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"  At this point, about the most surprising thing Apple could do at the company&amp;#039;s special event in San Francisco next week is not unveil a tablet. I&amp;#039;m hardly the first tech commentator to guess at what Apple has up its sleeve, but it seems pretty obvious by now that we&amp;#039;re talking about a larger, more expensive, more full-featured version of the iPhone. And that&amp;#039;s not to say that such a thing wouldn&amp;#039;t be technologically amazing in its own right, just that there are limits to what Apple could do, hardware-wise.  If I had to guess, I&amp;#039;d say that we&amp;#039;re talking about a screen size somewhere between 7 and 11 inches (probably not a dual-screen, Microsoft Courier-style device; somehow hinges seem overly busy and very un-Apple), multitouch enabled (unless a new technology is unveiled that integrates multitouch sensing into the pixels), with a processor and GPU superior to anything found in the iPhone. It would have to have battery life in the 5- to 8-hour range. It will definitely have Wi-Fi, maybe 3G, maybe a front camera for teleconferencing. There might be an OLED version, but I&amp;#039;d find it hard to believe that even Apple can bring any large-size OLED screen in for under $1000. And I&amp;#039;m pretty sure, given Apple&amp;#039;s history, it will be impressively thin and well-constructed; it would be a perfect product to launch a new design ID for Apple, as was the original iMac, the iPod and the iPhone. Personally, I&amp;#039;d also like to see this device come with a desktop compliment of accessories, including an inductive charging dock and wireless keyboard that turns this baby into an instant desktop Mac.  Hardware advances such as these will definitely inspire some oohs and ahhs in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on the 27th (which we will be liveblogging), but Apple&amp;#039;s big innovations have always been software and interface design, and that&amp;#039;s where the company has the opportunity to really come up with groundbreaking advances. Let&amp;#039;s face it, the market is going to be silly with tablets by the end of the year, but other tablets will all rely upon operating-system software from Microsoft and Google. With a tablet, Apple can really leverage the fact that the company designs and owns its own OS (not to mention its own storefront in iTunes). In fact, Apple has multiple OSs if you count iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as OS X--and that could be used to a significant advantage.  Imagine, for a moment, a device with two modes: Travel around, and you get a version of the iPhone OS modified to suit a big screen, but heavily oriented towards multitouch navigation. But dock it, and you can flip over to a lightweight version of OS X, with a mouse-oriented interface as well as productivity software like iWork and iLife. Maybe there is a multimodal way of handling software as well. Touch-based video and photo editing for tablet mode, mouse-based editing for desktop mode.  Or, short of a true dual-mode computer, how about tight integration between the tablet and your other connected devices over a network? Any tablet is bound to function as a secondary computer for most owners, so how&amp;#039;s about supercharging Bonjour--it works on both Mac and PC--so that it can drag and drop from the tablet directly to a desktop computer with touchscreen network map, or vice versa. The device could easily work as a large-screen remote control for all of the networked devices around your house--much like the Apple Remote app for iPhone does now, but far richer. Stream video to the tablet while you walk around, prop up the device on a kitchen counter, then pause the video, walk into the living room and throw it up to the Apple TV attached to your large-screen flat-panel (Apple TV doesn&amp;#039;t seem so pointless now, does it?). Did your friend just walk into your house with a tablet of his own? Apple could steal an idea from early Microsoft Zunes (seriously!) and allow for a quick ad hoc network to throw him a photo or do some instant collaborative work. Depending on how connected it is, the tablet could be a pretty compelling gateway to your home content on the road, as well. Apple&amp;#039;s acquisition of Lala allows for streaming content (movies and music) both from the cloud and your own home network to either an iPhone or tablet device. For music, an iPhone would suffice, but the tablet size is far more conducive to movies. Finally, there&amp;#039;s Web browsing. It&amp;#039;s pretty obvious that a tablet would be first and foremost a Web-browsing device. The iPhone does a pretty good job of navigating the Web, and it would be easy to play it safe and simply migrate the tap, flick and drag multitouch metaphor up to a larger screen. But there&amp;#039;s the opportunity to do some far more interesting stuff. A big screen could allow you to bring multiple pages up at once with a gesture (say, to compare a price at Amazon with one at Newegg). If Apple invests in a true multitouch (i.e., more than two fingers at a time) screen, there is the possibility for multi-fingered or even two-handed gestures that can get both more complex and more intuitive. There&amp;#039;s been a lot of talk about Apple&amp;#039;s tablet challenging the e-reader space, and it could make for a pretty compelling way to read a full-color newspaper or magazine. But well-thought-out gesture navigation could turn also turn everyday Web pages into a more lean-back magazine-like reading experience.  Obviously, I&amp;#039;m just blue-skying here, but this is exactly the sort of intelligence that could exist in such a device (and that&amp;#039;s not even considering all of the possibilities that could come from app developers down the road). And it&amp;#039;s this sort of stuff that could make Apple&amp;#039;s tablet truly unique. Otherwise, it&amp;#039;s just a big iPhone. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a5219/4343110/>