It's obvious that you've never done a FCC certification for a product. A manufacturer doesn't send the FCC anything but the test data on a product. The FCC doesn't do a thing except review the certification application and issue a number. Their revue is mostly to see that you've included all the necessary test data and included a check.
You just include any data and a check and that's it. What is represented in the data doesn't matter?
Apple tends not to design products from the inside out. If someone radicaly changes the location and or the material that the module is embedded inside of that has non-substative impact on the values?
I can see no change if hold the module constant, but then you are designing the device around the FCC certification. Does that sound like Apple's typical approach?
However, your missing the point. Whether you send the device in or rules the regulated tests internally and send the data in (to be certified/checked) you have
still announced publically that you are going to deliver X.
At that point it can't be a "...oh one more thing". It is no longer rumor on existance it is only a rumor on when. "When" isn't a "one more thing" worthy of an issue. So might as well just announce since it can no longer be a "ta da" event. it is the open, public filing aspect that is critical.
Apple is not open and is not public.
During the life of the iPhone it may go through many revisions and still have the same FCC certification number. A manufacturer has a lot more latitude then you imagine.
but the iPhone is out. Everyone and their mother knows there will be another iPhone next summer and more iPods next September.
Once it is out, were the wall of secrecy?
Frankly find it doubtful can use an iPhone/iTouch certification on this new product by just ripping exactly the same submodule out but putting into a complete different container with different constraints.
.... I don't know what that may be in Apple's case, but they have made some steps in gathering the the basic memory, and modules they need already.
why gather parts in quantity to a device you haven't finished designing yet?? All that does is put the parts on your inventory. That is money out the door which isn't coming back. What if buy 10" screens and later decide that a clamshell with two 7" screens is better. What going to do with those stack of 10" parts?
There is a stacking when you are trying to do a build up before launch if expect a demand crush on launch day. But thoses parts are going into finished products that are being stockpiled as product.... not a huge warehouse of parts. Stacks of parts is the opposite of just in time manufacturing.
[ If go back to when Apple was having gobs of finance problems there were stacks of products on the inventory. That is something they avoid like the plague now. ]
However, if their end-user feedback indicates that the product has something fundamentally wrong that isn't easily correctable, then they may not pull the trigger to turn on manufacturing.
If don't have that feedback yet why even run tests and submit to the FCC?
if it just a hack in development just run around without certs. If turns out that doesn't verify that check you just sent the FCC is money down the drain.
There's where you and I differ. I would expect that the different prototypes are indeed helping Apple determine that they are on target with their earlier marketing ideas.
Here is where you and I differ. I think Apple
did that already for last n years where Jobs have nuked version after version of this up till this point.
These rumors are usually about " I just/recently saw" and blah blah blah. If folks were saying "A year ago I saw..." then sure. At this point, where dotting the i's and crossing the t's.... It is mainly cooked at this point.
They may have folks trying to work bugs out of what they already decided to do.
I can't even comment on this. You aren't making sense in ignoring the synergism a well-thought-out ecosystem can leverage a new product's value.
You were trying to assert there is some ecosystem where the OS and app store are primary components of that ecosystem. The app store is OS agnostic. You can buy apps on Windows, Mac OS X , or iPhone OS. That 'ecosystem' you speak of makes the OS where you purchased them a non issue. That is the seemless/system aspect they have provided. So in the ecosystem of buying the apps, the OS isn't really a major factor.
If talking about the ecosystem of where you run apps... then the app store is immaterial. How you get apps to the machine is not a major factor in their usability. Has impact on feeding impulse buying habits, but it doesn't make them easier to use ( or find particularly to find when there are herds of duplicates clogging the store. )
Windows is not doomed or significantly impeded because there is no singular apps store for that OS. Having enough apps is more important than having them all in a single store. There is tons of hype about Apple's single store because it is relatively unique; not because it, in and of itself, is critical.
The store was indeed important in facilitating the gold rush of apps into the ecosystem. However, once there is an ecosystem there is little to support that it is really a critical factor. People do not spend large blocks of time in the store... unless they are now shopaholics. I can see how being shopaholics benefits apple, it is the user benefits that are cloudy.
. To me, this is a niche market at best and would rather see other hardware solutions than a tablet, but i say that knowing this has a market somewhere, just not me. I just think people don't want a scaled down OS on a tablet device for all intensive purposes will cost $1000 or more.
