I have no interest in owning an iPhone. I don’t go to meetings every day with trembling hands and utter “My name is Ian, and I’m powerless in the face of Apple“. I refuse to use iTunes, and I hate their business strategy and software. I get mildly annoyed when people tell me how I’ve made so much progress since I started using a MacBook (a machine I love, by the way). In spite of all this, I literally salivate when someone says “Mac Tablet”. I saw an Apple MessagePad back before I even used computers, and was dumbfounded when I finally started using a PC in 1999 to find that the product had been quickly abandoned. So will the world of tech industry and business news PLEASE STOP TORTURING ME? Industry sources have been saying “coming this fall” since around the time of this May 2008 rumor. Yesterday’s rumor is that they just shot an ad for the new Mac Tablet at a diner in Truckee, California. This all hot on the heels of the buzz about some mysterious “veteran analyst” actually handling the thing. To fan the flames of my lustful depravity, Mashable presented this comprehensive roundup of imagined Mac Tablets last week. My pick would have to be Tommaso Gecchelin’s flexible touchscreen notebook (pictured below), which most agree is an exceedingly unlikely Apple design. For now, alas, the only available Mac Tablet is the Axiotron ModBook, which somehow seems like one of those car kits that turns a Volkswagon into a sports car. Maybe I should’ve included the Mac Tablet in my list of Disappointing Technologies…

Tommaso Gecchelin’s Flexible Touchscreen Notebook Concept: