You may have caught some of the buzz about the Apple’s impending new product development announcement. Since Steve Jobs gleefully demo’d the first iPhone, the tech world has got slightly flustered every time Apple books a venue for more than 20 people.

This evening (UK time) Apple will announce what is slated to be a new Tablet computer. At this stage it’s 99% sure to be a new Apple Tablet, like this one mocked up on the T3 Site.

I’m really interested to see what they come out with, for three reasons:

1. Since buying a Toshiba Tecra tablet PC to experiment with sketching design concepts, I’ve been intrigued and frustrated by tablet computers. In typical Microsoft style, the tablet PC had some brilliant bits like the handwriting recognition, but overall it was really just some pen interface stuff tacked onto the top of windows, making it inappropriate as a touch sensitive user interface and disappointing as a user experience. So I’m very interested to see what the masters of user interface innovation have come up with. Remember it was Apple who originally invented the Mouse and the drag and drop Desktop metaphor we use so much today. They’ve certainly been busy over the last few years submitting a lot of  patents for touch sensitive interfaces. With incredible timing the USPTO have actually today granted a patent for a proximity-sensing touchscreen.

Diagram from Apple's latest Patent for proximity sensing touchscreen.

2. I’m also hoping to see Apple remain loyal to it’s creative customers and for this to be a fantastic electronic sketchbook. I actually really liked sketching on the tablet PC. Everyone has different opinions about this, but I always found it much easier to sketch directly on the screen of the tablet PC, rather than use a graphics tablet, where my hand’s moving on the desk while I look at the results on the screen a couple of feet away. I’m not holding out much hope on the graphic drawing ability though, as Apple will inevitably have made compromises to reduce cost. I imagine they will have prioritised functionality like mobile internet connection to download ebooks, which has more mass market appeal and will leverage iTunes to sell books. This little old product designer will be disappointed though if it’s no good as an arty farty tool.

3. Finally I can’t wait  to see what kind of lovely thing they’ve come up with this time. Apple are such a good example of a company that really ‘get’ what good product design is for and I love them for their bravery. It will be fascinating to find out what their strategy has been in selecting the balance of functionality and features. I suspect it will be a lot like the iPhone and have some crucial missing component (like the G3 was missing from the fist iPhone), and this one will only be  a “nearly there” product leading to the fully awesome version 2 next year.

So let’s see what happens in the next few hours! We’ll report back what we find.