By the way, AA is nice and generic, but only any good at a constantly low drain.

Now, I'm also the very happy owner of an HP Mini 311 hackintosh that I don't see being replaced by an iSlatelet either because I see them serving different purposes. My HP “Minibook” is really my home-away-from-home to my work machine (a MacBook Pro). I take the minibook to meetings to take notes, check mail, access web apps, websurf. I also take it with me as my tag-along computer when I'm out with the kids or on weekender trips that won't need the bulk or brawn of my MBP. I also let my 5 yearold beat on it w/o worrying about her destroying a $3000 machine with all my professional data on it.

I read e-books, listen to music, social network, read news/rss and watch video on my iPhone in addition to using it as my primary phone (my wife and I ditched our land line about a year ago too). The iPhone works well for most of those things, but the real estate issue is a serious problem for the eBook, video, and websurfing usage models. It works great in a pinch, but I'd love a little more screen when watch a movie/tv show or armchair surfing. This is where I see the iSlatelet fitting in and why I think that it needing a full-blown OS X desktop operating system isn't necessary.

The real question in my mind is whether the iPhone OS 4.0 enhancements will actually make it so that you can have apps run in both a “phone” and “tablet” mode such that their UI and functionality will scale to the target platform cleanly. And if anyone can pull that off, it's certainly Apple.

People are copncerned with cost primarily and only a small proportion of the public would pay a hefty price for a sexy looking gadget

AND if I could dual boot it with a favorite LINUX distro (the future Kubuntu Netbook Remix that will be “much better” this April looks good).

Then, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Depends.

I do like AA battery as I hate the TONS of proprietary batteries (one for every little device that are all bad for the environment in the long term when they hit the waste stream), AND if the smaller pocket version had AAA battery. IF it/they had that kind of battery tech, then I would have to really restrain myself. Well, in other words, it would have to be perfect in every way (and I doubt that such perfection even exists in the minds of the typical system engineers imagination, if they have imaginations). Then again, it is Steve Jobs, and he has proven himself to have the ability to bridge his imagination into engineering successes. Time will tell.

If Apple does not do the above, then someone should… because they will have to do it in order to beat Apple. I expects something fun to see when it is announced and we can see some videos of it working.

It doesn't fit in my pocket, so it's too big to take with me easily.
It doesn't have a keyboard, so I can't do real work it.

So, it's a toy I have to *really* want to take with me. Unless Apple has secretly perfected the virtual blowjob (iSuck?), this presentation is going to leave a lot of people cold.