The tablet isn't about the iPhone at all

It has been proposed several times that the supposed upcoming apple tablet will run iPhone OS at a higher resolution. It's not going to. It's not in apple's style to adopt a one size fits all strategy in anything. However, I have a two theories about what the tablet may be (in order of likeliness):

• A device running iPhone OS X with UIKit interface and frameworks: This may sound like it would run iPhone apps, but it will not. Instead, it adopts frameworks more similar to the iPhone's UIKit than Mac OS X's AppKit. And if it does this, OpenGL ES, not OpenGL, will be the 3D provider of choice.
• A device running full OS X: Full OS X is not a one size fits all strategy in this case... if the tablet's form factor is large enough. The MacBook Air, supposedly the "apple netbook", has a 13" display, and runs OS X perfectly well. The limiting factor on the Air is the full-size keyboard, but if Apple loses the keyboard and goes for handwriting recognition or thumb-typing, the display could likely be a high-DPI ten inch display. If the tablet ends up being as popular as the iPhone, this may serve to push the iPhone halo effect over the edge and get all of those iPhone developers developing for the mac.

Google Wave

Google Wave + some other online social network / wave list is going to replace facebook. They've already got the apps.

Open Ecosystem

Running linux is a feature for many smartphone platforms. Why does it seem that none of them make use of linux's killer feature for installing applications, package managers? Stuff like this is just insane.

A case for integrated web applications

I never knew until quite recently that the web inspector in WebKit browsers was actually an HTML/Javascript appliction (with obvious binding to communicate with the underlying stuff). If that's not a pervasive web app, I don't know what is.

My Thoughts on Package Managers

I recently held my breath and reinstalled the Windows 7 Beta after Windows 7 killed itself a few months ago. I have also been installing a few games, namely Warcraft III, WoW, Portal, and Half-Life 2. And I haven't needed the CD to install any of them.

Steam allows you to re-download games in case of a situation just like mine - the system you play the game on kills itself and you want to play the game again, albeit with a different GUID on your partition. This got me thinking as to exactly how easy it was - I don't have to bother with any installers in Steam and the Blizzard installers just download themselves and zip along. This is the same magic as a Linux package manager, but as a store. The magic part of the commerce in the download service is that games are still bound to a key, which is bound to my account, which I use to play the games. As game downloads move further and game companies such as Valve build out their online services, the CD key may no longer be necessary, and games will only bind to the account. The concept of binding to an account is not an alien one, evidenced by iTunes. However, IDENTITY as an ownership model is beginning to replace a slip of paper on the inside of the box.