Apple today announced this year’s important product, the iPad tablet.

This is the most hyped product since the iPhone  – actually more likely since the Segway.

Now we can tell that the iPad actually lives up to the hype.

Here are the specs:

Technical Specifications

Size and weight

Height:

9.56 inches (242.8 mm)

Width:

7.47 inches (189.7 mm)

Depth:

0.5 inch (13.4 mm)

Weight:

1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) Wi-Fi model;

1.6 pounds (0.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

MacRumors ran an article today that the iSlate could be operating on an ARM Cortex A9 processor. This seems not to be based on leaks or any verified facts, but it certainly is an interesting speculation.

The A9 is a new successor to the A8 range of processors that for example power the iPhones. In fact around 98 percent of the more than a billion mobile phones sold each year use at least one ARM processor. The Cortex A9 represents the next generation which supports multi-core designs. The Cortex A9 multi-core processors are expected to scale beyond 2 GHz while drawing less than 0.25 W of power per CPU.

The biggest implication of this would be that the iSlate would not be able to run standard OSX or Windows (and its applications). However, several Linux distributions, including the Chrome OS, have been ported to the ARM platform. Also, the iPhone uses a ported OSX version.

Apple is believed to be one of a few unnamed large licensors that ARM mentioned in their Q3 2009 earnings.

Coincidentally, ARM showed earlier several protoypes of multi touch tablets. Here’s is a YouTube video of them:

Today the WSJ reported that the iSlate is indeed to launch in March 2010. The story has been written by the same journalist who broke the news about Steve Jobs’ liver transplant, so the WSJ’s sources seem to be credible.

The WSJ says:

“A tablet-like device from Apple has been in the works for many years, with its development coming in fits and starts, according to people familiar with the matter. As The Wall Street Journal previously reported, the tablet has been the biggest focus for Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs since he returned to work in June after taking a nearly six-month medical leave to undergo a liver transplant.”

The WSJ references the already known booked dates at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (January 25 to Jan27) as launch date, with shipping to commence in March.

Supposedly the iSlate specs have been leaked, but it awfully looks like a quickly made up Word document. Anyway it’s something to tickle the geek inside you.

According to the  supposedly leaked document, the iSlate will run Mac OS X . Here’s more:

• Precision aluminum unibody
• 7.1-inch multi-touch touchscreen with some sort of “intelligent feedback” and an anti-fingerprint coating
• 2.26Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 2GB DDR3 SDRAM
• 120GB hard drive
• Built-in projector
• Built-in iSight camera
• 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Mac OS X 10.7 Clouded Leopard

The rumours about Apple creating a tablet computer have been going on since the release of the iPhone. However, in December 2009 they found new popularity when the Financial Times reported that Apple had booked the Yerba Buena Center for Arts in San Franscisco for a significant product announcement on January 26, 2010. Only a couple of days later,  Google China’s ex-chief Kaifu Lee wrote on his blog that an informed friend told him that an Apple Tablet appearance was likely. The details he gave were: 10.1-inch screen with awesome UI. Of course

Earlier, MacRumors stated that the Apple Tablet would most likely be called iSlate, because the domain iSlate.com was acquired by Apple.

Expect additional rumors until the upcoming launch of the iSlate or whatever it will be called. Always secretive and tight-lipped, Apple is playing silent observer at the moment and will – hopefully – speak on January 26, 2010.