Now that Apple's retail stores are officially public knowledge-- as opposed to unofficially public knowledge, which they've been for the better part of a year or longer-- it's probably a good time to turn our attention to the far less concrete areas of wild rumor and speculation. What better subject to tackle than the long-whispered, never-announced, occasionally-flat-out-denied Apple handheld? We know what you're thinking, but don't worry; we're not back on that whole Apple-branded Palm PDA kick again. After all, Apple features the Handspring Visor Prism in both of its new iBook commercials (yes, there are two, and they're both available online; thanks to faithful viewer Ed Pastore and the gazillion others who pointed that out), and it's even going to sell Palms in its stores. We'll take those as signs that Apple isn't about to launch its own brand of PDAs anytime soon.

But there was a rumorological offshoot to the whole "Apple handheld" subject, and that was the tablet-based Mac. iTablet, iSlate, iWriteOnThisThing, call it what you will; there have long been whispers that Apple is ceding the PDA market it founded to the ones already mired in that battle, and is instead working on something midway between a PDA and a laptop-- a full-fledged Mac with a pressure-sensitive LCD screen driven by pen input. Well, we were too retail-store-crazy to do anything with it at the time, but a few days ago a posting to the Mac EvangeList featured a veritable treasure trove of "details" about this alleged SlateMac, although the "treat as rumor" warnings are plentiful and strong. Still, when has that ever stopped anyone?

So here's the story: it's a tablet-style Mac sort of like the iBook, but with no keyboard-- just the screen half. It's a two- or three-pound unit featuring a 12.1-inch 1024x768 screen, two USB ports, one FireWire port, AirPort built-in (no card needed), an Ethernet port, and no modem. All input is via stylus and handwriting recognition. It runs Mac OS X (but not Classic) and can "screen share" with another Mac OS X system wirelessly via AirPort; the upshot is that even though it only packs a G3 processor, you can run applications on your desktop G4 and actually use them on the tablet. Oh, and there's a PC card slot, and an eight-to-ten-hour battery.

Sound like fun? It does to us-- with its screen-sharing capabilities, it would be the perfect "satellite" Mac to supplement a G4 in the den. Imagine being able to use your primary Mac while sitting on the couch in the living room; no worries about different copies of applications with different preferences on a PowerBook, no need to mess with file sharing to get at your desktop files. And, of course, the potential uses in an educational environment are staggering. While this is "only a rumor," the author claims that it's not wishful thinking; this thing exists. We have reason to believe, it too-- remember all those stories about InkWell, Apple's port of the Newton's handwriting recognition engine to Mac OS X? If the iTablet is running as a prototype at Apple, then it's a good bet it'll be a real product someday, since Apple stopped its whole "research for the sake of coolness" practices years ago. Now the big question is, will Apple beat Microsoft's "Tablet PC" to market?