Apple’s tablet is definitely the topic of conversation as we head toward Apple’s January event, but there could be more than just a hardware unveiling. There’s been a lot of speculation, in fact, about whether or not we’ll see iPhone OS 4.0 along with a tablet release.

The tablet isn’t likely to be powerful enough to run a full-fledged version of OS X, which points to another, stripped-down version, much like the iPhone OS. Actually, it probably is the iPhone OS, just with some more robust features like multi-tasking. There have also been reports that OS 4.0 has been kept out of developers hands because it leaks features about the impending tablet.

Whether it’s an updated iPhone OS or something else entirely, you can bet the tablet unveiling, if it even is that, will be about a whole lot more than just the hardware. For my money, I’d bet on an updated OS launching with the new machine.