I’m curious as to what you mean about not trusting Windows 7 or its 3rd party apps…

Only thing I had to add was that I hate Mediacom and I was thinking I’d rather pay per show, than pay for a subscription to any channel. Even if I had to subscribe to an individual channel. What Apple should do is setup some way of doing Hulu but selling per show. I wouldn’t even mind paying a small amount for the show and still having to watch some moderate amount of ads. Man you could even have tiered viewing where the less you pay the more commercials you have to watch. This would be great. It would also promote independent actors and show producers releasing shows and making money. Any Joe Schmo could create a TV show and given enough popularity on the iShow (iTunes for TV) store, could make it big without even needing to be on any major network like NBC, HBO, etc.

They don’t have a perfect record with delivering on promises, but that seems more a software thing. For example, it is still a bitch to install Windows 7 with bootcamp, at least on the new iMacs. They promised some kind of update before the holidays. Windows installs an outdated video driver and audio driver. The bad video driver means a black screen at boot, and the fix is to go into recovery mode and delete the driver.

More to the point though, I think that Apple has had a tablet prototype for awhile now, but they just weren’t sure what to do with it. Now I guess they’ve figured out some killer features that will make skeptics like me want one.

You point out that they deliver when they announce products, and I tend to agree, but I don’t think that means they aren’t working on subpar products, and occasionally one of them sneaks into the marketplace.

Steve Jobs has called the Apple TV a “hobby”, and I don’t think it has done very well. It is almost a great product, but is a bit lacking in horsepower and (possibly related) internet streaming video capabilities. I am still waiting for a killer setbox, because I really, really like the idea, but MythTV, Tivo, and the Apple TV have not lived up to my expectations.

It could be that they nail down the hardware, and then the software is not quite where it should be when they make an announcement. It’s that engineering that I don’t think is feasible in these 6 month times frames. It must take two months just to get the factories tooled up and spitting out millions of devices.

I’m still not convinced that a tablet will go over well though. I can think of things I’d like to do with a tablet.

(Oops, I wrote this a long time ago, but never submitted it)

More to your point, I don’t think they’d announce anything they knew they couldn’t commit to and didn’t, in some form, have ready even if it was in a lab somewhere. At the point when the iPhone was announced, what had they actually committed to? I don’t remember, but I imagine it was key enough to make it big but as little as possible to keep it feasible.

Wasn’t that kinda the thing with the first Apple machine? Jobs had announced a personal computer that was self-contained or something and he and wozniak just burned the midnight oil to get it out? I don’t remember but I don’t think they had done it yet when they presented the vision. I guess that’s all business though, nowadays it’s execution over ideas!

Oh man, you make another good point though. I mean, critics pretty much tell them what not to do and how it will fail. So they either make sure not to fail in that way or they don’t try to do what critics say they will fail at. Although was Apple TV a hit? You can’t win them all.