Yes, that is exactly what Apple is aiming to do as a primary form of usage. Remember that there was a big story in the associated press that Apple contacted magazine and book publishers recently this month about the tablet market. It's related to it.
Not only that, Marvel Comics was bought out by Disney.Guess who holds stock in Disney? That's right. Steve Jobs. Do you smell where this is going? Comics to tablet= digital comics. There is a difference between web-comics and digital comics. The latter will probably much more managable to create, design and publish while web-comics are linear in sequential form like a newspaper comic strip and with less interactivity.
Of course, there will be applications designed for the tablet for 'on the go' productivity relating to small and large businesses such as word processing, point of sale, database management, and so on.
And if the screen is pressure-sensitive, I expect a pen-based device for scribbling and drawing to compete with Wacom's Bamboo products. I use the old school Wacom tablet drawing pad and it still works great for digital art projects. But if this tablet can let me draw 'on the go' outside of my studio, I will be very excited because this would be extremely useful for jotting down conceptuals with clients or using a tablet-based Sketchbook Pro by Autodesk (which by the way is a fantastic app. It's as good as Painter but much lighter and quicker). I know for a fact Sketchbook Pro was released for the tablet PC market some time ago and for Mac OS X. I'm quite confident that if this is one feature they're using, I expect that to occur in the near future.
Games would not be surprising to me for the larger pad. If Apple is smart, if the tablet comes out, they should phase out the ipod mini line because I find them, I hate to say it, gay. That's my opinion. The iPod Touch or Classic (with hard drive) are the way to go for 'hardcore' music playing. But I do see why they would use the ipod mini as a 'starter' product for cheap. My prediction is that once the tablet comes out, all the iPods except the Touch will be phased out big time and you'll only see iPod Touch and the so called iTablet.
I suspect it will be named iBook. Remember the classic colored laptops from 10 years ago called the iBook? That product will be re-incarnated in that tablet form. Think about it. iBook=digital reading.
Makes a LOT of sense.
Easy.... something along the lines of
this
I would gladly pay around 900$ subsidized for this. Imagine having all your magazine subscriptions delivered to this and never having to throw them away like you do with your physical magazines. Being able to search them, watch your movies, read books, getting email, surfing the web.. And yes, a MBP would be able to do all of this with a touchscreen and most even without, but a thinner, sleeker device with this functionality would make me leave my MBP at home on travels and take the tablet..