[Macworld]

Post your comments for What might a tablet's home screen look like? here

[plazamac]

I'm guessing the "home screen" will be elegant and simple. A series of icons to select what "option" you wish to work with. An icon for the ereader. An icon for the media player interface. An icon for the "System Preferences" interface, and an icon for the "workplace" (such as desktop or finder-like area). Apple will leave it up to third parties to come up with widgets, clocks, "desktop" changers, etc. Also, don't forget the hacking community - especially if it uses the iPhone OS.

[23since84]

Expose-like function seems perfect for small but adequate physical display window onto a potentially large virtual workspace, maybe with stacks.

Rob, curious what you'd use this tablet for? Four of the app/widgets you show already work perfectly on my iPhone, which also does a bang-up job of scrolling through a newspaper article print column in the NY Times app--although imperfect for undisciplined browsing--and is also a pretty good photo viewer. So I don't think I'd buy a tablet for any of what is on your mock-up screen.

[ak77]

Farhad Manjoo has a far more convincing post about this exact topic, over on the Slate. I'm not sure he agrees with you.

http://www.slate.com/id/2242556/

[ak77]

And this is even better: http://gizmodo.com/5...st-be-like-this

[griffman]

I wrote another article about what I'd want the tablet for -- I want it to replace my laptop when I travel. I doubt it'll be able to do that, but that's my wish (and the wish of many of the commenters to that story).

So yes, the home screen replicates the iPhone's widgets (though I took them from Dashboard ). But the big difference is you have to run all those sequentially on the iPhone, and you don't have the screen space to see them all at once anyway.

With a tablet, I'd want it to be my information appliance when I glance at it, and then be able to use it for all the stuff we (seemingly) know it will do - games, movies, e-books, etc.

As for the other two articles, all are basically saying the same thing: the desktop metaphor won't work. I'm not suggesting the desktop metaphor come across; the Finder icon is there as a placeholder for some method of running the other apps. (This wasn't intended to predict Apple's actual design, just some thoughts on what I'd like to be able to do on the home screen of a tablet.)

-rob.

[lefthander57]

I guess in the 18 hours or so that remain before Apple reveals the doohickey, Maworld can still generate articles speculating about how many microns in thickness it will be, whether it's solar, wind or nuclear powered, what sound it might make when powered up, if it's more likely to appeal to short people than tall people....

There's just so much to cover!

Maybe Apple could wait an extra day or two....

[jcaruso]

I must be one of the few business users.... but what about a KEYBOARD ???? I'd love something portable where I can take handwritten notes, but also use like a laptop....AND be able to read books and magazines

[TimothyA]

I'm sure the tablet will need some kind of scrolling panel of application launcher buttons, but please don't call it a "dock." Not only is the OSX dock seriously flawed to begin with, as people like "Tog" Tognazzini have pointed out, but everything you do on a tablet is either "clicking" or "dragging," so the "scrubbing" motion of the OSX dock wouldn't work.