Apple unveils a new line of products

Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, speaks in front of an image of the 4th generation iPad, at left, and the iPad mini in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012. The iPad has a screen that's about two-thirds the size of the full-size model, and Apple says it will cost $329 and up.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, speaks in front of an image of the 4th generation iPad, at left, and the iPad mini in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012. The iPad has a screen that’s about two-thirds the size of the full-size model, and Apple says it will cost $329 and up.

By Roy Herrera
October 28, 2012

Apple held a media event on Tuesday in San Jose, Calif., to unveil its new line of products.

Experts speculated Apple would announce a smaller version of the iPad, and they were right. Apple announced the iPad mini and the fourth generation iPad. The iPad mini is being released to compete with other 7 inch tablets on the market, like the Kindle Fire HD, Google Nexus 7 and Nook Tablet.

iPad Mini specs:

•7.9 inch screen

•7.2 millimeters thick

•A5 microchip processor

•Lightning connector

•FaceTime HD camera

•1080p HD video recording camera

The only thing that is worth mentioning is that the iPad mini is as thin as a pencil. Other than that, it is just a smaller version of the iPad 2. The iPad mini doesn’t have a retina display because of the A5 processor, and overall it is just a bad tablet compared to the Kindle Fire HD in my opinion. I would just wait until Apple releases the iPad mini 2 because by then they will include a retina display and the new A6 microchip processor.

What surprised many people was that Apple unveiled the fourth generation of the iPad. It has been only seven months since Apple released the iPad 3, and there is already a better version coming out.

Fourth generation iPad specs:

•A6X microchip processor

•Dual band 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi

•LTE cellular access

•Lightning connector

•FaceTime HD

•1080p HD video recording camera

Apple claims the new microchip allows the iPad 4 to be twice as fast as before. Also, the new dual band gigahertz increases the Wi-Fi speed. People will also be able to use 4G LTE with the new iPad. Both the iPad mini and iPad 4 will include the new Lightning connector that was introduced with the iPhone 5.

Overall, the new iPad mini is not the best tablet out there today; there are tablets that have a better display and more features.

There is no need to upgrade to the iPad 4 if you have the iPad 3 because there is not a huge difference between the two.

If you are looking forward to purchasing the iPad mini, there are three options to choose from. You can get the 16GB for $329, 32GB for $429 and the 64GB model for $529. The iPad 4 costs between $499 and $699 for the Wi-Fi models and between $629 and $829 for a Wi-Fi + cellular model.