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.
As always, the Macalope says it best.<p>"January tablet unveiling 'confirmed' by ex-Google employee". Oh, well, then, that's all we need to WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT THE F-?<p><a href="http://twitter.com/TheMacalope/status/7238525063" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/TheMacalope/status/7238525063</a>
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.
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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_sales_surged_25_in_June_says_NPD" rel="nofollow">http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_...</a> (Extrapolating from one quarter isn't very accurate, but I'm lazy.)
I love tablets!!<p>I believe they are the future of computers, and Apple will design the thing the right way, changing the interface if necessary.<p>A computer doesn't need to be attached to a typewriter machine.<p>It's good news for everybody. The acers and eees will copy the design and will make it affordable.
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.
"former Google Inc. executive Lee Kai-fu"<p>You would think Bloomberg would at least get his name right..
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee</a>