Now that Arrington has weighed in, I’ll place myself in his rarified company by writing the obligatory blog post about why I think Apple is doing a tablet.

Because I am a loser, I have no access to Arrington’s clandestine sources, so I’ll content myself with doing a plebian version of trying to break down the reasons why it might make sense for Apple to do this.

Why would they do this?

People cry wolf on the Apple tablet thing almost every year:

• 2007
• 2008

Why would 2009 be any different?

Well for starters, netbook sales numbers are getting pretty huge. Apple hasn’t made a netbook yet, but why not? Well one reason is that Tim Cook thinks that netbooks suck. But a better one is that Apple has to know it could just do something a hell of a lot cooler if they made a device with the functionality of a netbook but the form factor of a a giant iPhone.

Why do I think this? Because Apple hasn’t entered the netbook market yet even though they have the expertise to own it. The iTunes Store is a juggernaut engine of adoption, and Apple’s also sitting on some badass multi-touch patents that they’ve hardly begun to make use of yet, not to mention supply chain prowess that is the envy of the industry and the cash/demand to ensure they can get whatever they need from overseas suppliers. I think they’re going to enter the netbook space in a major way, and that when they do, it will be a tablet.

What would it look like?

I’m thinking something like Amazon’s Kindle, but with the capabilities of an iPhone, and most of the look — big, flat tabula rasa touch screen. The size would be really important, because you would want this thing to be able to be a book or a control panel for your home media center, but also have a netbook-like capability set.

It’d probably have to have a better version of OS X on it than the iPhone does — more bells and whistles. This could be why OS X Snow Leopard has support for 3G. (I don’t think that the Air sells enough to be the reason. If that’s why, then they’re going to severely lower the price of that badboy).

What it would do

In general, I’m envisioning an on-the-go “instead of the laptop” option for when you’re travelling light but the iPhone isn’t enough. Here’s a list of the potential use cases that get me excited:

• Touch-screen notebook/sketchpad/eisel (a bigger space for Brushes!)
• E-media reader a la the Kindle
• Home media remote control
• iPod with awesome capacity
• iPhone with magnetically-attached, Ive-designed earpiece (we can dream, right?)

OMG! When can I have it?

Supposedly this fall, but who knows? The intensity of the buzz has been building for awhile. Most people think that an announcement would come at WWDC next month. Let’s hope so — I’d definitely be first in line for this one.