Apple's Q3 Financial call may or may not have pointed to a new Mac tablet offering but that doesn't really matter. The Mac tablet isn't a rumor any more, Robert. It's right here sitting in my pocket. If the iPhone isn't a Mac tablet, I don't know what is. It runs OS X. It has a full touch interface. OS X + touch == Mac tablet, any way you look at it.

The computing world is changing. We're no longer tied to desktops. We move around, we take our computing with us. Holding a computer in the crook of our arms isn't just a nice idea, it's practical. When you're walking through hospital halls, sitting in on a University lecture, attending business meetings, or specing out a project at a construction site, the tablet computer makes sense. If anything, the iPhone which has been pushed far beyond its original design specs, has proven that people want truly mobile computing. No keyboard, no standard screen -- true portability.

And it's not just about people who spend their lives away from their desks. Drawing directly on a screen beats the heck out of drawing on a Wacom tablet. Tablet computing brings the artist directly to the canvas. And it doesn't stop at drawing. How do traditional laptops and computer screens integrate meaningfully in any way into creating music. Sure, we're used to the standard tools but isn't a piano keyboard or a guitar a more natural interface into music? Let musicians jot notes into a portable tablet rather than figuring out how to keep moving between instrument and computer keyboard.

Cell phones and tablet computers are all about freeing ourselves. Sure you can bring a laptop on a camping trip or into the grocery store -- but an iPhone or a small tablet mac work much better on the go. So, say "Yes" to tablets. In fact, say "Heck Yes". Because we don't have to wait for Apple to deliver one any more. iPhone and App Store already have.

Since Apple's third quarter conference call, the rumor mill has been grinding its latest batch of corn: or what natives call "the MacBook tablet." The endless list of features, the bad Photoshop: It's already here.

Every time Apple has whetted our appetites for new products, the same people keep predicting a tablet-style device, and, since the Newton, they've yet to be right.

I know tablets are useful to some, but is Apple going to make one? Not just no: Heck no. Picture trying to drive with your hands in front of your face the whole time. If you design with a computer, a tablet of any kind just isn't for you.

Join me for a medium-sized rant about this Mac tablet, why it's a bad for Apple, and why they won't sell it.

You got your iPhone. You got your computer. Your emails sync. Your contacts sync. Your calendars sync. Your music, your podcasts, your photos, all your stuff: it just syncs. This is good.

Your notes? They don't sync.

This. Is. Bad.

Not just bad, but actually driving me nuts. It drives me nuts because I can't believe there's a technical challenge to be overcome here. On the iPhone, you have your Notes app in which you write text notes. How hard can it be to sync them up with something on the computer to which the iPhone is attached?

A friend says to me: "Sync them where? With Stickies?" He has a point - there's no obvious, existing place for text notes to go, but again, that doesn't sound to me like something that need be a problem. Let's have a simple desktop app called, um, Notes, with which the iPhone version syncs. OK, even Stickies if we have to. All I want to do is easily reach my iPhone-jotted notes when I'm working on the Mac.

Yes, I know about the work-arounds. I could use a Drafts folder in an IMAP account. I could add notes to a contact. I could just email stuff back and forth to myself. But none of these fits in with the way I work already, all of them are work-arounds. We're talking about text notes here: there shouldn't be any need for work-arounds. I look forward to a simple solution appearing in the App Store soon.

That said, despite the horrible Marker Felt font, I quite like the Notes app. I just wish it would sync. Is that too much to ask?

Fix one problem, and another comes up. Everyone was a big fan of how Apple's .Mac webmail used to sometimes attach a text document when you simply replied to someone. I mean, I know I was utterly overjoyed to go back, copy and paste, remove the attachment, and reply. Wow, that was really easy, wasn't it? Yeah. Well now Apple has fixed that with their shiny new "Web 2.0"-ish email. Unfortunately, there's a new problem. When I reply to certain emails (usually Reply All in a list), the address is often filled out with the person's name, followed by their email address. This makes sense, as pretty much every email system in the world does this. But Apple, ever the innovator, has made this "break" your email. Trying to send will result in an error, claiming quoted contents aren't valid email addresses. Golly Apple, thanks for saving me from my own stupidity! Now I get to manually edit the addresses just to make sure they are correct. Another time waster. Don't get me started on how it's taken our favorite fruit half a decade just to build an almost-usable email client application (certainly won't be business-class anytime this decade). I mean, waiting until 2007 just to have a proper email client? Super. Anyone else not really digging Apple's lame attempts to manage email?

So y'know that Office update that came out a few days ago? The one that Spotlight-ified Entourage and added syncing abilities with iCal and Address Book? Yea um, it ate not only my Address Book but my fiancé's which I was subscribed to through .Mac.

Syncing setup is brainless and painless - there's a new preference section in Entourage in which you can individually enable syncing with iCal, Address Book and/or Notes through .Mac. Simple enough. A little while after I checked those options, the .Mac syncing engine offered a dialog asking if I would like to merge items between Entourage and Apple's apps, or if I would like to overwrite Entourage. I chose to overwrite, since I didn't have info in Entourage's database and I was simply curious about the app.

Somehow, some way, even though I told the engine to overwrite Entourage, my Address Book magically increased to 499 contacts after the first sync operation. Maybe it picked up all those extra friends from MySpace or something during the sync, because last I checked I only had 326 contacts in Address Book. Upon investigation, some of my contacts had split into separate cards, with information either duplicated or obliterated. Even better: I am subscribed to my fiancé's Address Book (with editing rights) through .Mac, as we're helping to keep each other's contacts up to date in preparation for sending out invitations. The Entourage sync not only mangled a seemingly random collection of her contacts, but it blew away all of her groups.

Now before you fire off a snarling comment: yes, we have backups. I've turned into quite the backup nazi - but this post is more of a complaint and a warning about this new Entourage feature. Who knows if the mishap was the result of a .Mac syncing error or bug, but - call me biased if you gotta - I have a sneaking suspicion this had to do with an Office update that wasn't quite finished. I've never had an issue syncing anything else through .Mac, and that includes a lot of 3rd party stuff like Yojimbo, SOHO Notes and Transmit favorites.

So, boys and girls, the moral of the story is a classic: back your stuff up - and often (sub-moral: don't trust Microsoft, even if it is software from their Mac Business Unit).