I disagree that tablets have been a "failure" hitherto. Many companies (plenty of insurance adjusters) rely on tablet devices.
I think that the lack of general public adoption re: tablets indicates that it is inherently a niche product with very limited usefulness. Most people have VERY little actual use for a touch-screen except on very small laptops. Touch-screen desktops are, IMO, gimmicks for the average user. If the feature were there as a freebie, then I wouldn't gripe, but I certainly would not pay extra for something that takes more effort to use than a mouse. Niche desktop products like tablets designed just for watching videos are where touch-screens belong, not as desktop replacements.
As for touch devices replacing keyboards/mice, I say Perhaps for phones and ultra-portable netbooks, but for desktops, the tried and true KBM are going nowhere. I cannot fathom typing a sizable paper on a touchscreen. Many Blackberry owners insist on the KB even for phones.
I think that a lot of people here aren't thinking this through.
This is a DIFFERENT PROCESSOR folks!
...
No x86 chip in this, no OS X programs.
That's not really a good argument against it being OS X. If your program were properly written, theoretically, to "port" it from PPC Macs to Intel Macs all you had to do for Cocoa programs, at least, was flip a switch in Xcode and recompile. (I'm not sure if anyone had it this easy, but most Cocoa programs, I believe, were pretty simple to get working on Intel.) And, as you mention, there was also Rosetta. So, no x86 chip isn't exactly a show stopper for OS X programs.
As for touch devices replacing keyboards/mice, I say Perhaps for phones and ultra-portable netbooks, but for desktops, the tried and true KBM are going nowhere. I cannot fathom typing a sizable paper on a touchscreen. Many Blackberry owners insist on the KB even for phones.
It will certainly be a bold move to try and introduce a genuinely different input method. Apart from overcoming the much discussed practicalities, the first keyboard appeared, what, 120 years ago? Overcoming the cultural mindset is as big an issue I'd say. Still, if anyone can pull it off, Apple are probably the people to do it.
What if the tablet is dual purpose: a Mac tablet netbook when traveling and a powerful desktop when you are back at your desk? Impossible? Nope, quite doable.
If you look at the earlier ?Why Apple is betting on Light Peak with Intel: a love story? post, several things popped off the monitor.
Light Peak would allow one tiny optical port to interface with an external monitor that in turn could have any existing port you need.
1. ?With Light Peak, Apple and Intel are investing in a major project to deliver a unified new high speed cabling system that remains backwardly compatible with existing protocols and leverages state of the art technology while hitting a mainstream price point. Getting Light Peak to work requires a joint fusion of the core competencies of both Apple and Intel. Its success will benefit the entire industry, and solve a number of existing problems.?
2. ?With Light Peak, Apple asked Intel to develop a single data port that could supply multiple, high speed streams of data capable of carrying virtually any type of signaling: networking protocols like Ethernet and Fibre Channel; standard audio and video signals such as S/PDIF, HDMI and DisplayPort; and serial interfaces such as FireWire, USB, and eSATA. Using optical signaling, Light Peak can achieve very high data speeds over relatively long cables that can be very thin; copper cables have problems with signal attenuation, electromagnetic interference, and bulk.
3. Light Peak offers the capacity to upgrade existing signaling protocols to work over high speed optical cables driven down in cost by volume production.?
with a touch tablet flat in front of it, kind of like the touch wacoms, but in the form of a portable tablet.
I, as an iPhone used, have found myself touching my iMac's screen quite a few times in vein to click on something. Now, as nice as it would be to have a 24" multitouch screen on my iMac, we can hopefully all agree that it is not the most ergonomic of input interfaces.
if you were to have your home desktop iMac type machine, be it touch screen or not, and get rid of the keyboard and mouse altogether replacing it by a 10" touch smart touch screen now that would be a whole new approach to computing.
After you are done working at home, you just take the tablet with you, which is an autonomous device on it's own, as the apple tablet is proposed to be.
I can truly see a lot of merit in this.
It is both the desktop and laptop redefined.
I would have no problem paying $600-800 for it either.
Any takers?
++++1
The new iPad :
double up as the next generation input device - replacing keyboard (possibly) and mouse
This is probably a really dumb question, But I'll ask anyway. Is there any finiteness to the life of a capacitance-based input device. In other words, could, say, a keyboard based on that be expected to last for many, many years?
I would suspect such a input device would be capable of lasting a very long time. The occasional bad controller chip is always possible. Barring contamination there isn't much to go wrong. I'm not an expert here so take this with a grain of salt, it is based however on how the things work.
Apple isn't the only one with something cool. Touch is being implemented beautifully in the music and video markets and it's being implemented in much more sophisticated ways. I don't think Steve is necessarily the God of ideas. Similar products to the iPhone were in production or on paper at the same time or earlier. Like other great forward thinking people, he is great at making ideas better.
Did you ever imagine something as revolutionary as the iPhone would ever become reality? Scrolling and rotating images with two fingers seemed so ahead of its time. But two touch points were just the beginning!
There is 0 chance that Apple (of all companies) will roll out a device that has no keyboard or mouse, running software that was designed and built for the keyboard and mouse. Desktop UIs barely scale down gracefully to 10" screens to begin with. But trying to use touch to navigate UI elements that expect mouse precision is right out.
I'm not even convinced that Apple would greenlight an ultra-mobile device running software that wasn't specifically designed for that exact device (With the appropriate priorities on screen, UI, battery usage, available processing power, etc) let alone release something with less horsepower than a macbook of several years ago with the express purpose of running desktop software.
Apple isn't the only one with something cool. Touch is being implemented beautifully in the music and video markets and it's being implemented better. I don't think Steve is necessarily the God of ideas. Similar products to the iPhone were in production or on paper at the same time or earlier. What is he is good at is what the Japanese are good at. Making ideas better.
LOL One might say Borgesque. Btw, Orphic doesn't need a capital 'O' since you are not referring the the works of Orpheus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lukeskymac
I fail to see what's in there that isn't possible on the iPhone. Its touch points are limited by software alone, not fancy technologies.
That's because you have failed to examine it. When referring to the touch technology, not the OS, the iPhone is much more limited than the surface above.
Apparently when SJ was first shown the 'tablet' he said something along the lines of "looks cool, but what I would I actually use it for?"
A very smart guy that Mr. Jobs. Frankly I'm glad he asked the question because a lot of the people on this forum aren't. More pointedly the people who want to run Mac OS/X, which would lead to the same failures seen with other tablets.
Quote:
Even after all this time I have yet to hear anything that would make me want to get a tablet device.
For a small portable device I can see people going for it. If the rumors are true this device is pushing it as far as size goes unless it is a folder. If the right sized device comes out I could see it being a good replacement for the iPhone for the following: e-Mail, web access, connectivity apps in general, reference books, magazines and other publications. Oh a big one would be Movies.
The key is 3G connectivity as that makes the product usable just about anywhere. What you are really doing is offering up the same sort of services iPhone offers on a larger screen. You may say, who needs that, to which I would respond we do. Atleast we do on a properly sized screen, which is I fear a problem with the current ten inch rumors.
Quote:
I love my MacBook, I love my iPhone, what would I use something in between for? Reading newspapers?
Well yeah in part reading newspapers and magazines. It is interesting that Apple seems to be putting a lot of steam into this device just when a number of newspapers are going belly up. One can argue why they are going belly up but the electronic world is at least part of the issue.
The idea here is to offer up electronic distribution as a way to retain readership. I actually don't think this will work because the problems with the papers run deeper than that. The problem is papers have become unethical in reporting facts, are often meddlesome, and generally are slow to get the news out (likely due to a compulsive need to slant the stories to their editorial viewpoint).
In any event move away from newspapers to magazines, which I could find very compelling. Here you get a issue a month, in electronic form and can store it digitally. This would be fantastic if you want to keep issues on hand forever. It would provide for a more expressive packaging of media into a standardized electronic magazine format. I'm really hoping Apple can define an industry standard here as it is sorely needed. PDF comes close but has some shortcomings. The goal of the device should be to equal the ease of carry that a magazine represents, something your laptop can't do. Yes that jeans an extremely thin and light device.
Of course such a device would be incomplete without the normal web tools. So Mail and Safari would be there along with whatever else is trendy. Right now I use my iPhone for web access more than my laptop. In fact I hardly use the Mac for E-Mail anymore except for cleaning and organization. An easy to carry tablet would take some of this duty away from the iPhone.
In any event you will have a hard time convincing me that lugging around a 15" laptop is all that handy. A tablet won't be either if it is to large and heavy. That is why I'm hoping for a folding screen. The goal is to have no more difficulty than walking with a magazine or paperback book.
To me, this almost sounds more like a potential new input device for desktops which would replace the keyboard, mouse and pretty much any other type of input device.
This is exactly what the patent is describing for me. This is not the tablet. I believe the product based on this patent will be a futuristic multi-touch keyboard for use with the mac desktop and iMac.
Although, if this takes off then it would mean something similar will have to be done for the macbooks.
So I guess in a way this might involve the tablet as well.
.............For a small portable device I can see people going for it. If the rumors are true this device is pushing it as far as size goes unless it is a folder. If the right sized device comes out I could see it being a good replacement for the iPhone for the following: e-Mail, web access, connectivity apps in general, reference books, magazines and other publications.
Dave
Do you remember in the September iPod event where they showed the image of a guy trying to put a dell netbook in his back pocket....and failing? It was a joke so as to mock the "netbook" as not being pocketable.
Yet everyone is talking about an apple "tablet". Why would apple make fun of the netbook and how unpocketable it is yet at the same time plan on coming out with a mobile product that will probably be just as unpocketable.
At the very least, I see this apple product as being a folder and perhaps that microsoft courier might not be too far off the mark.
To me, this almost sounds more like a potential new input device for desktops which would replace the keyboard, mouse and pretty much any other type of input device.
I agree. I can see GarageBand and Logic users going NUTZ over this too. Movie editors as well.
I thought this would occur back in 2007 when we saw the first patent... A keyboard that changes keys on it's screen to coincide with the application in focus.
I was a tablet (the hypothesized Apple vision) skeptic for a long time, but I was converted when I saw my 3 year old daughter gradually learn how to use my iPhone.
If anyone has read the Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, you would get my point. Apple's tablet, like the iPhone and iPod touch, won't be a computer in the classical sense. Like the Young Ladies Illustrated Primer interactive book in the Diamond Age, its purpose is to serve as a consumptive, entertainment and interactive device. So, yeah, it's a super iPod touch, but I would imagine certain programs would be so much easier on it such as coloring, kids applications, video, reading, education, etc.
I could very easily see a device like that and evolved versions be my daughters companions for the foreseeable future. It would be a MacBook replacement really, save for those who use computers for traditional purposes (work et al).
I disagree that tablets have been a "failure" hitherto. Many companies (plenty of insurance adjusters) rely on tablet devices.
I think that the lack of general public adoption re: tablets indicates that it is inherently a niche product with very limited usefulness. Most people have VERY little actual use for a touch-screen except on very small laptops. Touch-screen desktops are, IMO, gimmicks for the average user. If the feature were there as a freebie, then I wouldn't gripe, but I certainly would not pay extra for something that takes more effort to use than a mouse. Niche desktop products like tablets designed just for watching videos are where touch-screens belong, not as desktop replacements.
As for touch devices replacing keyboards/mice, I say Perhaps for phones and ultra-portable netbooks, but for desktops, the tried and true KBM are going nowhere. I cannot fathom typing a sizable paper on a touchscreen. Many Blackberry owners insist on the KB even for phones.
Failure in the sense that a number of manufacturers stopped making them, or cut down on the number of models when sales fell well below expectations.
Tablets were being touted as a general purpose device for the average person.
That's not really a good argument against it being OS X. If your program were properly written, theoretically, to "port" it from PPC Macs to Intel Macs all you had to do for Cocoa programs, at least, was flip a switch in Xcode and recompile. (I'm not sure if anyone had it this easy, but most Cocoa programs, I believe, were pretty simple to get working on Intel.) And, as you mention, there was also Rosetta. So, no x86 chip isn't exactly a show stopper for OS X programs.
It's never that simple. The architectures are too different. There are no equivalents to many cpu instructions going from one chip to another.
Apple has no way in the SDK for either chipset to allow to compile for the other other. We're not talking about Universal binaries here. The ARM has nothing to do with the PPC, so Apple would have to write another cross compiler.
We're talking about taking a Mac program and running it on an iPhone OS based device, and visa versa. That's what some people are suggesting.
It won't work.
Somehow, some people think that just because the iPhone OS is the core of OS X, that with a minor stroke here and there, the programs are transportable.
What if the tablet is dual purpose: a Mac tablet netbook when traveling and a powerful desktop when you are back at your desk? Impossible? Nope, quite doable.
If you look at the earlier ?Why Apple is betting on Light Peak with Intel: a love story? post, several things popped off the monitor.
Light Peak would allow one tiny optical port to interface with an external monitor that in turn could have any existing port you need.
1. ?With Light Peak, Apple and Intel are investing in a major project to deliver a unified new high speed cabling system that remains backwardly compatible with existing protocols and leverages state of the art technology while hitting a mainstream price point. Getting Light Peak to work requires a joint fusion of the core competencies of both Apple and Intel. Its success will benefit the entire industry, and solve a number of existing problems.?
2. ?With Light Peak, Apple asked Intel to develop a single data port that could supply multiple, high speed streams of data capable of carrying virtually any type of signaling: networking protocols like Ethernet and Fibre Channel; standard audio and video signals such as S/PDIF, HDMI and DisplayPort; and serial interfaces such as FireWire, USB, and eSATA. Using optical signaling, Light Peak can achieve very high data speeds over relatively long cables that can be very thin; copper cables have problems with signal attenuation, electromagnetic interference, and bulk.
3. Light Peak offers the capacity to upgrade existing signaling protocols to work over high speed optical cables driven down in cost by volume production.?
You could have it all!
What does that have to do with what you're saying? You said nothing about the most important part, the computer.
Comments
I think that the lack of general public adoption re: tablets indicates that it is inherently a niche product with very limited usefulness. Most people have VERY little actual use for a touch-screen except on very small laptops. Touch-screen desktops are, IMO, gimmicks for the average user. If the feature were there as a freebie, then I wouldn't gripe, but I certainly would not pay extra for something that takes more effort to use than a mouse. Niche desktop products like tablets designed just for watching videos are where touch-screens belong, not as desktop replacements.
As for touch devices replacing keyboards/mice, I say
I think that a lot of people here aren't thinking this through.
This is a DIFFERENT PROCESSOR folks!
...
No x86 chip in this, no OS X programs.
That's not really a good argument against it being OS X. If your program were properly written, theoretically, to "port" it from PPC Macs to Intel Macs all you had to do for Cocoa programs, at least, was flip a switch in Xcode and recompile. (I'm not sure if anyone had it this easy, but most Cocoa programs, I believe, were pretty simple to get working on Intel.) And, as you mention, there was also Rosetta. So, no x86 chip isn't exactly a show stopper for OS X programs.
As for touch devices replacing keyboards/mice, I say
It will certainly be a bold move to try and introduce a genuinely different input method. Apart from overcoming the much discussed practicalities, the first keyboard appeared, what, 120 years ago? Overcoming the cultural mindset is as big an issue I'd say. Still, if anyone can pull it off, Apple are probably the people to do it.
What if the tablet is dual purpose: a Mac tablet netbook when traveling and a powerful desktop when you are back at your desk? Impossible? Nope, quite doable.
If you look at the earlier ?Why Apple is betting on Light Peak with Intel: a love story? post, several things popped off the monitor.
Light Peak would allow one tiny optical port to interface with an external monitor that in turn could have any existing port you need.
1. ?With Light Peak, Apple and Intel are investing in a major project to deliver a unified new high speed cabling system that remains backwardly compatible with existing protocols and leverages state of the art technology while hitting a mainstream price point. Getting Light Peak to work requires a joint fusion of the core competencies of both Apple and Intel. Its success will benefit the entire industry, and solve a number of existing problems.?
2. ?With Light Peak, Apple asked Intel to develop a single data port that could supply multiple, high speed streams of data capable of carrying virtually any type of signaling: networking protocols like Ethernet and Fibre Channel; standard audio and video signals such as S/PDIF, HDMI and DisplayPort; and serial interfaces such as FireWire, USB, and eSATA. Using optical signaling, Light Peak can achieve very high data speeds over relatively long cables that can be very thin; copper cables have problems with signal attenuation, electromagnetic interference, and bulk.
3. Light Peak offers the capacity to upgrade existing signaling protocols to work over high speed optical cables driven down in cost by volume production.?
You could have it all!
If you are a good company Apple will absorb you.
Wow. That is seriously Orphic.
Now this, to me at least, is really interesting.
Consider having an iMac like desktop.
with a touch tablet flat in front of it, kind of like the touch wacoms, but in the form of a portable tablet.
I, as an iPhone used, have found myself touching my iMac's screen quite a few times in vein to click on something. Now, as nice as it would be to have a 24" multitouch screen on my iMac, we can hopefully all agree that it is not the most ergonomic of input interfaces.
if you were to have your home desktop iMac type machine, be it touch screen or not, and get rid of the keyboard and mouse altogether replacing it by a 10" touch smart touch screen now that would be a whole new approach to computing.
After you are done working at home, you just take the tablet with you, which is an autonomous device on it's own, as the apple tablet is proposed to be.
I can truly see a lot of merit in this.
It is both the desktop and laptop redefined.
I would have no problem paying $600-800 for it either.
Any takers?
++++1
The new iPad :
This is probably a really dumb question, But I'll ask anyway. Is there any finiteness to the life of a capacitance-based input device. In other words, could, say, a keyboard based on that be expected to last for many, many years?
I would suspect such a input device would be capable of lasting a very long time. The occasional bad controller chip is always possible. Barring contamination there isn't much to go wrong. I'm not an expert here so take this with a grain of salt, it is based however on how the things work.
Dave
Jazzmutant
Did you ever imagine something as revolutionary as the iPhone would ever become reality? Scrolling and rotating images with two fingers seemed so ahead of its time. But two touch points were just the beginning!
There is 0 chance that Apple (of all companies) will roll out a device that has no keyboard or mouse, running software that was designed and built for the keyboard and mouse. Desktop UIs barely scale down gracefully to 10" screens to begin with. But trying to use touch to navigate UI elements that expect mouse precision is right out.
I'm not even convinced that Apple would greenlight an ultra-mobile device running software that wasn't specifically designed for that exact device (With the appropriate priorities on screen, UI, battery usage, available processing power, etc) let alone release something with less horsepower than a macbook of several years ago with the express purpose of running desktop software.
Cocoa Touch anyone? That's all it takes.
Apple isn't the only one with something cool. Touch is being implemented beautifully in the music and video markets and it's being implemented better. I don't think Steve is necessarily the God of ideas. Similar products to the iPhone were in production or on paper at the same time or earlier. What is he is good at is what the Japanese are good at. Making ideas better.
Jazzmutant
I like this:
I fail to see what's in there that isn't possible on the iPhone. Its touch points are limited by software alone, not fancy technologies.
Wow. That is seriously Orphic.
LOL One might say Borgesque. Btw, Orphic doesn't need a capital 'O' since you are not referring the the works of Orpheus.
I fail to see what's in there that isn't possible on the iPhone. Its touch points are limited by software alone, not fancy technologies.
That's because you have failed to examine it. When referring to the touch technology, not the OS, the iPhone is much more limited than the surface above.
Apparently when SJ was first shown the 'tablet' he said something along the lines of "looks cool, but what I would I actually use it for?"
A very smart guy that Mr. Jobs. Frankly I'm glad he asked the question because a lot of the people on this forum aren't. More pointedly the people who want to run Mac OS/X, which would lead to the same failures seen with other tablets.
Even after all this time I have yet to hear anything that would make me want to get a tablet device.
For a small portable device I can see people going for it. If the rumors are true this device is pushing it as far as size goes unless it is a folder. If the right sized device comes out I could see it being a good replacement for the iPhone for the following: e-Mail, web access, connectivity apps in general, reference books, magazines and other publications. Oh a big one would be Movies.
The key is 3G connectivity as that makes the product usable just about anywhere. What you are really doing is offering up the same sort of services iPhone offers on a larger screen. You may say, who needs that, to which I would respond we do. Atleast we do on a properly sized screen, which is I fear a problem with the current ten inch rumors.
I love my MacBook, I love my iPhone, what would I use something in between for? Reading newspapers?
Well yeah in part reading newspapers and magazines. It is interesting that Apple seems to be putting a lot of steam into this device just when a number of newspapers are going belly up. One can argue why they are going belly up but the electronic world is at least part of the issue.
The idea here is to offer up electronic distribution as a way to retain readership. I actually don't think this will work because the problems with the papers run deeper than that. The problem is papers have become unethical in reporting facts, are often meddlesome, and generally are slow to get the news out (likely due to a compulsive need to slant the stories to their editorial viewpoint).
In any event move away from newspapers to magazines, which I could find very compelling. Here you get a issue a month, in electronic form and can store it digitally. This would be fantastic if you want to keep issues on hand forever. It would provide for a more expressive packaging of media into a standardized electronic magazine format. I'm really hoping Apple can define an industry standard here as it is sorely needed. PDF comes close but has some shortcomings. The goal of the device should be to equal the ease of carry that a magazine represents, something your laptop can't do. Yes that jeans an extremely thin and light device.
Of course such a device would be incomplete without the normal web tools. So Mail and Safari would be there along with whatever else is trendy. Right now I use my iPhone for web access more than my laptop. In fact I hardly use the Mac for E-Mail anymore except for cleaning and organization. An easy to carry tablet would take some of this duty away from the iPhone.
In any event you will have a hard time convincing me that lugging around a 15" laptop is all that handy. A tablet won't be either if it is to large and heavy. That is why I'm hoping for a folding screen. The goal is to have no more difficulty than walking with a magazine or paperback book.
Dave
To me, this almost sounds more like a potential new input device for desktops which would replace the keyboard, mouse and pretty much any other type of input device.
This is exactly what the patent is describing for me. This is not the tablet. I believe the product based on this patent will be a futuristic multi-touch keyboard for use with the mac desktop and iMac.
Although, if this takes off then it would mean something similar will have to be done for the macbooks.
So I guess in a way this might involve the tablet as well.
.............For a small portable device I can see people going for it. If the rumors are true this device is pushing it as far as size goes unless it is a folder. If the right sized device comes out I could see it being a good replacement for the iPhone for the following: e-Mail, web access, connectivity apps in general, reference books, magazines and other publications.
Dave
Do you remember in the September iPod event where they showed the image of a guy trying to put a dell netbook in his back pocket....and failing? It was a joke so as to mock the "netbook" as not being pocketable.
Yet everyone is talking about an apple "tablet". Why would apple make fun of the netbook and how unpocketable it is yet at the same time plan on coming out with a mobile product that will probably be just as unpocketable.
At the very least, I see this apple product as being a folder and perhaps that microsoft courier might not be too far off the mark.
To me, this almost sounds more like a potential new input device for desktops which would replace the keyboard, mouse and pretty much any other type of input device.
I agree. I can see GarageBand and Logic users going NUTZ over this too. Movie editors as well.
I thought this would occur back in 2007 when we saw the first patent... A keyboard that changes keys on it's screen to coincide with the application in focus.
Agreed. So what about an iTube? The 10" is the height of the "tube" screen when rolled up.
Plus, when you're not using it, you can smoke it.
If anyone has read the Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, you would get my point. Apple's tablet, like the iPhone and iPod touch, won't be a computer in the classical sense. Like the Young Ladies Illustrated Primer interactive book in the Diamond Age, its purpose is to serve as a consumptive, entertainment and interactive device. So, yeah, it's a super iPod touch, but I would imagine certain programs would be so much easier on it such as coloring, kids applications, video, reading, education, etc.
I could very easily see a device like that and evolved versions be my daughters companions for the foreseeable future. It would be a MacBook replacement really, save for those who use computers for traditional purposes (work et al).
So, I've been converted.
I disagree that tablets have been a "failure" hitherto. Many companies (plenty of insurance adjusters) rely on tablet devices.
I think that the lack of general public adoption re: tablets indicates that it is inherently a niche product with very limited usefulness. Most people have VERY little actual use for a touch-screen except on very small laptops. Touch-screen desktops are, IMO, gimmicks for the average user. If the feature were there as a freebie, then I wouldn't gripe, but I certainly would not pay extra for something that takes more effort to use than a mouse. Niche desktop products like tablets designed just for watching videos are where touch-screens belong, not as desktop replacements.
As for touch devices replacing keyboards/mice, I say
Failure in the sense that a number of manufacturers stopped making them, or cut down on the number of models when sales fell well below expectations.
Tablets were being touted as a general purpose device for the average person.
It didn't turn out that way.
That's not really a good argument against it being OS X. If your program were properly written, theoretically, to "port" it from PPC Macs to Intel Macs all you had to do for Cocoa programs, at least, was flip a switch in Xcode and recompile. (I'm not sure if anyone had it this easy, but most Cocoa programs, I believe, were pretty simple to get working on Intel.) And, as you mention, there was also Rosetta. So, no x86 chip isn't exactly a show stopper for OS X programs.
It's never that simple. The architectures are too different. There are no equivalents to many cpu instructions going from one chip to another.
Apple has no way in the SDK for either chipset to allow to compile for the other other. We're not talking about Universal binaries here. The ARM has nothing to do with the PPC, so Apple would have to write another cross compiler.
We're talking about taking a Mac program and running it on an iPhone OS based device, and visa versa. That's what some people are suggesting.
It won't work.
Somehow, some people think that just because the iPhone OS is the core of OS X, that with a minor stroke here and there, the programs are transportable.
How can you all miss one intriguing possibility?
What if the tablet is dual purpose: a Mac tablet netbook when traveling and a powerful desktop when you are back at your desk? Impossible? Nope, quite doable.
If you look at the earlier ?Why Apple is betting on Light Peak with Intel: a love story? post, several things popped off the monitor.
Light Peak would allow one tiny optical port to interface with an external monitor that in turn could have any existing port you need.
1. ?With Light Peak, Apple and Intel are investing in a major project to deliver a unified new high speed cabling system that remains backwardly compatible with existing protocols and leverages state of the art technology while hitting a mainstream price point. Getting Light Peak to work requires a joint fusion of the core competencies of both Apple and Intel. Its success will benefit the entire industry, and solve a number of existing problems.?
2. ?With Light Peak, Apple asked Intel to develop a single data port that could supply multiple, high speed streams of data capable of carrying virtually any type of signaling: networking protocols like Ethernet and Fibre Channel; standard audio and video signals such as S/PDIF, HDMI and DisplayPort; and serial interfaces such as FireWire, USB, and eSATA. Using optical signaling, Light Peak can achieve very high data speeds over relatively long cables that can be very thin; copper cables have problems with signal attenuation, electromagnetic interference, and bulk.
3. Light Peak offers the capacity to upgrade existing signaling protocols to work over high speed optical cables driven down in cost by volume production.?
You could have it all!
What does that have to do with what you're saying? You said nothing about the most important part, the computer.