Electronics, Ipad | featured news

Apple Inc. regained some momentum in its fourth quarter, selling more iPhones than expected while triggering some concerns about the iPad. But the results ratcheted up the pressure on the company for the current holiday quarter. The company is preparing to market a new set of products and is grappling with making enough iPhones.

Apple Inc's "iPad mini" will attract new customers but the higher-than-expected price will come as a relief to low-cost tablets such as Amazon.com Inc's Kindle, analysts said, in a muted reaction to the new tablet.

The full-sized iPad is like a hardback book. The new iPad Mini is the paperback version many tablet users have been waiting for.

The smaller device will officially be called the iPad Mini and be priced starting at $329, pricey when compared with popular 7-inch tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, which start at $199. The iPad Mini will have a screen slightly smaller than 8 inches -- the original iPad has a screen just under 10 inches -- while having the same screen resolution of the larger version.

The rumors surrounding Apple's press event, scheduled for Oct. 23, are deafening. Will the Cupertino-based company announce a smaller iPad? (It had better.) Will the company offer up a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display? (Very likely!) How about an Apple-branded coffee maker? (No.)

Wow, tomorrow’s the big/little day when Apple will hopefully unveil the long-rumored iPad mini. Alongside the smaller tablet it’s speculated that we’ll see a few updates to the Mac lineup and a UI update to the popular iBooks app. What has been quietly whispering in the background is the possibility that Apple would tweak the current full-sized iPad by expanding 4G compatibility and swapping out the old 30-pin dinosaur dock in favor of the new Lightning connector debuted at the iPhone 5 launch event last month.

Apple’s iPad mini event was rumored to be happening sometime around October 17, but this week brought no invite. Now, however, there’s a very good sign that we could see it on October 23, thanks to a report from AllThingsD and a confirmation from one of the best-connected bloggers in the Apple ecosystem.

Apple has yet to unveil the iPad mini, but already, a report says exactly how many will be available in time for the holidays.

Apple did not violate patents owned by Samsung Electronics in making the iPod touch, iPhones and iPads, a judge at the International Trade Commission said in a preliminary ruling on Friday.

The FBI on Tuesday disputed a computer hacker group's claim that it stole personal identification data on millions of Apple device owners from an FBI agent's laptop.