Before the iPhone, and even a little after it, I expected such a device to have two USB ports, Ethernet, Modem, power, audio, and video out (make a great portable video player). I also expected a few keys. As a Macintosh, it would need modifier keys for Shift/Command.Option/Control clicking. It would need a rotate key, and a key to call up a touchable on-screen keyboard when text entry was called for. Perhaps a mouse button, too. How else to discern point -without-click, click, and click-and-drag? That’s at least seven buttons, and perhaps more to adequately support both landscape and portrait modes for righties and lefties. That’s a lot of buttons for a computer without a keyboard.

But then Apple shocked us all. It produced just such a computer with only four buttons, only one of them on the front of the device. And the eight connections I imagined? Two.

And I expect that is much the same format as Apples upcoming tablet. But it will not be a MacBook, or even a MacAnything. If it’s a Mac, it has to support Mac software and Mac interfaces. And then we’re back to needing modifiers for all click or non-click possibilities.

Much Mac software would run very poorly or not at all on a computer with a slow power-sipping processor, a small screen, and no keyboard. Programs would have to be build specifically to run on this Mac-Tablet, and those programs would be ill-suited for a full Mac like a MacBook Pro on an iMac.

I am now convinced that any future tablet from Apple will be much closer to the iPhone than to any Macintosh. As such, it would not have the word “Mac” anywhere in its name.