Amid all the shaky speculation about whether Apple is buying Twitter and EA, two things seem certain. First, the company is working on a 10-inch touchscreen device. Second, Apple is making a strong push into the world of gaming--as evidenced by the company's hiring of two former Microsoft Xbox execs.

The company's predicted push toward gaming is assumed to be focused on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Since the runaway success of the iTunes App Store, the platform has become a dominant force in the perennially popular world of casual gaming.

The company's relative openness in terms of third-party publishers and hardware features such as  touch controls and the built-in accelerometer have seen to that. Some recent releases for the iPhone have even explored the device's potential beyond this market, a fact that Apple will no doubt be happy to capitalize upon with its recent hires.

That Apple is working on a 10-inch touchscreen device for the summer is being treated as an inevitability, as well. Apple refuses to comment on such speculation, maintaining a typical veil of secrecy around its future product announcements. All the information that has arisen about the device thus far has come from patent applications (which, for the record, Apple files whether or not it plans to use the proposed technology) and the admissions of third-party parts manufacturers, leaks that have seemingly led Apple to consider developing more parts in-house.

The rumored device has alternatively been referred to as a tablet and a netbook; most speculation puts it somewhere between an iPod Touch and a Macbook. The clearest application for such hardware is as a multimedia device--a movie player/Web browser/music player. Unless Apple associates the device with the Macbook brand, it seems unlikely that it would add a keyboard input, instead relying on its touchscreen functionality.

What does seem likely, however, is some focus on gaming. Apple famously tried and failed to enter the game-console race with 1995's Bandai collaboration, The Pippin (which reportedly sold a mere 42,000 units). That failure aside, it seems unlike that Apple would release a devoted gaming device--it knows perhaps better than anyone the importance of multimedia. So gaming would likely be, at best, a secondary selling point for any new piece of hardware.

The question is, what sort of gaming would be ideal for such a device? If the tablet is optimized to pull content from the vast resource that is the App Store, it will likely feature a built-in accelerometer, which has become so integral to so much of iPhone software.

That said, a 10-inch device isn't quite so conducive to the manner of tilting so many games require. Instead, it may rely on an external source of input. Bluetooth functionality certainly seems like an option. Perhaps Apple will allow third-party manufactures such as Belkin and Logitech to make a mint off of controllers and remotes. An even more likely method of input would be the iPod and iPod Touch. With an existing base of millions of users, why not let those devices double as the world's most advanced remote control?

My guess is that Apple will dip its foot in the gaming waters with the device by first limiting it to those already available for the iPhone. Should Apple find success in the tablet as a gaming device, it will shift focus and perhaps encourage the design of devoted gaming apps for the makeshift console. No one learned the lessons of the Pippin better than Apple itself, and the greatest takeaway is: always have a backup plan.