Please God let them use this to virtualize macOS inside iPadOS. Not as a daily driver but for the occasional use of a full desktop OS (when plugged into a keyboard/mouse). Then I could stop traveling with two devices once and for all.
There is no meaningful performance increase to go to a backwards incompatible version? Three letters: DOA. if not performance then at least we'd need some crazy new feature like good multi threading or perhaps running on a new relevant platform (say ios or android). Otherwise we will be 2.X forever.
Here is something I don't get: while this project is cool, if cost is the goal, once you add monitor, mouse & keyboard, isn't anyone better off with a combo of eBay laptop + Debian?
I dont see the big deal. Apple is Apple. Hopefully he learned a ton and will take it with him to his next startup where he will be able to blog about it.
One other thing to consider about the big market hypothesis is: how accessible is it to a capital efficient startup. To take an extreme, the power generation market in the US is second only to health care, but it is quite unlikely that you can crack that as an entrepreneur. Similarly, even if you can get into a big market, the amount of margins available to subscale players is often a deterrent in and of itself (you can't for instance become a subscale ISP these days even though Internet access is a huge market as well). Outside of chasing a fad, going after inaccessible markets is the second biggest mistake I see.