Well, it's that time of year again where Apple's getting ready to release their newest products. Which of course means everyone's predicting/guessing what will be released, what the gadgets will look like, and how much they'll cost.

The consensus seems to be that the iPhone 5 will be the same size as it's predecessor but with a bigger screen, and everyone is expecting a 7" iPad that everyone keeps calling the 'iPad Mini'.

Both of these things bother me, and I hope they're wrong.

First, I don't think it makes any sense at all to call a 7" iPad a mini anything. A 7" device would be larger than most of Apple's products, other than their MacBooks and Desktops, and it also leaves out the fact that more and more the iPod touch belongs in the iPad family and not in the iPod family.

If/When Apple ships a 7" iPad, I think it makes sense to rebrand the iPad family of products all together. Just like when iPhone OS became iOS with the launch of the iPad, I think the iPod touch becomes the iPad mini with the launch of a 7" iPad.

Each of my kids has an iPod touch. You know what they call it? Their iPad. You know why? Because it's an iPad. A mini iPad. There's nothing about it that even resembles an iPod. Even the iPod app is gone and is called 'Music' now.

An iPad, an iPad 7 (or something), and an iPad mini - that makes sense.

Unlike the nomenclature issue of calling the 7" iPad 'mini' where no one actually expects Apple to name it that - they're just calling it that for now - it does seem that there's a good chance the iPhone 5's screen will indeed be larger.

I so hope this isn't the case.

Conventional wisdom is that the bigger the screen the better. And the Daring Fireball link to the story about the iPhone 5 screen size talks about this in a lot of detail.

I for one don't want a bigger screen though. In a world where I can have a 7" iPad, a 10" iPad, and an 11" or 13" MacBook Air.....do I really need a little bigger screen on my phone? And more importantly, is that really an important benefit to the consumer anymore?

I don't think so. What I do think is beneficial though is something smaller and lighter.

Instead of finding a way to keep the physical form factor the same size while increasing the screen size, I'm hoping Apple found a way to keep the screen size the same while decreasing the size of the physical device. That would be awesome.

Of course, I'm just guessing and hoping on all of this, but the conventional wisdom just feels a little off to me on this next batch of product announcements.