We’ll be revealing four amazing – but purely conjectural – Apple product studies in the January issue of the magazine (check this website on Nov. 26 for the full article). But for now we wanted to share our vision of how this fabled tablet might pan out.

We call it the MacBook Flash, and it eschews a bulky hard drive for featherweight flash memory. Granted, the lack of a spinning disk is all just rumor-mill hearsay, but the concept isn’t so far-fetched. The solid-state Flash could be slimmer than three-quarters of an inch thick, and include a touchscreen OS for drag-and-pinch navigation and fingertip data entry.

For times when you need to write anything of length, you’d slide the screen upward, revealing a keyboard (à la the Sidekick mobile phone). Optical drive? Très gauche! Instead, you would install apps over an Internet connection (à la third-party iPhone apps) or through FireWire and USB drives.

Only power demands compel us to spec the Flash at thicker than a half-inch. With a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 128GB of Samsung memory, and a 12-inch glossy widescreen display, this MacBook will need a legitimate power supply.

So please consider. And check back on Nov. 26 for a peek a four entirely new product directions that Apple might explore.