Re: State of the PC Industry - HP lays of 25,000

[Andrew Richards] "[Chris Harlan] "They often announce hardware weeks or in some cases months before it is shipping."

Only if it is an all new product segment, like the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010. There hasn't been a paper launch of a new Mac since maybe the original MacBook Air in January, 2008, and that was measured in days, not weeks or months. In recent years new Macs haven't even had press events. They just show up on Apple's site and in Apple's stores. All the new-Macs hubbub comes from without, not from Apple.
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Andy, there was a two week delay with this year's iPad. And, I agree that with older lines they most often just refresh. But I was responding to "Apple doesn't announce hardware in advance." I just don't think that you can predict those kind of things from Apple. If they want to tell you about Thunderbolt in advance, they will. They'll talk about its eventual implementation long before it happens. And, they'll drop saucy hints all over the place about things like Apple TV, for an entire year before its implemented. They just do it on their own terms, and with as little or as much info as suits them. What about the 17,000 well-placed mentions of "post-PC world" in the iPad release talk? I guess that could just be sales blather, but it seems to me that that was making a rather profound announcement about the general future of Apple hardware.