This news doesn't excite me in the least. We don't need another laptop; we've got laptops. What we really need is a Mac tablet!!!
I agree that a tablet would indeed be a "killer ap," and the ultimate suppliment to one's desktop (or other main computer), but we have to keep in mind the most important thing at which no tablet to date has succeeded at: Portability.
We can rattle on about wish-lists and must-have-features, but what we really need is a unit that is light, thin, and has a long battery life. One needs to be able to easily carry the tablet in one hand and interface with the other. I see these as the most important goals in creating a tablet.
In order to accomplish this, we'll have to sacrifice a lot of power. That being said, I don't see how, at this point, we could give it any more complex of an OS than the iPhone and therefore, bmight just be dismissed as just "a big iPhone." Maybe that's what we need, but I'm assuming that people are going to want its capabilities to lie somewhere between the iPhone's and the MacBook's. If this is that case, I think we have a year or two to wait.
See, the iPhone's UI is limited by the size of its screen. Surely the SOCs inside the iPhone will become more powerful, but you'll never be able to run a program that requires a larger screen. A tablet, however, could use these moblie chips and benefit from a the larger screen, as that is its niche, so I forsee a resurgence of "true" tablets in a year or so, as we really start to chart out more-and-more powerful SOCs.
Wow. That ended up being sort of a thread-jack. Sorry, all.
Summary: I don't see an adequate tablet being a reality for another couple years.
-Clive