Apple also locks down the iPad to allow me to only do with it what they bless as appropriate.
The Apple model is just different. It's not "the right way" it's just "the apple way." High emphasis on developing in secret and only showing a locked-down finished product.
The fact they are releasing an OS a year before it hits shelves allows millions of developers to get a crack at building new apps.
How interested are developers going to be in developing apps for a "maybe" platform when they can be developing for an installed base of 50-odd million iPads right now? What if this is a TouchPad? It doesn't seem like a good bet on the tablet side given the history.
One of the most attractive aspects of this to me is that I would not be developing just for a single device tablet OS. The applications will run across both tablets and desktops, and even a Microsoft "failed" Windows release is sure to see a massive uptake, especially as it will be the default OS on the vast majority of new computers.
It's not as if Microsoft haven't tried to do this before and failed and they're taking a pretty different approach to what's working in the market at the moment.
It's possible that Win 8 can be a success on the desktop / laptop but fail as a tablet OS.
On the flipside, you're more likely to be developing for a lot of different versions of that OS, and – over time – you'll be developing for the lowest common denominator among them.
The Apple model is just different. It's not "the right way" it's just "the apple way." High emphasis on developing in secret and only showing a locked-down finished product.
The fact they are releasing an OS a year before it hits shelves allows millions of developers to get a crack at building new apps.