Apple Expects To Ship 10 Million Tablets in First Year | Hacker News Reader

Apple Expects To Ship 10 Million Tablets in First Year

bloomberg.com

32 pointsFlemlord28 comments

Snow Leopard ("0 new features") makes more sense in light of this. They let the engineers concentrate on decreasing the footprint and improving performance, while the UI/design team was pulled off to work on the tablet.

There were some minor UI improvements, like stacks and expose.

Those came in Leopard, actually.

Expose is a lot older than even Leopard, but what he means is that they were changed in 10.6; therefore there were some (if small) UI changes.

As always, the Macalope says it best.

"January tablet unveiling 'confirmed' by ex-Google employee". Oh, well, then, that's all we need to WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT THE F-?

http://twitter.com/TheMacalope/status/7238525063

But hey, the speculation is bolstered by a quote from Rob Enderle! And he knows what he's talking about: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/09/enderle-joojoo

If I recall correctly this was the goal Steve Jobs set for the first year of iPhone sales also. I'm not sure Apple will have as much success with the tablet right away unless they get very aggressive with pricing. The iPhone was a type of product people have always wanted. It was an easy sell being so ahead of its competition at the time. Apple has to cultivate a market for the tablet and convince people they want it.

Steve Jobs probably has at least one particular annoyance in mind that this tablet solves for people. But it may be an annoyance such that we're not even aware of it so much as a problem. It may be a "fact of life" to us.

With the iPhone, I was aware that there were many times I was annoyed that the data on my phone didn't match the data on my computer. I was also tired of carrying around an iPod and a phone and a PDA.

If the tablet has enough computing resources, then it could solve the data sync problem. I can simply have the "master copy" of all of my data with me, all the time. You can do this with a USB stick, but you can't do anything with the data in transit unless you stick it in a netbook. With tools like Bonjour, Apple should be able to make all of your devices and MobileMe seamlessly sync with a master copy of your data. You always have it at hand. If you have an idea, and want to make a quick note or a sketch, then you do it, and it's a part of your main data and not in some note-taking thing off to the side.

That would be a good enhancement to both a tablet and the iPhone. I've begun to use my iDisk in this fashion after the release of the iDisk app for the iPhone but that's basically limited to viewing (selected) file types. If all third party apps could read/write to iDisk it would be far more useful to me.

I wonder if the FTC is scratching their heads wondering what to do about Apple product rumors.

All the device needs for phone functionality is a blue tooth radio and a cellular radio, which is nearly free in terms of component cost, especially since a cellular radio would be required anyway for ebook and eperiodical functionality.

But what about iChat video capabilities? That seems like a pretty fun application.

An electronic picture frame that can receive videophone calls from the grandkids? Classic 21st-century technology concept.

Oops, this was already covered here in this thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1024982

As of 2008, Apple sells 2.5 million Macs a quarter[1], which gives 10 million Macs per year. There's no way to sell 10 million units of a device that doesn't do anything your existing devices can't do. If the "tablet" is actually just a touch screen MacBook, then this makes sense.

[1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135747/Apple_laptop_... (Extrapolating from one quarter isn't very accurate, but I'm lazy.)

Apple sold 3.05 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 17 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 10.2 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones in the quarter, representing seven percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. -- http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/19results.html

I love tablets!!

I believe they are the future of computers, and Apple will design the thing the right way, changing the interface if necessary.

A computer doesn't need to be attached to a typewriter machine.

It's good news for everybody. The acers and eees will copy the design and will make it affordable.

Why would tablets be the future of computers? At home I have a 22" widescreen standing on my desk, in what way would my computing experience become better by me carrying that around?

Why would Apple successfully design the thing the right way? They have a good track record, but past performance is not a guarantee of future performance...

Sounds to me like he's expecting them to have recreated BumpTop (the 3D multitouch UI for Windows) on OS X. It'll be hailed as innovative and revoutionary I'm sure.

Maybe it has a charging dock with a vga/dvi/hdmi & audio out to connect to LCD TVs? I'd might buy that!

To sell 10 million in a year, wouldn't these need to be under 100 bucks?

Apple sold in excess of 10 million iPods last quarter, most of which were priced above $100. That's in addition to 7 million iPhones.

My own pet theory is that a new device will carry the iPod brand (e.g. "iPod Slate") and take the top price point ($399) from the Touch. They might not sell 2.5 million in the first quarter at that, but I can easily see sales ramping up to meet 10 million if the device is even remotely interesting.

"former Google Inc. executive Lee Kai-fu"

You would think Bloomberg would at least get his name right.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee

Family names come first in Chinese, Japanese and a number of other languages. E.g., Chairman Mao was Mao Zedong, not Zedong Mao.

The frustrating thing is that many Asians are starting to reverse their names when working with the rest of the world. If "Kai-Fu Lee" sends me an email, I'll have no idea how to address him ("Hi, Lee", "Hi, Kai-Fu", "Hi, Mr. Lee," and so forth). :-P

If it helps, chinese often address other chinese using their given name rather than the family name, otherwise it would be pretty annoying to address each other within the family. If it's a formal greeting, use the family name, otherwise use the given name.

Unless I misunderstand you, isn't that basically the same thing we do in English?

I understand Asian family names work, but the proper way to address him in English is "Dr. Lee".

Or is it "Dr. Kai-Fu"? That's the question I'm asking... how can I tell if my correspondent has already swapped his names in the belief that he's following the Western custom?

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