I read the whole thing and it's nothing more than pure speculation and "analisys." What I took from it is that The Apple Tablet will be a full working device like the many tablets we've seen since the beginning of the decade.
Is the author someone famous in the Valley or something?
Cringely opined some years ago that tech companies evolve through three categories (or stages of development): technology driven, sales driven, and marketing driven.
There's an assumption in this ontology: that growth and evolution of a tech company is predicated on new technology.
The new (post-1997, Jobs II) Apple breaks this rule. Apple is design driven, at a level that makes more sense to folks with a Fine Art degree than a CS background. (The reason for their success? Lots of folks with an aesthetic background like this stuff and will pay extra for it.) They're seeking a better user experience, vertically integrated at all levels with their web ecosystem.
Gruber -- who's been tracking apple for something like 20 years -- gets this. J. Random Gizmo columnist doesn't.
That said, I don't think his analysis is that great in this particular article, that's why I quoted the word analysis in my original post. Like I said, this feels like pure speculation backed by intuition on the author's part. His analysis doesn't use any sort of sales numbers or statistics to show where the market is heading and why Apply would take certain decisions.
Yes, it feels like that. Since he explicitly says as much in the article. Few other Apple pundits are so self-aware.
Edit: it's also already a failed site. Its name pretends to a comprehensiveness that is belied by the meager three dates on which he's posted, the latest of which is in September, 2009. Gruber posts something almost daily-surely he's been wrong about something since September?
2. don't see any hate speech
do you remember the industry's response to the iphone when it was first announced? most observers thought it was the dumbest thing they'd ever seen. the general reaction was that apple was suffering from hubris of monstrous proportions to think they could enter into this market, with no history or reputation, and succeed. i didn't know whether it would be successful or not, but i knew i wanted one, real bad. it turns out that there were a lot of us.
apple succeeded with the iphone far beyond anyone's wildest expectations. probably moreso than jobs himself thought possible. they didn't just make a successful product, they completely upended the mobile phone business. it will never be the same again.
with any luck, we are now entering another period exactly like that one. apple is about to release a product that most people think couldn't possibly be successful. no one is willing to come out and say it will be a huge flop this time, because apple is now on a decade-long winning streak. betting against them is foolish.
apple's tablet has the potential to shake up the computer business in the same way that the iphone shook up the mobile phone business. if it does, this could be the beginning of a very exciting time indeed.
The only ones in denial were competitors. Users and bloggers loved it since day one, and by day one I mean the day Apple announced it, not the day Apple released it.
generally speaking, the tech press is deeply suspicious of everything apple does. most of their articles are some variation of "gosh, apple sure doesn't act very much like microsoft. why is that? of course they also make computers, so they should act like a combination of microsoft and dell. if they did, they sure would be a lot more successful."
If the people in the tech press could invent (or understand invention when they saw it), they wouldn't work for the tech press.
Honestly, you and I both reached the same conclusion: Apple's tablet will be better thanks to Apple's great execution. I just don't understand why the article gets son many up-votes. We should expect those results from Apple based on what they've done with their other products.