Apple is looking more and more likely to be releasing a tablet computer either later this year or early next. I won't bore you with all the references online, there are too many. So, purely from my head, here is my wish list for what the device will actually be like.
1. Affordable. Yes I know this is Apple and they don't always seem to understand the word, but this recession is looking serious. We. Don't. Need. Expensive. Trinkets.
2. A killer application. I don't know what form this would take but the problem with previous tablet launches has, for me, been that there's no compelling reason to buy them. Give me one and I'll think about it.
3. A neat but not ostentatious design. No, look, Apple's great at designing very pretty kit indeed but with something like this I don't want to get mugged.
4. A pleasant experience with an e-book or even e-comic-book reader. I've had a look at the competition and they're all kind of OK. Apple needs to make it easy and pleasant to read using this machine - the same trick it pulled off to make the iPod so much more fun than the competition, even if it used incompatible formats at first. This - without the incompatibilities - needs to happen with the device I'm calling an iPad.
5. An optional and preferably wireless keyboard add-on. What, you think I'm buying this *and* a laptop?
6. Options to share multiple headphones. So the kids are in the back of the car, I put a DVD on, they've both got to be able to hear it.
7. Connection to my iTunes library over the Internet. Actually it seems a little crazy to me that all Apple devices don't do this. When I'm on my own WiFi network it's no problem at all to play music or a video from my desktop computer on my laptop, so why isn't it the same when I'm out but still on broadband? Don't give me security reasons - you know it can be done, and eventually will be.
That, for me, would make it pretty compelling. Anyone any other thoughts?
