I'd like to know also why people expect Mac OS/X on the tablet.
Agreed. The air and a tablet would fit into different categories. I have an air and it does not disappoint.
I'm glad you like the AIR but for many of us the initial device was a huge disappointment. It is probably the best Apple example of failure due to an excessive focus on design over function.
They improved the machine a lot with the NVidia chipset but in my opinion it still doesn't offer everthing a laptop should offer. Even that would be so bad but we gave $399 Netbooks far outclassing AIR in features. In the end I highly doubt that AIR brings in enough revenue to justify the whole development process.
Why are all these people hoping the tablet runs full OSX? Just get a laptop. The tablet will run iPhone OS.
That is what I'd like to know myself. Mac OS/X simply would be a huge mistake. I think part of the problem is that people look at iPhones tiny screen and equate that functionality with a tablet. That won't be the case at all; much of what is seen on iPhone are apps, these can beceasily enhanced to offer up even more features on a tablet. Those fatures can be easily supported by the larger screen and faster hardware.
Part of the problem is that Anericans are so technically ignorant now that the don't know the difference between an app and an operating system. On the iPhone all that users really see are the apps, the OS for the most part is hidden away. About the only thing that can be considered OS related might ve Spring board and the preferences pane.
Also when it comes to the tablet Apple might see web apps as the future for some services. E-Mail might be a good example with Apple dropping the native app.
Note right now I'd hate to see that happen as I prefer the native E-Mail client. However an E-Mail service accessed with a full HTML 5 client, on a fast machine, might not be that bad. In the end though we are still talking about iPhone OS, the apps and services might be different but does anybody expect Apple to simply port the apps over with no effort to use the new screen real. estate?
Well some apps they might due simply to the lack of need to add features. But let's face it Safari on a tablet could use a few more features than what is offered up by iPhone. With more RAM and faster hardware those features are easy to add. All would still use the Multi Touch base that comes from iPhone.
Plus on top of all of this it is well known that the tech in iPhone was acquired from tablet project at Apple that has yet to see the light of day. This should be most significant as one can easily imagine a triming process to prune that code base to fit an iPhone as originally speced. All Apple needs to do now is to finish off that development, make sure it is compatible with iPhone software and sell it to us in a cheap tablet.
Dave