No said release date!

Meet the flagship of Apple’s recent flurry of patent activity, a product some have been predicting Apple would release for years: the Mac tablet. This slate-format tablet is as portable as a MacBook Air, but with a twist: It also docks into an iMac for regular desktop work. This is no stuffy PC tablet; expect a fully thought-out interface and a specialized Mac OS update—as well as a treasure trove of innovations that could take this tablet from cool to downright phenomenal.

Based on existing technology, the tablet would feature iPhone-like multitouch, spanning the entire screen. Flitting through images and albums will be as easy as it is on the iPhone and the latest MacBook touchpads. And new gesturing patents granted this year will continue to add capabilities, assigning new functions to more multifinger gestures, full-palm gestures, and stylus data-entry.

When you’re not mobile, the Mac tablet docks into an iMac-like chassis. This may seem mundane at first, but don’t count on Apple leaving this as a simple, dumb display, with a relatively underfeatured tablet shouldering all of workload. Tucked inside this custom iMac you’ll find a larger, secondary hard drive (for extra storage or automatic backups), a beefed-up graphics chip, or even an extra processor, giving the tablet a power boost befitting a workstation. -MacLife

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