Today, I hit a turning point. This was the first time in which having a Mac tablet would have been the most practical solution for me. And it all had to do with minimization.

I’m moving my office, which for anyone who has had the delight knows is a testament to doing as much work as possible with as few tools as necessary. Generally, my Macbook Pro takes care of pretty much anything I need to access, design, produce or add up when I’m on the go… but, as I found out today, I really need a good place to sit down and a decent amount of elbow room. It’s a testament to the contemporary work environment that high-level computing needs to be accessible while standing.

One might argue that an iPhone, Pre, Blackberry or any other high-end smartphone are essentially standing-room-only-environment office replacements… and that’s true as it relates to wireless communication.  But I interact with clients on a personal level with my machine- specifically with regard to sketching designs or creating documents in real-time. Even if an app existed for this and was available to any smartphone on the market, it would be impractical if not for the processing power required to run it, but  because of the size of the display.

I used to be opposed to the idea of Apple creating yet another notebook solution in what’s already a self-saturated market. The Macbook is fine, the Macbook Pro heavenly, the Macbook Air little more than an experiment, the iPhone a revolutionary and the iPod touch a little underwhelming without VoIP capability (coming soon). I always thought that a tablet would be better served as an accessory… a microcomputer that docks with a host and connects with it wirelessly for extra data. But after today’s experience, I have to admit I’m a little ashamed to have not considered an Apple tablet’s potentially tremendous impact upon industry as a stand-alone machine.

Think of your package delivery service guy’s little electronic signature machine, the clerk’s register at Macy’s or any cabbie’s meter and (separate) navigation system.  Think of how much the companies who have to purchase those proprietary devices must pay for them.  Now think about how easily all of those systems could be replaced with (and revolutionized by) an Apple tablet and the appropriate software. Now think of all the small businesses who can’t afford the aforementioned systems, buy currently have a spiffy little iMac running behind the counter as their company machine.

So, why haven’t they released such a thing? I mean… how difficult of a thing could it be to develop?

I think it’s all about per-unit cost.

A Mac tablet’s price point would need to be LOW. How low? Well, one would think that Apple believes that it would need to be less than $1,800- which is what the most comparable product, the Air, runs for with the solid-state hard disk (and there’s been no traditional Apple cost-lowering for it, which I take to mean that it’s always been a fixed-price item). And then there’s the touch screen, which I assume would easily push the basic model cost up to at least $2,000.

Now, Apple isn’t very shy about rolling out high-price tech. That’s because they know that their rabid fan base will consume new product wildly at the upstart, and then praise it in their metagospel afterward… relying on the trickle effect to create consumer interest, and then gradually lowering the price to attract the latecomers and skeptics.

But I don’t think that the consumer is the target for this one… I think it’s businesses. And I think they know that. That means that Apple has to get to the bottom line upon roll-out… and that means getting the introductory price down to it’s fighting weight.

So, does that mean that an Apple tablet could be the company’s first step into the world of the business machine?  Would they ever tread the stomping ground of their antithesis IBM? Well- if they don’t, Google will.