get used in businesses and dedicated single-use devices (we're seeing it with POS some already - that will likely grow). Now, it may be that android 7" tablets take some of that market too, but... I'm not sure it will. cheap android tables (sub $100) aren't all that usable for day to day business stuff (I've tried a few - mighty slow, for starters), compared to the punchiness of an iPad mini.
The entire market for tablets may shrink if consumers opt for just one larger device, but iPad mini will likely still be a steady device for a long time to come. Now that I've said it, apple will drop them next quarter! ;)
They may well add the digitizer, but I don't think Apple will bother with better keyboard support than they already have. I think they view laptops and tablets as being complementary devices. A digitizer might make a tablet a better tablet, but a keyboard just turns it into an inferior laptop.
As tablets do evolve Apple's advantages in market share, app ecosystem dominance, software development and their 64-bit processor technology head start all place them on the strategic high ground in all the ways that matter.