MacMost: Making the most of your Mac, iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV.

So rumors are growing stronger that Apple will come out with a tablet product later this year or next. A lot of people seem to think it will be a large-screen iPod Touch.
In a way, this makes sense. With the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store a huge success, Apple can come out with an iPod Touch that takes advantage of all of that third-party software and the whole iPhone OS with its Web browser, Mail and other apps.
What a cool device that would be. Or would it?
For instance, I’m not sure how I would such an “iPod Tablet” myself. Would it come in handy at the office? Not with my desktop Mac, or even my MacBook Pro around. Why would I setting for an iPhone OS experience when I could have a full Mac experience.
At home, I use either the MacBook Pro for bits of work, or my iPhone for something quick. The only advantage of the iPhone is that it is on my person, which gives it an advantage when the MacBook Pro is somewhere else in the house. An iPod Tablet would suffer that same drawback since it won’t fit in my pocket.
So what about when I step out of the office? Well, the iPod Tablet probably won’t come with me. I need my iPhone, because it is a phone. I can check email, check news, tweet, etc., with it. It is small enough to be in my pocket all the time. The Tablet just won’t be there when I need it.
How about on long trips — overnight excursions to conferences or on vacation? Well, for that the Tablet probably won’t be enough. I’d need to take my MacBook Pro. And my iPhone for communication. So why do I need a Tablet?
So a Tablet won’t be for someone like me. It is more likely that it will be for someone who doesn’t use either an iPhone or MacBook. I just can’t see that being a very big market.
So how could Apple make it better? Make it a real Mac. If it runs Snow Leopard, and not the iPhone OS, then it can be a successor to the MacBook Air and a competitor to the NetBooks. Make it touch screen, sure, but also make sure Bluetooth and USB keyboards and mice work with it so you can use it for real work with real apps. For that, I would ditch my MacBook.
I hope they go that route, iPhone apps are great, but they are more for communication, organization and entertainment. To compete with NetBooks, a Mac Tablet would need to run applications, not apps.