A recent survey from Borders Bookstore seeks to find how familiar its customers are with e-readers from Amazon, Sony, and Plastic Logic. This particular survey, however, includes "the Apple iPAD (large screen reading device)," which is interesting.
There are a few possible explanations for the inclusion of a phantom, hotly anticipated device on a tangentially related retailer's customer survey. First, Borders, somehow, in some weird alternate universe, has incredibly privileged information from Apple on the most secretive product since the iPhone, and has haphazardly namedropped it in a survey. For reasons I had to state while explaining that option, I don't believe that's too likely.
The more logical explanation is that Borders thinks an Apple tablet or e-reader is possible, and included it on the survey based solely on the extensive rumors that those dastardly blogs have been ranting about. That explains the very un-Apple capitalization of iPAD as well as the paranthetical description. Our best bet? Pure speculation. Like, well, everything else involving the Apple tablet. [Borders via Engadget]