Apple Special Event, October 2012

The Apple special event has just completed and I would say, most of the rumors have come out to be totally true. Very accurate? or has Apple actually lost its power to keep upcoming products top secret.

Here is the summary of what Apple announced, stay tuned, relax and be amazed at the latest technology, the company has to offer.

Tim Cook started the event with some iPhone 5 and iOS facts.

Some quick facts:

- There are an average of 28,000 imessages sent per hour.

- As of today, there are already 275,000 iPad apps available, 35 Billion apps downloaded from the App store.

- 1.5 million books are now available in the iBook store, 400 million books already downloaded.

The new iBooks:

The new iBooks was announced. iBooks is now capable of continous scrolling, as you read a book, when you flick, the words go by, just as you would expect it. More integration with iCloud. Easy to share on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. This is now available as a free download in the App Store.

The new MacBook:

Did you know that the 13" MacBook Pro is Apple's number 1 selling laptop? Actually it's the number 1 selling Mac.

The new 13" MacBook Pro was announced. Now thinner at 0.75 inches, 20% thinner than the previous generation MacBook Pro and amazingly light, weighing in at only 3.57 lbs., almost 1 pound lighter than the previous generation making this the lightest MacBook Pro ever. Of course, the new 13" MacBook Pro now comes with the Retina Display.

Under the hood, Intel Dual Core i5 or i7 (Ivy Bridge) processors, Intel HD Graphics 4000, 8 GB RAM and up to 768 GB flash storage. With all these power, the new 13" MacBook Pro still has a battery life of up to 7 hours.

The new 13" MacBook Pro will ship with the latest Mountain Lion OS.

The new Mac Mini:

Dual Core or quad Intel Core i5 or i7 (Ivy Bridge). Up to 1 TB HDD or 256 GB SSD storage. Up to 16 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000. According to Apple, the Mac Mini is still the most efficient desktop.

The new iMac:

The edge is 5 mm thin, 80% thinner than the previous generation of iMac. To be able to achieve this super thin design, Apple engineers used "Friction Stir Welding", this is the process wherein actual molecules are molded together to form one piece. Again, for the super thin form factor to be possible, Apple has now removed the optical drive but inspite of that, Apple was still able to crunch in a dual microphone and a stereo sound system which actually sounds better than the previous generation.

The new iMac will have the option of either an SSD or an HDD storage, but Apple has come up with a third, hybrid storage solution they call the Fusion Drive. The Fusion drive has both flash storage and HDD storage, the operating system automatically resides on the flash portion and applications will usually reside on the HDD part, but, the operating system is also smart enough to toggle which applications stay on the flash drive and which applications go to the HDD depending on application usage. The result is that the Fusion drive is almost as fast as a pure flash drive but with the higher storage capability of an HDD.

Fusion Drive:

The new iMac comes with a wireless keyboard and a Magic mouse, starts at $1299 for the 21.5" screen.

The new iPad:

The 4th generation iPad was announced, not even a year after the New iPad was released. The latest generation now comes with a powerful A6X processor, which according to Apple, will be twice the speed of the previous generation chip, the A5X. This also gives twice the imaging power at the same time, battery life is maintained at a maximum of 10 hours.

Wi-fi has also been improved, again, according to Apple, Wi-fi is now twice as fast as the previous generation.

Also, as Apple is standardizing, the 4th generation iPad now comes with a lightning connector first seen on the iPhone 5. The 4th generation iPad starts at $499 for the base 16GB Wi-Fi model.

The iPad Mini:

The much talked about and the much awaited iPad Mini finally was unveiled.

One thing that the iPad Mini can do that the full sized iPad can't is it can be held by one hand...

The iPad Mini is 53% lighter than the iPad, weighing in at only .68 pounds. "As light as a pad of paper". The iPad Mini comes in Black and White, contrary to what we were expecting, there were no multi colors for the iPad Mini, except for the Smart covers that come in different brilliant colors. The actual size of the iPad Mini is 7.9" diagonal compared to the 9.7" diagonal screen of the iPad 2. In terms of screen resolution, the iPad Mini has the same 1024x768 resoultion of the iPad and iPad 2.

Under the hood, the iPad Mini is very similar to what the iPad 2 has except for the Facetime HD camera. The ipad Mini is powered by the same dual-core A5 chip which powers the iPad 2.

The iPad Mini starts at $329 for the base 16 GB, Wi-Fi only model.