Here are two great rumors that taste great together: a new tablet from Apple and a new tablet for Windows.

Okay, yeah. So what, right? We all know this. We won’t shut up about it.

Now, in conversations that followed my last post about the Apple tablet, I admitted that I’ve never wanted to jailbreak any of my iPhones but I might be interested in jailbreaking the Apple tablet that I will inevitably get.

However, what if the tablet’s OS is just crap? What if it does turn out just to be a glorified iPod Touch with a focus on movies and eBooks? Am I going to want it then? Maybe some shiny HP tablet running Windows 7 might be more attractive to me for what I want to do (sure, I’ll read books on it but movies? only if I’m on a plane). But why should that be the only option?

I wonder how hard it will be to turn one of the new PC tablets into a Hackintosh? A Hackintablet, if you will (even if you won’t). That may be a better option for some people who are disappointed with Apple’s offering but don’t want to get their precious little hands mussed up with some Windows 7 action. I’d be fine with Windows 7, honestly; I use it for work every day and I maintain that it is the best consumer OS that Microsoft has ever released. It makes me excited for Windows 8 which I imagine will be a further refinement of what they already have (in other words, I expect Windows 8 to be the next Windows XP). But, I’m drunkenly stumbling off the path here.

Personally, I’ve always been kind of against jailbreaking. I don’t see how it’s our ‘right’ to be able to install whatever we want on hardware (outside of laptops and desktops, of course). But my opinion was mainly out of spite for all of the whiners who get all indignant when they can’t get Linux to install on their electric toothbrush or whatever. Trust me, a lot of my opinions are based straight out of spite. Spite gets me through life. Spite is fuel. But spite don’t make right. And even though I don’t necessarily agree with jailbreaking, I really appreciate the work the guys who produce jailbreaking software do. That’s some serious hacking and my hat’s off to ‘em. And now jailbreaking or building a Hackintablet seems more acceptable to me now that I might have a personal use for it.

And even if I don’t do it myself, I’d be surprised if someone doesn’t hack the crap out of Apple’s tablet and I’d be surprised if someone else doesn’t shoehorn OS X onto a PC tablet. Especially since it was my idea first. And it was my idea. Don’t contest. Give credit where credit’s due:

To me. THAT’S RIGHT. TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah, the Apple tablet. We’ve dreamed long and wild about it and speculated like it was the Klondike. We’ve already praised and damned Apple for a product that no one knows one proper, proven fact about. And I’m about to do the same thing.

You see, this is the most excited I’ve been about an Apple product since the iPhone (and, before that, the iPod). Unfortunately, I already have an Apple tablet: it’s called the iPhone. And—bonus!—it fits in my pocket. Sure, the screen isn’t that large but do I really need a 7″ or 10″ screen for what I do with it? Do most people? Is the tablet seriously going to just be the large-sized-print version of your favorite book, geared for the bespectacled elders amongst us?

And lest you think that the tablet is going to be like the MacBook Air and run Snow Leopard, just take a look at the name that’s been bandied about by the Relevant Ones lately: yeah, it’s iSlate and not MacSlate. This suggests that it’s going to fall in line with the iPod Touch rather than the MacBook. That tells us iPhone OS and not OS X. Does that mean that the home screen is going to look like your grandmother’s Windows 95 desktop: just an endless grid of barely-organized icons? Or will the icons be huge so that only, say, 16 are visible at once? Will it be like we’re using 1024×768 on a 27″ screen? Will this really be the large-print version of the iPod Touch?

All of these things do only one thing: disappoint me. There’s a lot of potential in the idea of an Apple tablet that will be thoroughly lost if it’s just a glorified iPod Touch. At the same time, it’s not realistic to expect it to just boot up to a nice, empty install of OS X; desktop-oriented operating systems simply aren’t geared for touch interfaces (sure, they may be touch-capable but it doesn’t mean that they’re designed for that sort of thing). That’s what drove the design behind the iPhone OS, of course. And, now, I’m sure that Apple also realizes that OS X won’t scale down well to a 10″ touch screen. But do they also understand that the iPhone OS won’t scale up either? And does it matter?

The iPhone OS is already a proven winner that not only has immense popularity and support going for it but also doesn’t require anyone to be trained on how to use it. Why waste resources developing a new UI when you already have one that can be recycled into a viable—if less capable—solution? Of course, I don’t expect it to be identical to the iPhone OS. They’re going to want to put that extra screen real estate to use and there needs to be at least something impressive other than the fact that, yes, Virginia, the Apple tablet does exist. If nothing else, I’d like to at least see a UI based on the iPhone’s but with, say, cover flow and tabs for organizing installed apps. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if the UI looks suspiciously like iTunes where everything is organized by activity and is always linked to your iTunes Store account so you can download books, apps, and music without having to jump into a specific app.

And the keyboard in the graphic above? Good grief, I hope not. It’s supposedly going to have a 10″ screen. A centralized floating keyboard only makes sense if you’re going to be using it against a surface. Or awkwardly cradle it in one hand like a plate full of steaming clams while you’re poking at it one character at a time with the middle finger of your other hand, cursing Steve Jobs’ crinkly old body at each alphanumeric stab. A smart design would be two fans of characters in both lower corners, half being one side of a QUERTY keyboard, the other half being, well, the other. That way, you can hold it in your grubby little paws and thumb-punch your way through life. A space bar, of course, would be on both sides. This is smart because left-handed people could have the option to switch things around.

But now I’ve just gone all science fiction on you. I’m just typing out loud anyway. This is me being both nervous and hopeful for the Apple tablet. I, for one, hope it’s better than I expect but don’t expect it to be as neat as it is in my head. In the meantime, I’ve gone from my wallet practically barfing out $800 every time I see mention of the Apple tablet to it just offering up an anxious vurp.