Having Worked at and watched Apple for some time, it has always been pretty clear to me they almost always* retain hardware form factors for at least two revisions. At Apple, I read somewhere once, the first version needs to pay off the cost of R&D in the first revision and if profit is to be made, it will be on the second.

With the epic success of the iPhone and iPad in comparison to Apple’s past experiences with Product Development, perhaps it is a mantra they no longer need to follow. However, as good habits often die hard, this might be one worth retaining.

For those in the technology media and others who have developed some sort of failed Nostradamus principle over the past few months, I’ll leave you with Jason Yip’s question today on Twitter:

In order to learn, it's not enough to just make a prediction; you also need to explain why you believe what you predicted will occur—
Jason Yip (@jchyip) October 05, 2011

I’m waiting for you to show you’ve learned.

* The notable exception is the iPad. I suggest that with the iPad 1 having been in development for so long, they probably amortised the costs of Hardware R&D over the lengthy lifecycle instead