The internet is really eating this one up, but to be fair - in 2007 when that announcement was made, touch screens were worthless and styli were required for interacting with elements like scroll bars and such which were all too narrow to use via touch.
I think Apple saw a good opportunity to attack the Surface Pro which was sitting above the iPad in terms of user group. This might actually be the device us designers have been craving in terms of a good digital sketching experience without the horrible overhead of Windows 8.