Forbes / Brian Caulfield

Apple is building a touch-screen computer with a 3.5-inch screen that will sell for as little as $199. The pocketable gadget will run Apple’s iOS software and a contract-free version of Apple’s popular iPhone 4S. Forbes obtained one of the devices by paying an Apple employee a modest sum of money.

The handheld could pose a threat to Sony and Nintendo’s handheld gaming devices and will feature a multi-touch interface and the ability to download new software directly from Apple’s online software store, just like the iPad. The device will be introduced by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs himself… on September 8, 2007.

Okay, I’ll stop right here.

Apple, of course, already sells this product. It’s called the iPod Touch.

Which makes speculation that Apple will introduce a new version of the iPad, with a 7.85-inch screen, sort of ridiculous.

That’s because Apple has been introducing versons of the same product — the iPhone — with different screen sizes and capabilities since 2007.

That should put a report Friday from Taiwanese trade publication Digitimes in perspective:

Apple is likely to launch a 7.85-inch iPad prior to the fourth quarter of 2012 in addition to a new iPad scheduled to be released at the end of the first quarter, according to sources in the supply chain.

…

[I]n order to cope with increasing market competition including the 7-inch Kindle Fire from Amazon and the launch of large-size smartphones from handset vendors, Apple has been persuaded into the development of 7.85-inch iPads, the sources indicated.

Persuaded to make a smaller iPad? Or is it a bigger iPod touch? Is there a difference? That’s not a criticism. Apple got something right with the iPhone: a simple, pocketable computer built around multi-touch, a high-speed wireless data connection, and an expanding suite of sensors that make it a more personal personal computer.

The rest, as Steve Jobs explained to All Things D’s Arik Hesseldahl, are merely variations on a theme:

In 2007, right after the introduction of the first iPhone, I attended a meeting with Jobs and the editors of the magazine I was working for at the time.

The meeting included a Jobs-led, hands-on demo with prototype iPhones, during which I asked Jobs a question: “Will you do a version of this without the phone?”

The answer — which surprised me that he even gave it — was yes. In that moment I got a very tiny glimpse of the long path that lay ahead. I could see way off in the distance the logical progression leading first to the iPod touch and from there to the iPad. It was a revelation.

And that’s why the prospect of an iPad with a smaller screen doesn’t mean much if you’re already thinking of buying an iPod touch or an iPad. You can move your songs and software so easily from one device to another — thanks to Apple’s iCloud suite of services — so you don’t have to worry much about this season’s iPad becoming suddenly obsolete.