Waving shiny gadgets in the air without announcing price and (imminent) availabiilty is also not the way things are done anymore. And we do have Apple to thank for that.
Exactly - I'm trying to think of a recent Apple product launch where they didn't give the price up-front. Both the iPad and the iPhone, which were announced several months before they were launched, were given prices at the keynotes.
Assuming that Apple and the iPad is "the way things are done these days", then there's plenty of in depth specs available: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
Exact pixel resolution and ppi of the screen.
Number of CPU cores and the precise CPU model.
Exact listing of wireless protocols and bands supported.
Megapixel counts of the cameras and video recording format limits.
It would be nice to have even this data for the Surface.
If I am going to replace my on the go coding environment (which a Win 8 Intel tablet could be) I care about ram/cpu. Especially in a multi-tasking environment.
It may not matter for applications designed for a constrained environment (Apple/Android), but if I'm going to load up a big honking IDE on a Windows/Intel box, it starts mattering.