I just hope the gpu is powerful enough to render all the extra pixels (presumably about 6x as many) at a similar speed to the iPhone (preferably the 3gs), otherwise 3D games will have to use upscaling to run at the same speed full screen.
As far as I understand, a multi-tasking device would, for example, need to hold the graphical assets of all concurrent applications in memory at the same time or be subject to swapping. This would drive up the manufacturing costs. Since user experience is the most important thing to Apple, (enough to prevent multitasking on the iPhone), I'm not holding my breath for a multi-tasking tablet. The appeal of the device is most likely somewhere else. The iSlate is much more likely to be a device that does one thing at a time well, rather than a device that does many things well at the same time. Computers are for multi-tasking. I'm happy to be proven wrong, though
A lot of the rumors surrounding it quote wildly varying price points, but I've seen $1000 come up quite a few times recently which definitely prices it out of range for a lot of folks. I, for one, agree with you, I won't be buying one if it's $1000. I have a MBPro and a 3GS. However, if it comes in at under $500, I'll definitely be pursuing a purchase. Q
I think Apple will just release an Engine that supports both full resolution and partial. Restricting the support to full resolution would only damages the product and the key selling point of iDevice. The 100,000 apps in the App Store. Not everyone would bother to port their design over to a higher resolution. So an option would be ideal for the new tablet. It's like selling HD or Normal. That's my bet.
The iPhone runs a cut down version of OSX anyway. Apple will probably add more features previously only seen on the mac like multitasking and windows with sizing but could go further. All the way up to a full featured OSX running on ARM in a few generations time. Who knows, a 2013 macbook air could run on an ARM CPU with new screen tech and offer 24 hours of use in vibrant colour under direct sunlight Of course, not everyone would bother to port their apps to the iSlate and Apple Probably will ensure that all iPhone apps run on it but the point is, they don't have to. If the next SDK allows support for it hundreds (possibly thousands) of devs will be revving their apps to have an iSlate version up and running before launch. Apple could decide they would rather have 1000 apps that work well on the device than 100,000 that work in a little window and/or stretched to full screen res.
