iPhone had the first two store UIs; the iTunes Store for content like music and movies, and the App Store for software. The iPad will add a third, the iBookstore, for buying eBooks. These stores all provide content for users to extend the utility of their device. But each has a pretty different user interaction model for accessing, purchasing, and consuming that content.

• The iTunes Store is a separate app that is completely distinct from the iPod app. When you find something to buy, prompting you for your iTunes account password. It then adds the purchase to the app's Downloads tab. Once you have purchased the content, you must then switch back to the iPod app to listen to or watch it.
• The App Store is a separate app. When you purchase something, it prompts you for your iTunes password, and then exits to the home screen, switching to the screen where the app will live. The state of the download is reflected in the app icon. When the download is complete, you tap the icon on the home screen to use it.
• The iBookstore (the one word is the official name as used by Apple) is not a separate app, but lives within the iBooks app on the iPad. Purchasing content prompts for the iTunes password and downloads in-app, which can be directly accessed after it has finished downloading.

Each type of content follows a different workflow when going from access to purchase to use. If a goal of the iPad's low price is to drive content sales through the three stores, as some speculate is the case, then the purchase model should be as streamlined for the different types of content. Forcing different workflows will only confuse users who can't remember which type of content comes from where.

We've all got our thoughts on what the Jesus Tablet will be, so here are my guesses. I fully expect to be completely wrong on all of this, as many of these answers are completely blind shots and that Apple will blow my expectations out of the water.

Hardware

• 8"-10" touch screen, running at 1280x720
• Very thin; less than 1/2" thick (the iPhone 3GS is 0.48" thick)
• About 1lb heavy, light enough to hold in one hand
• 8 hours of battery life
• 32 or 64 GB SSD
• WiFi
• 3G over GSM, and Apple's US 3G partner will continue to be AT&T
• There will be some way to pair your Tablet cell connection with your iPhone's cell connection; either with an official announcement of AT&T tethering, or by adding your Tablet to the 3G account
• Front-mounted camera
• Some kind of collapsible stand in the frame, so the device can sit on a table

Input/Output

• Multi-touch on the display, exactly like the iPhone
• Multi-touch on the back of the device, similar to the surface of the Magic Mouse
• Photos and video via front-mounted camera
• Audio via front-mounted microphone and speakers, wired headphones, or Bluetooth
• Dock connector
• Expanded voice recognition
• Software keyboard, no Bluetooth keyboards available

Software

• It will run the iPhone OS 4.0; or rather, the iPhone OS will become a "Mobile OS X", consisting of the heavyweight Tablet and the smaller iPhone.
• It will allow multiple apps to run at the same time, with some UI for viewing multiple apps alongside each other. This may not be possible on the iPhone.
• It meant to replace a full PC for most common day-to-day needs
• iPhone applications will not run "automatically", but will need to be resubmitted through the App Store approval process. Most applications will run without much modifications. Icons will need to be higher resolution.
• A system-wide Dock for documents, applications, and small widgets will be onscreen at all times
• The home screen will be significantly revamped, and renamed to the Dashboard. App icons, web clippings, and widgets will be freely arrangeable.
• Handwriting recognition will be available for text input, with an optional stylus, or with a gesture such as two closed fingers drawing as if you had a pen.
• Some gestures will be used on the back of the device, such as scrolling and zooming.

Apps

• Standard kind of iPod and Internet communications apps the iPhone OS comes with. iTunes video, iTunes LP content, Maps, and Safari web content will look phenomenal.
• Sketchbook, an unlimited workspace to sketch and write notes, with collaboration features.
• iWork, a full port of the iWork application suite, tied to the Internet (and expansion of the iWork.com web application), with collaboration features.
• iChat, a port of the Mac app, with a heavy emphasis on video conferencing

SDK

• The SDK will be available immediately, with a simulator.
• There will be an emphasis on application interoperability.
• Applications will be able to register plugins with view controllers and UTIs. When an application wants to expose an object (say, an image) to other apps, it will look for app plugins which respond to the "public.image" UTI, load one which matches the UTI, and present the view without leaving the application.
• Applications will be able to expose services, similar to how they work on Mac OS X. Services will be integrated into the voice control system.

Product

• 32 GB model will be available for $899
• 64 GB model will be available for $999
• Available in US in March, major countries by summer
• There will not be a WiFi-only model at launch.

Other Predictions

• Updated MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs, with the mobile Core i5 "Arrandale" processors from Intel.
• There will be no mention of Verizon
• There will be no updates to the iPod or the Apple TV
• There will be no announcements of the iPhone 4G

There's been quite a bit of misunderstanding about what Palm's new WebOS is, versus what it isn't. So I'd like to dispel some of the questions surrounding it from the information I've been able to find on it. There isn't much I was able to find (not surprising, as the thing was just announced today), but we can draw some conclusions from the information.

From Web Apps to Widgets

Many people will respond with derision at the fact that applications in WebOS are built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; given the state of most web applications today, this isn't hard to understand. However, the biggest reason web apps are crap compared to their desktop equivalent is that web apps have no integration with the host OS. Which means that web apps have a tough time dealing with multiple OS windows, the clipboard, and offline access.

When Apple released Tiger, they shipped with it the popular Dashboard interface. Inside were miniature applications which were also written with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There was a slight difference, however; Apple included the means to integrate the Dashboard with JavaScript. One example is how a Dashboard widget will display its settings via a smooth, GPU-accelerated 3D animation where the 2D widget flips over. This is possible because Apple included JavaScript hooks to perform this animation. But the core tools were just the same - HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The Mojo Framework

WebOS applications are much more sophisticated than Dashboard widgets, and certainly more so than regular web applications. This is because WebOS includes a set of tools for creating apps, called the Palm Mojo Application Framework. This, at its highest level, is conceptually similar to Cocoa Touch on the iPhone; it provides common functionality to all applications. It's what will provide all the common code on the device, from data manipulation of stuff like your calendars to the whizzy animation effects you'll see throughout the interface. It's the reason that, in most iPhone apps, the scrolling behavior feels exactly the same.

So, from what I can tell, the Mojo framework is an implementation of all of these ideas, using JavaScript as the programming language, and using HTML5 and CSS for drawing to the screen. Despite there being very little information, they do mention the following features on the developer website:

• apps are installed and run on the device,
• apps are designed to be multitasked and run in the background,
• apps have full access to gestures and the touch screen,
• apps can use a Growl-esque system to display user notifications,
• apps will have access to sqlite databases for data storage (part of HTML5), and
• apps can exchange data via a common messaging mechanism.

The Performance Argument

"But won't it come down to speed?" Yes, it will. However, WebOS is based on WebKit, and likely is using the latest enhancements from the SquirrelFish project. There is a battle royale going on right now between the developers of WebKit, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera for fastest JavaScript interpreter, which means that JavaScript is only going to get faster and faster.

Why go with JavaScript? It provides a low barrier to entry; nobody really needs an SDK to write apps. It makes it very easy to sandbox apps, as the underlying operating system is still invariably written in some form of C, and JavaScript provides no way to break that barrier. And many other reasons, which I talked about last year before the iPhone SDK came out.

tl;dr: JavaScript is just a language. Palm used that to build a system for making applications. They're nothing like web apps.