After outlining my thoughts on the tablet, a few folks have noted that Apple has never made a modular device because they're clunky and harder to produce, but I don't think that means they never would. While I'm not positive it will be a laptop, I am quite confident the tablet will act differently in different environments (see Pogue's explanation of Droid docks).

After writing the last post, I found some examples, new and old, that showed similar ideas.

Two years ago, Popular Mechanics envisioned a truly modular tablet. I think this is further than Apple would go, but is most similar to what I discussed above.

I couldn't find the source of this image, but I see something like this as a distinct possibility. Tim Van Damme posted a thoughtful piece yesterday that struck a similar cord. "Combine this 'shell' with our tablet, and you get a fully functional desktop computer".

Finally, here's a real product. Lenovo is coming out with a hybrid laptop/tablet that is pretty ugly, but is theoretically identical to what I proposed.

I think I'm done prognosticating (for now), but I'm growing more and more excited about this device. I've also started thinking more about how content will be displayed. More to come on that later.