First and foremost, I'd like to point out that this post is inspired by John Gruber's review of the Verizon iPhone along with other recent speculation.

As you may know by now, The Daily iPad newspaper was announced yesterday. One of the key announcements was pricing. It would be only $0.99 per week or $39.99 per year, and this would be paid for via a new subscription service built into the app. Well iOS 4.2, the current version of iOS, does not support in-app subscriptions. And Apple wouldn't just make this feature exclusive to The Daily. They have to announce APIs for it. Luckily, The Daily is completely free for the first two weeks of launch, which makes it paid starting February 16th.

This gives Apple until then to announce the APIs for in-app subscriptions. Since Apple has been cranking out betas for iOS 4.3, in-app subscriptions will almost certainly be introduced in iOS 4.3. So we know now that iOS 4.3 should be here within the next two weeks. Plus, what better way to announce iOS 4.3 than a keynote, right?

That brings us to the iPad 2. We all know the second-generation tablet is due very shortly. It doesn't make sense at all for Apple to hold two separate events for iOS 4.3 and iPad 2, especially when iOS 4.3 is such a small topic. Both announcements will be merged together in one event. iPad 2 will ship with iOS 4.3 as well.

So when is this event happening? Well, a few days ago I posted that the iPad 2 was coming later than expected. This is because I got an email from Apple saying to buy an iPad for Valentine's Day. Apple wouldn't advertise to buy an iPad for Valentine's Day if they were going to announce the iPad 2 before then. So I'm going to stick with my word on that.

Then of course, an article was just posted today stating the rumor that an event would be held next week. It's possible, but it's also possible that invitations for the event would go out next week. So to keep within the time frame of two weeks since yesterday and after Valentine's Day, there's only one logical date for Apple to hold an event for iOS 4.3 and iPad 2. I could be very wrong on this, but at least it's in support of this rumor back in December. I'm calling the shots: Apple will hold an event February 15th.

Update (2/4): Oddly enough, I just realized that February 15th happens to be a Tuesday, which is when Apple almost always holds events. But while I have my theory, AppleInsider now has a slightly different one.