It's no longer 2003. A Macbook Pro equivalent back then was a lot more than $1800. An iPhone equivalent would have been really expensive and it would have had

It's no longer 2003. A Macbook Pro equivalent back then was a lot more than $1800. An iPhone equivalent would have been really expensive and it would have had a 10 minute battery life. Combined WiFi+GSM chip sets were still new back then. Wireless data plans were running at around £2 per megabyte (packet) or a max of ~50kbps (channel at 1.5c/min+). Trying to build a useful tablet, with wireless capability, with the money left over in the electronics budget of the average consumer, after paying for a MBP and an iPhone? Not possible. There would have been too many compromises for Apple at the time, whereas in 2010 they can do a pretty good job at it.