Apple Messiah Steve Jobs is expected to come down from the mountain bearing tablets next year, according to Apple Insider.

The tablets will not proscribe a new religion but are rather a new way for fanbois to hand over huge wodges of cash to Steve and his Apple inner circle. After dismissing the netbook as junk, Apple is apparently going to come up with an expensive tablet priced at $500-$700 that will fill the gap in the market Steve has decided to ignore. 

Quoting beancounters Piper Jaffray Apple Insider said that there's mounting evidence to suggest Apple next year will introduce its own take on the market in the form of a tablet-based device that will sell for $700 or less. The clue is that Apple has been seen writing component contacts in Asia and applying for patents on multi-touch sensitivity for more complex computing devices, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster said.

Munster added that Apple's acquisition of P.A. Semi along with other recent chip-related hires, it is increasingly clear that Apple is investing more in its mobile computing franchise. After consulting his Tarot cards, Munster predicted that Jobs will recover from his hormone replacement therapy and then go onto the mountain to tell God what his plans are.  Then he will come down the mountain with a touchscreen tablet computer with a display somewhere between 7- and 10-inches. 

He thinks the tablets will be revealed before the Apple fanbois will be at a special event sometime in the first half of 2010. This will give Apple's tame US press time to whip up expectations and print lots of free press releases for the outfit about how wonderful Tablets are and how Steve Jobs will make the best in the world.

So far no one has seen a prototype, but Munster was pretty down on the spec of the beast. He seemed to think it would run an operating system that was more robust than the iPhone but optimised for multi-touch. This would put Apple well behind the curve as much of that functionality will have been installed on Android mobile machines. By 2010 we would expect to see Windows 7 and Android on netbooks and the only thing that Apple's tablets will be offering is a touch screen. 

Munster seems to think that is not so important because Apple will be able to offer its App Store to punters. Although quite how that will compare with being able to run every open source program you can eat on Windows 7 or Android for free he didn't say.