BenjaminSte.in

I get secret joy out of watching people speculate about upcoming Apple products.  What amuses me is that people have a really hard time innovating themselves, and more importantly, a hard time believing that Apple can innovate.

Of the thousands of predictions about the Tablet/iSlate, they pretty much all boil down to two possibilities: a MacBook running OS X without a keyboard or a large iPhone.

Honestly folks, what are the chances that Steve Jobs is going to get on stage and announce a form factor change of a 3 year old phone?

Leading up to the iPhone announcement, the pundits were sure it was going to look like a click wheel iPod with a dial pad. No one even imagined what was eventually announced.

If you think you know what’s coming, I’d like to refer you to the most widely accepted iPhone rumor a few weeks before the announcement.  The one everyone was positive we were going to see:

• January launch on “all” providers, both CDMA and GSM
• Extremely small form factor
• Two battery design (with single charger) — one for playing music, the other for phone functions
• Flash memory: 4GB for $249, 8GB for $449
• “Slide-out keyboard”
• Possibly touchscreen

with a slight update from Engadget:

“it’s pretty safe to say it won’t have a QWERTY keyboard (although it may be a slider), touchscreen is out, and it’s only going to be GSM with 3G at launch”

Wow! That’s actually a worse track record than the New Jersey Nets.

You can learn a lot from history.  So please bloggers, keep the rumors flowing.  We secretly love to read them.  But just keep in mind, we’re going to see something awesome in 2 weeks. And if it looks anything remotely like a 7” iPhone, I’ll eat my hat.