A new week, a new Apple rumour (I'm going with the UK spelling here since I'm in London). This one is about the fabled Apple Tablet, which is basically the same rehashed rumour about the Apple netbook that surfaced earlier this year.

In this version, China Times has an article (translated here) about the upcoming plans for Apple to release such a device in October.

eWeek interviewed me yesterday to find out my opinion on if these rumours were possibly going to come true.

My opinion? This rumour smells about right. Why? Because of a convergence of a number of factors: user demand, technology, and developer energy. The point where these things converge is where Apple plays best.

I was recently quoted about rumours that Apple was making a move to Netbooks. In conclusion: I think it's a lot of talk about something that's not going to happen... yet.

First: a disclaimer. I own an Apple Specialist, but none of the information contained in this article was gathered from any Apple sources, either officially or unofficially. It's all conjecture.

With that out of the way, my opinion is as follows. Apple is an incredible company with a history of design innovation. They have perfected a core OS (OS X) that runs on machines with 30" screens and 3" screens, with a multitude of interfaces - keyboards, tablets, mice, and touch. It's obvious to me that a device with a smaller screen than the 13" MacBook but larger than the iPod touch would be one of the many in development at One Infinite Loop. In fact, I would guess that there are literally dozens of prototypes with varying screen sizes of 6" to 10" lying around in some super-secret lab in Cupertino.