To be fair, John Gruber's a pretty levelheaded guy, so it's not like this is coming from applefanboysnewseveryday.com
His broader point--that Apple likely wants to move the iPad into Q3/Q4 (calendar, not Apple fiscal) is well taken. But I would suspect we'd get an earlier iPad launch to foreshadow it, e.g. iPad 3 in mid-January 2012, followed by iPad 4 in mid-October 2012. By all indications the iPad 2 isn't coming until late March. That only leaves seven months for an iPad 3 event.
But maybe they'll work it into the lineup as a Pro (or as I speculated in another thread, a "Retina" model) and not pass down the retina features for a few months on the lesser models, and then not refresh the entire lineup until September/October 2012.
No doubt, they went at this wrong initially. The wanted the hype machine and they got it, but it left them poorly positioned to compete in the future. Some round of iPad adopters are going to get screwed in the switch from Q2 to Q4 (calendar), plain and simple.
But I think if the iPad 3 is the power-house high resolution display that most people don't think is currently feasible, then they can launch the high-end model in October 2011, pass the upgrades along in a soft launch of iPad 3 in March, and then roll out a big show for iPad 4 in Q3 2012. They could supplement this by doing a major iOS revision with iOS 6.0, to be previewed in Q1/Q2 2012, and roll-out big hardware changes in iPad 4 a couple quarters later.
The tablet space is competitive enough to support two iPad upgrades in a single year. The iPhone went through some major changes in its first year and widespread adoption didn't really occur until the 3GS. There is certainly precedent for growing pains until Apple has properly matured the iPad lineup.
