27th Jan for Apple's worst kept secret, or is it?

Apple are holding a 'special event' for journalists on the 27th Jan in San Francisco.

Everyone is expecting the launch of Apple's tablet computer (the iSlate or whatever it's going to be called) which will have a 10.1" touch sensitive screen.

There's now speculation that Apple will also release v4.0 of the iPhone OS at the event and also iLife 2010.

There's speculation wether to the tablet will run a souped up version of the iPhone OS or a modified version of Snow Leopard. Rumours are that standard iPhone apps will run on the tablet in emulation mode while native apps use a special version of the iPhone developers kit which knows about the extended screen size. It's also expected the tablet OS will support backgrounding of applications. There's also rumours that the tablet will be based on an Intel Atom CPU or like the iPhone an ARM variant.

Apple has allegedly already been telling select developers to ensure their apps are resolution independent and some developers have had early access to the iPhone v4.0 SDK.

Apple are notorious for not pre-releasing an information relating to launches, but more recently they seem to be dribbling bits of information to select journalists in a manner so they can plausibly deny anything officially - while keeping the market on tenterhooks and pushing the hype machine into overdrive.