Not many products inspired so many blog posts with wishful thinking as the Apple Tablet iSlate. Judging from the interest in the early adopter niche, this product will be even revolutionarier (this word is actually reserved for Apple products) than the iPhone.

Paul Buchheit:

“I have no idea what Apple is planning to release, but to me the revolutionary product need is in bridging the virtual and physical worlds. If you spend your entire day in front of the computer, this need may not seem real, but if you move between the two worlds you may notice that they are strangely disconnected. For example, imagine that I’m looking at a picture on my computer and want to give you a copy. In the physical world, I would simply hand you the print (I would have gotten double-prints), but with computers it’s nearly impossible. Yes, there may be some complicated 10-step process that I can use to share the image, or maybe I can download and install some obscure software, but I’m not going to do that and neither are most other people. Imagine if I instead had a simple (built-in) gesture for passing the photo off to person standing next to me, and it were just as easy as handing them a real photo.”

John Gruber:

“The Tablet, I say, is going to be Apple’s new answer to what you use for personal portable general computing.

Put another way, let’s say instead of a MacBook and an iPhone, you’ve got an iMac and an iPhone, but you also want a portable secondary computer. Today, that portable from Apple (portable as opposed to the iPhone’s mobile) is a MacBook. With The Tablet, you’ll have the option of a device that will more closely resemble the iPhone than the iMac in terms of concept and the degree of technical abstraction.”

And dissenting, Joe Wilcox:

“Tablet is a nowhere category. For all the hype about an Apple tablet , it is at best a niche product. The world doesn’t need an Apple tablet, no matter what the hype about rumored features or regardless of what actually releases (if anything).”

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