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So today's the day Apple finally unveils its tablet device (or records the greatest letdown in mobile history). There's not much to add, after well over a year of speculation, about the features and business model this product may support. Indeed, the most unlikely turn-up would be for Apple to announce a feature nobody has yet thought of. But if there's one thing the Mac maker does even better than making attractive gadgets, it's stirring up anticipation. So, with an air of a rabbit in the headlights, we'll report a couple of final predictions.

The most interesting recent reports have focused on the all-important content model rather than the device features, and it is here that Apple, for all its design skills, has the real track record for innovation. The 'iSlate' is already being billed as a sort of Kindle on speed, supporting the same integrated content model as the Amazon e-reader, or indeed the iPod, but expanded to include video, interactive books and games, as well as books and magazines.

To support such a strategy, The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is in secret, eleventh-hour negotiations with book publishers over ebook pricing, an element of the Amazon model that has proved most thorny for content owners. The report says Apple wants to establish two new price points for ebooks of best selling titles - $12.99 and $14.99, with some titles offered at $9.99. As with iPhone apps, Apple is targeting a 30% share of the revenues, with publishers getting the rest. The carrier providing the wireless connection ,whether embedded or with a contract, would not get a share of content takings.

This would put Apple head-to-head with Amazon in ebooks, and with an aggressive pricing model. Amazon's Kindle Store usually sees major titles costing slightly less than their paper versions, but they do not come with standardized pricing. Even the slightly lower prices have led to some publishers, especially in Germany, trying to stagger the electronic release until the conventional book has had its first sales cycle. So they may be very resistent to iTunes-style fixed rates, though of course these are balanced by minimal production costs for ebooks and the huge profile and reach that Apple might be expected to have - both directly, and by adding increased credibility to the whole e-reader segment.

The other main model for e-readers is Google's favored approach of providing as much free content as possible, though this is only usually possible with out of copyright titles.

If the iSlate is heavy on book content, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will have to eat some quite recent words. When allowing the Kindle app onto the iPhone, it seemed that Apple had conceded the book distribution market to Amazon. Jobs said at the time: "People don't read any more." In fact, recent research has found that e-reader owners typically continue to buy paper content, with their ebooks being incremental, boosting their total reading time by as much as 20%.

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