There’s a lot of buzz going on about the tablet Apple should announce in a matter of a few days. You know, every blog that I know has posted at least an article about it, so I decided to share my thoughts as well.

I believe that the tablet will be announced, and that it won’t be called Apple Tablet, iSlate, Macbook Touch, iPhone XL or whatever fake name you can think of. Now, this is not a post where I discuss specs, nor I will share my thoughts about prices, controlled leaks and other people’s opinion.

I want to focus on apps, and how I believe Apple is going to collaborate with 3rd party developers. Just like if it’s day one again.

Many people are still wondering if the tablet will be powered by the App Store, or if it’s gonna let you install 3rd party applications just like you do on Mac OS X. The tablet will use the App Store, sure. And you know why? Because every Apple device that doesn’t expose its system structure will rely on the App Store in the future. Look at the iPhone: Apple produced a consumer device, for a larger audience than Mac OS X’s one and correctly decided to hide its system files. Wise move: people don’t want to mess around with strange files on their phones. The iPhone works and it’s popular because it combines powerful features and awesome applications in a simple package: if you want to install an app, you open iTunes and hit Sync.If you want to delete it, you just press an x. You don’t have to drag it somewhere to install, there’s no Trash to uninstall things. Before 2007, many Apple fans wrote forum and blog posts about a “Mac OS phone”. Hell, did you seriously think such a thing would have succeeded the way the iPhone did? No, that was completely wrong, and facts are proving it. Now, if you start from the assumption that the iPhone works because it’s simple and doesn’t run a raw porting of Mac OS X but a custom, mobile-dedicated iPhone OS - you can understand that the Tablet will just do the same: it won’t run a squeezed version of Mac OS, it won’t have exposed system files and it will have a custom OS powered by the App Store to install applications.

Then, you should also consider the revenue point of view. Apple currently takes the 30% of revenue from each app that’s sold in the App Store, and everyone’s happy with it. Developers are happy because the App Store is a great marketplace and the percentage Apple takes could have been bigger, Apple is happy because 30% is a lot, considering how many apps are sold everyday. Also, the iPhone has a larger and more heterogeneous audience than Mac OS X: don’t forget that many iPhone users are PC. They don’t have and probably can’t stand Macs. And Apple knew this back when the iPhone was still a prototype: they were producing something everyone could buy, from 17 years old PC dudes to 40 years old Apple aficionados. They thought they could make mountains of money from it. This, together with the fact that a phone should be stupid simple to manage, led Steve to the conclusion that a 30% of revenue was a good move to make his pockets grow full of bucks. The Tablet will share the same policy. Sure, it’s not a phone and it’s not a notebook / desktop computer but as I said above, it’s gonna be a popular portable device, and successful portable products are easy to use. That’s why it’s gonna use the App Store. And if you’re still wondering why I’m so sure the tablet will be popular, just look around on the web. Everyone’s talking about it. I remember a similar situation way back in 2007 before the iPhone was announced.

But there’s a completely different scenario too. Just like Apple surprised everyone and announced the App Store, Apple could innovate again and don’t announce an App Store for the tablet. I know, this sounds pretty crazy - but I believe that of the App Store is not the only possible and successful revenue model. You have to remember that Apple can always refine what’s already great, just look at Snow Leopard. There’s a thin line between “not announcing an App Store” and “refine what’s already great” though: that line leads us to not announcing another iteration of the App Store as it is, but a refined version of the App Store. Sounds crazy, right? Yeah, it does and I know. But just sit back, erase that offensive comment you were writing for this post and think: if the Tablet won’t be just a larger iPhone and won’t just run iPhone apps at a higher resolution, why should it interact with the App Store, which was created for the iPhone? Are you sure that an online store which was created for iPhones / iPods could also work for a tablet computer? How are newspapers going to publish daily contents on the App Store? It seems clear that Apple will come up with a similar idea to the App Store, refined to open up to subscription models and other stuff God knows Steve is thinking about.

So, I’m expecting a tablet device, with a dedicated operating system, based on a finely tuned version of the App Store. Now the question is: how on earth can iTunes 9 run all this stuff together?

Yeah, we should expect a Cocoa iTunes 10 too.