Is Apple Really Going To Announce A Tablet on January 27th? Unless you’ve been on mars chatting it up with Dr. Manhattan the last few months then you’ve no doubt seen the slew of rumors about the possibly impending tablet announcement. Most seem pretty set on the basic idea is that we are looking at something along the lines of a bigger version of the 1st generation iPhone. Nicer looking and updated hardware, of course. But I take it more to mean this is Tablet 2G. It’s going to be be pretty amazing, but it’s an initial release and I think we’ll see a very similar product cycle with the tablet, or iSlate if you buy the rumor, where we’ll see a newer in several months and then a minor update to that one.

But the real question for me is will the tablet support bluetooth keyboard profiles? Right now, the iPhone os does not have the bluetooth keyboard driver profiles. I’m sure the experts will all give different reasons, but I think it comes down to Apple being stubborn thinking that the software keyboard is good enough and that if they did allow external keyboards, would that have any impact on laptop sales? I highly doubt it’s the latter. At least with the iPhone. Could you imagine one of those silicone roll up keyboards that was bluetooth, with a small foldable stand for your iPhone. Put that puppy in landscape and you could do some serious writing. But will the Apple tablet have a bluetooth keyboard profiles? No.

Why would they? If they software keyboard is good enough on the iPhone then why wouldn’t it be good enough for the tablet? In theory it should work much better. Lots more space and less fat fingering for those of us who are still normal human sizes. Again, I doubt this would ever cut into the notebook market. The netbook market perhaps, but no chance on notebooks. The tablet will be seriously under powered to be a real laptop of any kind. If it turns out to be real, it could be a serious contender for a primary mobile device though. With a keyboard it could be a threat to lower end laptops and netbooks, possibly even the Macbook Air.

Regardless, I think this initial release stands no chance of having those bluetooth keyboard profiles I so desperately want. But I hope I’m wrong, because if it does run on the iPhone OS, that also means the iPhone may get those profiles too! So lets hope that come Jan 27 Apple announce the tablet, which will launch with the iPhone 4.0 OS and have, among many other improvements, bluetooth keyboard profiles.