One good thing about working for myself this month has been my ability to catch up on Mac rumors and track the upcoming Apple Tablet, whose existence is pretty much assumed by now, but whose features are being hotly debated and speculated over. It's not just the tablet that gets me excited.  Apple rarely just puts a device out - they establish a beach head for a whole new medium in the process.  I'm probably letting myself get a little caught up in the gossip wave, but what the heck - it's fun, right? So, with that in mind, here's what I really want to see announced on Wednesday:

• A device suitable for playing videos, playing music, or reading books.


• Wifi and 3G data connections


• Ability to playback interactive video/audio (similar to experience of a DVD, but QT based)


• Multi-mode use (ability to dock with keyboard/screen or use as tablet only)


• Front facing camera for video conferencing


• Solid State Drive (fewer moving parts and hopefully relatively fast on/off)


• Long battery life - 6+hours of usage w/o video playback, 4+ with video playback


• Minimum 720p playback

Specs along this line become a serious game changer for me.  This is a device I'd carry way, way more often than my laptop.  In fact, a small Bluetooth keyboard and mouse along with this would potentially replace my laptop in many situations.  I've come extremely close to buying a kindle in the past year and the hold out for me was it to single purpose in its intent.  If this device can serve as that e-reader, as well as a more broad media device it's very likely to find a place in my house pretty quickly. If there is a development environment for creating interactive content that comes out with it, then i'm really excited about the idea of creating custom content with this UI in mind, both for the training and general entertainment worlds. EDIT: adding Wired's excellent summary of what they expect on Wednesday.