
Apple Expects To Ship 10 Million Tablets in First Year - Flemlord
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6GpNsdiz204
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chaosmachine
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.

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elai
There were some minor UI improvements, like stacks and expose.

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ams6110
Those came in Leopard, actually.

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kolokonokos
Expose is a lot older than even Leopard, but what he means is that they were
changed in 10.6; therefore there were some (if small) UI changes.

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mcormier
As always, the Macalope says it best.

"January tablet unveiling 'confirmed' by ex-Google employee". Oh, well, then,
that's all we need to WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT THE F-?

<http://twitter.com/TheMacalope/status/7238525063>

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raganwald
But hey, the speculation is bolstered by a quote from Rob Enderle! And he
knows what he's talking about:
<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/09/enderle-joojoo>

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jsz0
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.

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stcredzero
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.

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jsz0
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.

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chengmi
I wonder if the FTC is scratching their heads wondering what to do about Apple
product rumors.

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marze
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.

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zach
But what about iChat video capabilities? That seems like a pretty fun
application.

An electronic picture frame that can receive videophone calls from the
grandkids? Classic 21st-century technology concept.

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zach
Oops, this was already covered here in this thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1024982>

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natrius
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.

[1]
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_sales_surged_25_in_June_says_NPD)
(Extrapolating from one quarter isn't very accurate, but I'm lazy.)

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GHFigs
_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>

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xcombinator
I love tablets!!

I believe they are the future of computers, and Apple will design the thing
the right way, changing the interface if necessary.

A computer doesn't need to be attached to a typewriter machine.

It's good news for everybody. The acers and eees will copy the design and will
make it affordable.

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henrikschroder
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...

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dangrossman
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.

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paul9290
Maybe it has a charging dock with a vga/dvi/hdmi & audio out to connect to LCD
TVs? I'd might buy that!

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bioweek
To sell 10 million in a year, wouldn't these need to be under 100 bucks?

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GHFigs
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.

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rajbot
"former Google Inc. executive Lee Kai-fu"

You would think Bloomberg would at least get his name right..
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee>

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xiaoma
Family names come first in Chinese, Japanese and a number of other languages.
E.g., Chairman Mao was Mao Zedong, not Zedong Mao.

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CamperBob
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

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catch23
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.

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andrew1
Unless I misunderstand you, isn't that basically the same thing we do in
English?

