It would only be backing away from his comments if he were still CEO and if you assume he actually believed 7 inch tablets were inferior to 10 inch tablets. Since Tim Cook is now in charge, he is able to assert his own beliefs and visions related to their products. What Steve said is a whole other era, and things will be different now. Tim very well may have always disagreed with Steve about tablet size, and if so then him making this decision would not be about backing away from Jobs' comments, but rather him taking the company in a different direction under his tenure.
People always reference things Steve Jobs said to illustrate that either Steve was wrong or that Apple is flip flopping, but here is the thing about Steve's past comments... He was a master marketer and salesman (among other things) and he would say what he needed to say to sell his product. When he was proclaiming the perfection of 10 inch tablets, his company did not yet have a 7 inch tablet, so of course he is going to call them junk. Now, to his credit, most of them were in fact junk (if not all), but even if there were some good 7 inch tablets, he is going to say they suck because he wants you to believe that you want/need his tablet more than all the others.