Can anyone confirm that this is actually going to happen? I keep seeing 'rumors confirmed!' but no one has shown an invitation or any actual confirmation from Apple. For all we know they may be reserving that convention center for a company retreat!
Having been through the Apple rumor cycle more times than I'd like to admit, this is most likely real. The amount of leaks, the date-pegging, and the absolute lack of any look at the device suggests that this is happening, and directly matches the iPhone launch.
There will be new MacBook Pros at some point in the near future – but I think Apple is less and less inclined to give any such “boring” changes their own events.
I think Apple has been moving away from situations where they are forced to present something – anything – (like Macworld) and will try to only use events for really new stuff. The two lone exceptions are the WWDC and the yearly iPod event. You might see simple spec changes in the WWDC keynote (probably only mentioned in passing), but I don’t think you will see them anywhere else.
(Design changes might be something they would present at such an event. But since we just lived through the change to the Unibody design I don’t think we will see changes in the next one to two years. That would be unnecessary and stupid.)
If they're announcing the tablet in January, I wonder what kind of release date they're looking at. Does anyone know what the average announce to release cycle is for Apple products?
Although, the iPhone had significant external schedule factors which pushed an announcement: FCC, AT&T, etc. Unless this device can connect to a cell network, I don't see why they wouldn't pull one of their patented "And it is available.... right now!" things.
The final stages of bringing the product to market may require greatly expanding the circle of those who are "in the know", making preserving secrecy more difficult. Steve wants to control the revelation, not some leak to do it.
One key reason for the usual 'right now' availability is to avoid cannibalizing sales of existing products. They were happy to pre-announce the iPhone because there were no existing Apple phones. Arguably the tablet can also be pre-announced for the same reason (although one could also make an argument in the other direction viz the MacBooks)
I doubt it; content and software would not be ready in time.
The iPhone SDK had a six-month public seed time for devs to create their apps for the opening of the iTunes app store, but there's been no public SDK for the tablet yet. It'll be announced now, out in June.
The iPhone wasn't released with an SDK or App store though. While I think it would be unlikely for Apple to launch a tablet / new mobile product that doesn't have an app store, it wouldn't be the first time.
