If Apple has a new product waiting in the sidelines they are keeping very quiet about it. But that is normal for Apple, they are fanatical about keeping product developments secret. But equally as frenzied are the Apple rumour mongers and they are saying that something big is coming. It has been reported, by the FT, that Apple have booked the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days in late January. The question is why?

Rumours about a possible Tablet device from Apple have been circulating for ages now. Some expected the tablet to be announced earlier this year, in time for Christmas, but it didn’t materialise. The rumour was that Steve Jobs didn’t think the product was ready yet. Now with the booking of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts the word on the street is that Apple will announce a new Tablet device which has been nicknamed the iTablet.

So what is a tablet device? Basically it will be a 9 inch or 10 inch device with a touch screen similar to an iPod Touch. It will have flash memory like the iPod Touch and will be able to play music and video and run applications in the same way as the iPod Touch or iPhone. In fact there is another rumour which says that Apple has contacted some key developers to ensure that their iPhone/iPod Touch applications can run at “full screen” rather than using a fixed resolution.

The key of course will be Internet access. Having a bigger screen the device will be able to render webpages much better than the iPhone and won’t need as much zooming to see things. This makes the device better suited for reading eBooks and magazines. It is taken for granted that the device will support Wi-Fi and there are some thoughts that it could incorporate a data only 3G SIM card.

Another reason why this event is unlikely to be iPhone, iPod or Mac related is that all these products have been recently updated and in fact the last time Apple used the YBCA it was to update the iPod line. That was in September and also happened to be the place that Steve Jobs made his first public appearance after his illness.