This is a sad day. The world has lost one of its greatest minds and visionaries, in Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and obviously so much more than that. I have never met nor spoken to Steve, nor have the majority of people writing, tweeting and talking about him today. He was a hero to many, a beloved celebrity, and a leader.

We are allowed to talk about Steve.

We are allowed to feel sad.

I feel sad. In fact, this morning I decided to throw the todo list out the window, to sit down and think different. I’m dedicating this day to figuring things out, work and life and future and everything else that might be spinning around in the back of my head.

Thinking different is what Steve did, that’s what made him the great visionary that have touched so many lives and helped shape the world we live on today. This touches me profoundly as I’ve been flipping throw pages of obituaries on my iPad, reading tweets on my iPhone, and now I’m writing this on my MacBook Air, listening to music bought from iTunes. It amazes me, truly.

With these tools I make my life easier and more beautiful, thanks to Steve’s visions and the execution of the Apple he shaped, with its brilliant minds.

It is some comfort that Steve’s ideas and leadership will live on in Apple in the years to come. A man like that leaves a mark of course, but also because Apple’s future products and ideas are already in the company’s R&D department. The magic that is Apple products isn’t created overnight, they take years and years to build, which is what is so truly marvelous about this company. When they launched the iPhone, it had been in the works for years. Just now, PC manufacturers are catching up to the new MacBook Air line, and the iPad, well, no one’s there yet.

It is not all thanks to Steve, but I dare say that without him there would be no Apple today.

And yet, and yet. The visionary Steve is just one persona, the one we can pretend to know thanks to keynotes and famous one line emails.

The person Steve was with his family and friends is a whole different matter. There’s been some glimpses into his private life since Steve stepped down as CEO, but all in all we don’t know anything about that person.

Neither do we need to.

We shouldn’t forget that family Steve existed, however. Because in all our grief, which we’re entitled to, there are those who are tremendously more hurt by the loss of this man.

I’m still sad, I don’t seem to be able to shake that feeling today. That’s OK, I’m turning it into something positive by taking a page from Steve’s book of life and devoting myself to thinking differently today.

Thanks Steve. For everything.

• It’s thinner, lighter, and faster. Love it.
• It’s beautiful.
• Android tablet makers are even further behind now.

Seriously, Motorola & co must be frustrated right now, they just can’t keep up with Apple. They have yet to produce a tablet matching the original iPad, and now Apple ups the ante again. It’s never fun to be a follower all the time, and it is definitely not good for business.

And while the competition is playing catch-up, Apple is busy preparing iPad 3.

Go figure.

You see, I write somewhere between 20 and 50 emails a day from my iPhone, I tweet and connect on Facebook, I read up on news and I entertain myself. It is a brilliant multi-purpose device that saves me time, something that is really valuable to me.

Realizing that, I would be a fool not to be the least curious, nay, thrilled about the prospect of an Apple tablet.

There are a ton of more or less likely predictions out there. Some I truly believe, like the fact that this will be a kick in the Amazon Kindle’s nuts because Steve Jobs wants to rule the media industry and newspapers, books and magazines would look and work great on a nice touchscreen interface. I also think that it is a no-brainer that the tablet will play games, and the success of the iPhone means that the developers are onboard. Jus don’t expect it to be a game changer just right now, it’ll most likely cost more than two PlayStation 3s and that means that the install base for gaming will be a lot smaller than for iPhone and iPod touch. That being said, obviously it’ll run games and it will do it good.

Moving on, I do believe we’ll get cameras so that we can Skype, and this thing without 3G would be a crime. Most likely we’ll also get some sort of iLife package with great multitouch support, and everything we got in our iPhones, only more Macish.

All that is pretty uncontroversial stuff. You’ve heard it before. I want all that.

Now here is what I really hope for, but really can’t believe will happen. Still, one can dream right?

I want the tablet to be no bigger than 11″, hopefully smaller so that it will be really portable. I want it to have an onscreen keyboard, obviously, but also support Bluetooth keyboards. Maybe that is one off the reasons Apple made the wireless keyboard so small, for portability? Hardly, but it is an encouraging albeit unlikely thought for my reasoning. Anyway, the tablet needs a stand so that I can put it on a table, in both landscape and portrait mode.

Now here’s the killer: I want the tablet to replace the MacBook Air!

“What? Why? And don’t you love your Air?!”

I most certainly do, but I would love a stronger oversized iPhone with multitasking, decent image editing, video viewing, hyper portable Mac with an optional keyboard even more! I don’t care if the tablet is priced as an Air, or worse – that I would buy. As a writer, that Is the ideal machine to take on the road and to use at home. I could set it up on the living room table, lie down on the couch and type away on my wireless keyboard, now wouldn’t that be grand? It would for me at least.

Here’s hoping my dream will come through, however unlikely. Until then I’ll have to make do with a jailbroken iPhone, the BTstack Keyboard driver, and the Gorillapod to top it off. But it just isn’t quite enough.

Please Apple? Pretty please?

Footnote 1: First image swiped from CrunchGear’s unicorn post, and the second from Gizmodo’s post on Apple Bashful, which I would’ve loved by the way…

Footnote 2: I wrote this whole thing in WriteRoom on my iPhone. That might tell you how much I’d love an Apple tablet geared toward me as a writer…