Can Apple really do it again?

Here's a story from the near future. It's been a long day. Finally throwing aside the cares of work, you slump down on your sofa and pick up that shiny new device you bought the other day. Costing the thick end of £1,000, it's Apple's stylish new iPad (iTablet? iSlate?) – a smooth 10in screen with no keyboard, like an iPhone on steroids. You pick it up, turn it on with one swipe of a finger, and begin to . . .

At this point, the picture goes hazy and freezes. The reason: while the ­invitations for the launch of Apple's "latest creation" in San Francisco next Wednesday have finally gone out to the great and good of the technology industry, still no one is certain what the hell their creation is actually going to be for, nor even what it will be called (though my money is on iPad or iSlate).

The device that Steve Jobs, chief executive and co-founder of Apple, will unveil at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is variously predicted to transform our experience of reading electronic versions of books, news­papers and magazines (there are publishing executives clasping their hands heavenwards with that fervent wish); of watching TV and video; of surfing the web and playing games; even of making internet video calls. Perhaps it will do all of the above.

Not surprisingly, then, this is being called "a critical turning point for the way we get and use all sorts of media", and "Apple's reconception of personal computing". In the New York Times, the media columnist David Carr wrote: "I haven't been this excited about buying something since I was eight years old and sent away for the tiny seahorses I saw advertised in the back of a comic book." Another gasping fan wrote: "The only thing I know is that I'll take two."
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