You’d think that anything Apple unveils during its now confirmed media event later this month is pretty well known. If that’s the case, I suppose there’s no valid reason for any further coverage. All we need are the final product descriptions, the price and when orders will be accepted.

Of course, I’m being facetious here. It may indeed be a certainty that an Apple tablet is a large part of the bill of fare. Indeed, I am convinced Apple has already briefed a few members of the press with the essential details of their new product announcements. As you probably realize, some many already have the new gadget in their hands, preparing reviews that you’ll read in the early days following availability.

Apple, you see, has one of the best marketing machines in the business, and you just know that media around the world will be paying really close attention to those announcements. Indeed, one of the 24 hour cable TV channels has already promised to have someone feeding life updates as the event progresses, very much in the fashion of an important government meeting. Imagine that!

So far, the early scuttlebutt has focused on some sort of tablet computer, likely with a 10-inch screen and probably sporting an enhanced version of the iPhone operating system. In fact, there may be a new version, 4.0, which will incorporate additional features to accommodate a larger device and perhaps extend other capabilities to existing iPhone and iPod touch owners.

What this will all cost depends on whom you ask and what makes sense from a sales point of view. At the high end, the so-called iSlate will cost $1,000, same as a MacBook. The question, of course, is whether that price point is the deal breaker, or required by the cost of building such a gadget. More to the point, how many of you would be willing to give up on a note-book and buy a tablet-based device instead? Will it fill the same purposes, or offer other capabilities that we really do not quite understand yet?

Contrast this tablet frenzy to the way the PC universe has handled such products over the years. In large part, Windows-based tablet computers are simply note-books onto which a movable screen, with stylus input capability, has been grafted. The only operating system changes of note are the ones needed to accommodate a touch-based system. Period. No wonder few care, and tablets have been largely consigned to vertical markets, such as medical offices, where it makes sense to carry around small computers to consult and store patient information. Obviously Apple wouldn’t bet a huge amount of their resources on such a product without having a vision of something quite different and far more compelling.

At the same time, there are reports that Apple has been negotiating with major publishers to deliver content on the iSlate. But spending near the price of a note-book on a glorified e-book reader doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. That capability might only be a small part of the overall focus on delivering a wide range of digital content to consume. When you add music, video and perhaps 3G connectivity, including mobile phone service, lots of fascinating possibilities may come into play.

Some are suggesting that the tablet-based operating system will also incorporate more visible elements of the desktop version of Mac OS X. That means being able to run many standard Mac applications, and a few of the guests on the tech radio show have suggested a hybrid OS, perhaps with capabilities that will later be added to Snow Leopard’s successor.

In recent days, has also been talk about an iLife ’10, a major upgrade that will integrate Macs and mobile devices in Apple’s typically elegant and seamless fashion. But what about iWork ’10? Will there be a version that sports Multi-Touch capabilities? What about other potential product introductions, such as a refreshed note-book lineup? No, probably not, because even the recent iMac upgrade, a pretty major one in fact, merited no more than a press release.

In any case, how do the existing wireless carriers fit in with this new product? If there’s 3G support, would you get a big discount if you bought your iSlate along with a data plan? If that’s the case, rather than pay $900 or $1,000, maybe the price will be closer to $700, which is still a fairly large number for a product that has existed in a special-purpose category up till now.

Certainly, the pros and cons of Apple’s end game have been fodder for lots of media attention, and I’ve probably done little more than contribute to the confusion. Of course, we’re all playing into Apple’s hands here. No matter what comes out of that special media event, the mere fact that the media frenzy won’t abate may be sufficient to make the new product, whatever it happens to be, a big success right out of the starting gate. And that is precisely what all this is about as far as Apple is concerned.

As some of you have heard, the PC industry appears to have recovered from a severe case of the doldrums, reflected in declining sales for part of 2009 mostly as the result of the world economic crisis. There was, however, one shining light in all this grief, aside from Apple’s record profits of course, and that’s the netbook.

So if you felt you just had to squander $300 or $400 on a tiny note-book computer, you were in good company. Indeed, it may well be that it was this product segment rather than the arrival of Windows 7 that impacted the PC industry the most. But is that good news for Microsoft?

Well, I suppose it is if many of those new computers were shipped with Windows, particularly Windows 7. It wasn’t so good if they were supplied with Windows XP, or to add insult to injury, Linux. Later this year, Microsoft’s worst nightmare will be the arrival of Google’s Chrome OS.

You do see all those awful ads on TV for Windows 7, where someone touts a lame feature, often not unique to Windows, such as wireless networking, and pronounces it so special that he believes he invented it. Now I don’t pretend to know whether the public is foolish enough to buy into this foolishness, or even understands that these spots are designed to promote a new PC operating system rather than a computer with an unknown brand name. Yes, the focus of the message is really that vague.

But that has always represented Microsoft’s dilemma, which is to somehow separate the generic PC from its own operating system, or even that it really makes a difference to the average customer, unless they choose to go Mac instead.

Now I’m quite certain Microsoft will use the improved sales figures as vindication for their operating system strategy. Even though they make very little money from OEM licenses for the very cheapest PCs sporting basic versions of Windows, a sale is a sale and no sense complaining about it.

On the other hand, I wonder if Microsoft has begun to understand their onward march to irrelevance. You see, very little of what they say these days is really taken seriously. Oh, Windows 7 fixes all the problems with Vista? Well and good, but what about XP users who want to upgrade and face a draconian installation process? What about Apple’s forthcoming tablet computer?

The Zune HD? What’s that? Did anyone really buy those things during the holiday season? Does anyone remember what a Zune HD is or was? Does Microsoft even make those things anymore? Do they somehow hope to morph the product line into a full-fledged smartphone to complete with the iPhone?

Who is competing with the iPhone anyway? Oh yes, Nokia by dint of ongoing legal actions and, of course, Google. But wait a minute, isn’t Google actually taking market away from Microsoft, by signing up the very same companies who used to build Windows Mobile handsets? Is Google’s target Apple, or Microsoft? Or do they just want to continue to sell ads, without regard to which gadgets those ads appear on?

Another question: Is Apple’s recent acquisition of a mobile ad service an indication that Google may soon find itself exiled from the iPhone? There is a recent rumor, in fact, that Apple plans to switch its iPhone and perhaps Mac search capabilities to Microsoft’s Bing. There’s even a Bing app for the iPhone if you want to see whether the changeover is worth the bother. Or maybe Apple will just build its own search engine, establish its own ad revenue stream, and leave it to Google and Microsoft to fight their battles on someone else’s turf.

Now that Windows 7 has been out for a while, is there any special feature, other than the faux Dock, that’s even worth shouting about? Is the enterprise ready to switch wholesale, or will they just wait until they’re ready to buy batches of new PCs for the office? More than likely, Microsoft’s next quarterly revenue will begin to tell the tale. If sales and profits come across as flat or declining, and perhaps more employees are set to receive pink slips, it’ll be just another round of evidence of the company’s long-term decline.

Certainly, giving European customers a browser ballot box has to add insult to injury. People are deserting Internet Explorer in droves and former Windows advocates have joined the crowed. The onward migration to Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera continues unabated, the pace is only going to accelerate.

Maybe Apple’s sales increases won’t prove an avalanche of Windows desertions just yet, but when the netbook craze dies off, as it inevitably will, how many customers will just continue to buy new PC boxes and be satisfied with more of the same? You have to wonder if Microsoft is even aware that time is no longer on their side.

Regardless of whose sales figures you believe, it’s a sure thing that the netbook saved the PC industry in 2009. Without those cheap, shrunken note-books, I’ve little doubt that sales would have been perfectly awful for most of the PC box builders.

Instead, they can return to an alleged PC resurgence, and Windows 7 no doubt helped, despite those perfectly awful TV spots. On the other hand, despite selling larger quantities of product, what about the profits? How much money can a company make on a $300 computer, large, small or otherwise?

You don’t have to wonder why Apple won’t enter that sandbox, and it’s all about quality and profitability. One thing is certain about cheap gear, and that’s the lack of durability. This stuff may work fine on Day One, but will you still receive satisfactory performance after six months, or a year or two?

As most of you know, actually fixing one of these things once the warranty has expired will generally cost more than the machine is worth. They are disposable, but I suppose you could say the same thing about an iPod or even an iPhone, although most of the problems for both can be repaired if you’re willing to spend a third to half the cost of buying a replacement.

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As you know, different market research firms have different number-crunching methodologies, so you can expect that the results will vary, and sometimes be contradictory. A case in point might be the first reports of U.S. PC sales for the last quarter. Depending on which firm’s figures you quote, Apple either gained market share or lost it, with sales that increased 31% or 23.3% over the previous year.

Clearly there’s a hefty disparity there, and how you interpret the numbers can vary, depending on whether you believe IDC, which favored Apple, and Gartner, which didn’t.

Either way, the biggest winners were HP and Toshiba, very much because of the growth in the netbook segment. Indeed, it’s fair to say that those shrunken portable PCs pretty much saved the industry from disastrous results in 2009, but does that really put these companies ahead of Apple?

The problem with the PC makers is that most companies are engaged in a mad rush to the bottom of the market, an endless search to sell as many boxes as possible regardless of the profits earned from each particular sale. This approach stands in bold contrast to the way Apple has traditionally approached its product positioning, particularly after Steve Jobs regained control of the company. Instead of maximizing sales, Apple’s marketing people have looked to a sensible tradeoff, so that each product and service sold will earn a decent margin. If there is no potential to earn enough profits, Apple stays away.

This is why, for example, the Mac mini remains at $599, even though you can buy complete desktop systems from any of a number of PC box makers for less, with display and input devices included. Of course, those products are all pieces of junk. They might work all right for a while, but build quality, the fit and finish and longevity, are sacrificed. At the end of the day, you might feel its better to just toss them out after a year or two — one hopes to the recycling depot — and buy new ones. In contrast, you expect a Mac to last for years and years, even after app and operating system upgrades are no longer possible.

I have a friend, for example, who has one of the first-generation Mac minis. He knows full well that he’ll never be able to run Snow Leopard on that machine, yet it works just fine for his purposes, which are limited to simple word processing, email and Internet surfing. At a time where a similar PC will be consigned to the trash heap or perhaps the closet or garage, Macs manage to remain relevant for years and years. That’s why it does often make sense to buy the premium product, even if you do end up with more computer than you might have wanted.

As you probably know, Apple has the lion’s share of sales for personal computers costing over $1,000. At the same time, this doesn’t mean Macs are overpriced, despite claims of that sort by members of the financial and tech media. They continue to look at price over value, and short-term gains over long-term stability. That is probably why the PC companies continue to fight for every sale, even if those sales don’t make a whole lot of sense from the standpoint of overall profitability. Market share is king, and that’s just not Apple’s game plan.

You can see that in the fact that Macs have been on a steady, not stellar, growth curve for several years, slowly advancing in market share and resulting in great profits for Apple. Maybe other PC makers will achieve greater gains this quarter or the next, but what is going to happen if people begin to desert the netbook and start to consider products that really meet the needs of the customer, rather than having a bottom line price? If they opt to pay more, they are apt to buy gear less frequently too.

This year, if you can believe what happened at the Consumer Electronics Show, lots of PC makers are dragging tablet computers off the shelves, wiping off the dust, and hoping desperately to trump Apple’s still unannounced contender. At the end of the day, tablets have never worked in the mass market, mostly because there’s very little innovation behind most of those devices. Just slap on a touchscreen display, perhaps with the ability to rotate, add a stylus for input, and make it otherwise identical to most other Windows computers on the market. No wonder the tablet revolution has remained stillborn.

That doesn’t mean success will necessarily come easy for Apple. The rumors may indeed be right about screen size and some of the basic features, but the overall interface may not be entirely that of a grown up iPhone. That would seem too simple, nor would it justify the years allegedly spent on the development of that device. At the end of the day, a fancy case, leveraging the basic look of the iPhone and the fundamentals of its operating system and features would seem a lame solution. It really doesn’t make sense.

But right now, most of the attention will likely be focused on Apple’s quarterly numbers, which will be revealed later this month. They will be the unvarnished numbers rather than surveys by third-party marketing firms that may not, in the end, give you a clear picture of what’s really going on.