waffle

Once bitten, I’m a bit shy of making any qualifying statement about a possible tablet or slate. (That article was “information” rumors, not gut predictions though.)

So here’s the only three predictions I dare make about the slate; none based on any sourced information whatsoever:

• It will contain something that we didn’t at all see coming, something which will beyond a doubt establish the slate’s raison d’être in this way: you may as always doubt that you are going to need it, but it will be clear that it does what it does in a way that no other supposedly similar device has managed to in eight and a half years, and which opens new possibilities. We can’t see it now, by the same token that some of you envisioned on-screen clickwheels instead of multi-touch on that 3.5″ display three years ago.

• Absolutely no stylus.

• Many aspects of the “content” issue has a very obvious, very open and very standard answer: iTunes LP. I may still not think that web apps are the bee’s knees when it comes to supplanting native iPhone apps, but surely WebKit’s rendering can provide a nice Flash-level experience for stuff beyond music.

  With a high resolution, landscape display, you’ve got this thing made for magazines. No pages. WebKit supports CSS3 columns: just pan horizontally. And there’s plenty of room for interactivity, video clips, bookmarks and even insipid “Twitter this on Facebook to a friend” chicanery.