Smarthouse out of Australia reports that Apple may be unveiling a Mac tablet with docking station in mid 2007. According to the blog, Taiwanese manufacturers are bidding to turn Apple’s full-working prototype into production at the moment.

Smarthouse goes on to say

The Mac tablet has been designed to handle third party applications such as home automation software that will allow users to control lighting, audio, entertainment devices and security feeds. It also acts as a full blown PC has wireless linking for a new generation of Wireless Hi Fi speakers that are currently being tested by Apple. The new MAC tablet has Intel processors as well as a docking station that allows the device to link to screens with HDMI input. The docking station also has additional memo0ry capability so that users can stream content to either the tablet PC or the docking station or directly to a media centre if one is being used.

Hmm.. sounds interesting. Jason O’Grady says he would love a Mac Tablet to keep up with news and email on the go but also points out the negatives:

There are a lot of negatives to tablet computers: they are less functional than full-fledged notebook PCs, data input can be dicey (although handwriting recognition is slow, voice recognition has the potential to be fast) and they’re usually pretty bulky and expensive.

Those are my main concerns too. I’ve got a Tungsten T5 which I carry wherever I go and already that is pretty bulky. And to my knowledge handwriting recognition still has some ways to go. The main factor is price. If the tablet comes up to about the same price of a MacBook, will consumers still buy it?

It sounds interesting, but unless this vaporware tablet is really revolutionary, I would rather have an iPhone (another vaporware product) to surf the net and email, and manage my calendar. However, if there’s one company that can pull off a revolutionary tablet PC, its Apple.

Stay tuned…