The closer 27th January gets, the louder and larger the Apple Tablet rumors get. This time Wall Street Journal is the source party, so its pretty safe to assume that these rumors are more on the trustworthy side. Engadget has done everyone a favor by summarizing them. See the latest collection of iSlate rumors after the jump.

WSJ discloses that:

  • The Tablet will come with a virtual keyboard — kind of a no-brainer if it’s gonna be a keyboard-less tablet and not, say, another laptop.
  • Apple‘s been talking with The New York Times, Conde Nast, and HarperCollins / News Corp. over how they could collaborate. When asked, NYT Chairman Arthur Sulzberger would only say “stay tuned.”
  • Electronic Arts has been working closely to prep games for the tablet. We know of a number of gaming journalists who’ve gotten invites to next week’s event, and given Apple’s heavy games push over the past year or so, this wouldn’t surprise us in the least.
  • A reaffirmation of earlier murmurings about potentially swapping Google for Bing as the default search engine. Maps, too!
  • Those TV subscription rumors? Apparently the gang in Cupertino have been pitching a “best of TV” service that would package the best four to six shows per channel.
  • A web-based version of iTunes, tentatively called iTunes.com and potentially launching in June, for buying music outside of the dedicated app. Additionally, there’d be a new initiative “to populate as many webs ites as possible with ‘buy’ buttons, integrating iTunes transactions into activities like listening to internet radio and surfing review web sites.” No mention if music will be downloaded or streamed from the cloud, but we can definitely see how Apple’s recent Lala acquisition would play into this in the future — in fact, we’ve already seen it start to bear fruit.
  • Here’s a weird one: Apple has supposedly designed the tablet “so that it is intuitive to share.” One such experiment is virtual sticky notes that launch for the intended recipient by facial recognition via built-in camera.

All of this just makes you wish a little bit more for a quick and immediate arrival of 27th January, which will clear the whole scenario once and for all.

For more Tablet stuff, check out the following links:

Apple Tablet to be subsidized by Verizon, will bring a dock station for Keyboard/Mouse

Rumor or Reality : Apple Tablet delayed till June, due to battery issues

Apple Tablet might be US specific only

Rumor: Apple to unveil iPhone 4.0 and Tablet simulator at the iSlate launch event

[via Engadget]

[Original Source: WSJ]