This is not the Apple tablet you are looking for

Ah, it’s Apple tablet prognostication season (again and again), and the technorati have themselves in a frothy mess as they drool over their (as of yet non-existent) Next Great Apple Thing.

But hey, that’s kind of par for the course around products from the land of Cupertino. What’s really wrinkling my shirt, though, is something else. Why is it that every time someone envisions the next Apple device, they do such a piss-poor job of thinking forward in time? Is it that Apple is just that magical, and only they can see how mashups of existing devices isn’t the way to go? Or is it that everyone is so darn excited about the tablet but doesn’t have anything to actually say?

I’m going to go out on a (short) limb here and make some realistic guesses as to what the Great Tablet will (or won’t) have:

• An underpinning of the standard OS X we use on our MacBooks every day (not the stripped down version underlying the iPhone)
• Touch enhancements that incorporate gestures beyond those currently available on the iPhone, probably related to moving items around on the screen (think scrabbling through a pile of photographs with your fingers)
• A particular focus on media consumption, through a slightly updated version of Front Row
• An updated version of iTunes (based on the iTunes 9 platform) that provides access to iPhone apps (each in its own window, more than one running at a time)
• iTunes will also provide full-screen old media content such as newspapers and magazines, causing great excitement among the New York Times of the world, and great wailing in the hallowed halls of the Kindle maker
• Most definitely not the iPhone interface stretched out until the battery icon is a bitty little blob on the upper right or warmed-over iPhone interface with 32 icons (or 84!)
• A virtual on-screen keyboard that’s the size of a standard desktop keyboard, with some sort of visual or tactile feedback to indicate key presses (and not the little pop-up tab from the iPhone)
• Not a rehash of the iPhone keyboard swimming in the middle of the display
• A surprisingly fresh industrial design that draws from the language of both the iPhone and the MacBooks, but is unique to the tablet
• Not a half-thought-out rearrangement of the iPhone physical design
• WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G networking with some sort of a twist, akin to the lifetime free Whispernet that comes with the Kindle
• Those who haven’t spent much quality time with a MacBook Air will find it to have surprisingly few ports (just USB, video out, and a combo audio in/out jack)
• It’s not going to be called MacTablet, iTablet, or anything with Tablet in the name

These are, of course, utter speculation. But there’s one area where I’m absolutely positive: it isn’t going to have an on-screen scroll wheel when the entire screen is one massive touch panel.

But my favorite part of this entire hoo-hah around the Apple Tablet To Be is the AppleInsider article claiming Microsoft is creating a competing tablet: “Just as they compete in numerous other markets, Microsoft and Apple could be going head to head with new touchscreen tablet devices in the near future, if a new rumor proves true.” Yes, just as they have with Windows Mobile and the Zune. C’mon, people, stop making up news just to fill pixels.

(The image above, by the way, comes from this article, one of the few level-headed pieces on the topic to date.)

Agree? Disagree?