[ghshephard]

First of all - it's mostly a speculative piece - that's the point of that article. The post is a sequel to http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/this_ipad_mini_thing. Second, if you read through the first article - you'll see that he tries to justify his speculation based on some design principles that were laid down in the HCI guidelines for the iPad. He does mention where his "cupertino birds" have given him some hints though.

I don't believe there have been any assessments of the next generation iPad anywhere on the internet that have been this justified with rationale provided, or have carefully sourced all the other writers that contributed to his thinking.