Given it’s prediction season, and that a lot of folks are speculating about whatever sort of tablet computing device Apple is putting its finishing touches on, I’m going throw my hat in the ring and post my own prediction.
First, I think the thing has two touchscreen displays. That could explain the conflicting stories about whether the display is 7 inches or ten inches diagonally. It would open up like a notebook computer and one of the displays would become a keyboard. So it’s a ultralight notebook, like an airier MacBook Air, and with built-in 3G connectivity.
I think the second display — actually a hybrid of a display, a reconfigurable keyboard, and a trackpad/pointing device — may even be an eInk or OLED or other low-power type. And I think they would’ve come up with some clever system of hinges and/or sliders that would allow the full-power display to either close up like a notebook (protecting both displays from the ravages of the inside of a backpack) slide behind it. In this second mode it’s a eReader, like the Kindle, Nook, or Sony Reader.
Of course Apple’s multifunction products usually have feature sets that come in threes (“it’s a phone, a widescreen iPod with video, and a breakthrough internet communicator”). My best guess as to the third function would be as a two-way video phone connected over the mobile phone network.
I suspect the design language might follow that of the Magic Mouse, as it’s new and strangely distinct from just about everything else Apple is selling right now. Not that the iMac ever looked like a Mighty Mouse, but no other current product of theirs has the combination of aluminum, plastic, and compound curves that the Magic Mouse has.
I’m not sure how they would pull the mechanical design off, particularly since Apple is so averse to fiddly or flimsy-feeling mechanisms. My best guess is that the keyboard/CPU/battery portion is like a bigger, solid-aluminum iPhone, and that the high-power display is a concave plastic cap that fits over the top and/or bottom of that, depending on the configuration.
So it think Steve will pull it out of his pocket and presented first as an eBook reader. Then Steve will flip the display around and “boom”, it’s also a netbook. Finally he’ll have Phil or Tim give him a video call.
