Apple's mystery "product transition": A tablet, perhaps?

Long-simmering rumors of a Mac tablet get a gulp of oxygen after Apple execs hint at a "future product transition," followed by whispers of a "MacBook Touch" slated for the fall.

Let's start with Exhibit No. 1: Monday's quarterly earnings report from Apple, during which CFO Peter Oppenheimer repeatedly mentioned a "future product transition, which I can't discuss today."

Of course, that touched off a frenzy of speculation, ranging from a revamp of the MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks (rumors of which were recently fanned by purported spy shots of new casings) to new iPods, or even "a new form factor of devices that are smaller than a laptop but larger than an iPhone," as the New York Times put it.

Then we have Exhibit No. 2: A report from MacDailyNews, in which an anonymous tipster claims to have details on an upcoming Mac tablet:

Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X … Slot-loading SuperDrive. Accelermoeter. GPS … By October at the latest.

Of course (as MacDailyNews itself warns), this is just a rumor, and chatter about a tabletized MacBook is nothing new. But combine the MDN report with the hints from Apple's conference call, and suddenly we've got a Mac tablet firestorm on our hands. 

Then again, not everyone's taking the bait; Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog, for example, notes that a Mac tablet "would be a new product, not a product transition," and leans instead toward a new iPod line with touch controls and solid-state drives. 

So, what do you think—do we have a MacBook Touch in our future? Would you buy one, and for how much? What features would you like to see, and what would you use it for?

Related:
An iTease: Something Cool and Cheap From Apple [NYT]
RUMOR: Apple’s secret product is ‘MacBook touch’ [MacDailyNews]