The late Steve Jobs used to mock 7-inch tablets, describing them as "tweeners." Is he spinning in his grave now that Apple just revealed the 8-inch iPad mini?

It has a 1024 x 768 display (not Retina, but same resolution as the iPad 2), is 7.2mm thick and, thanks to curving metal back, looks just like an overgrown iPod Touch. Construction remains in aluminium, unlike the majority of other 7-inch tablets.

The insides include a dual-core A5 processor, dual-band wifi/LTE wireless radios, 5MP rear-facing iSight camera and (of course) Lightning connector.

"It is every bit an iPad" Apple senior VP Phil Schiller remarks.

Still, we wonder-- is the iPad mini "too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad”? Or is the 7-inch segment, as represented by Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7, taking over too much of a chunk from the lower end tablet market for Apple's comfort?

Not that iPad sales are too shabby, mind. The company claims it sold 100 million iPads in 2 and a half years, while CEO Tim Cook says "[Apple] sold more iPads in the June quarter than any PC maker sold of their entire lineup."

However the true shock announcement for the Apple afacionados is not the iPad mini-- it is the 4th generation iPad. That's right, the "new" iPad (revealed little over 6 months ago) is already being retired in favour of an updated "powerhouse."

It carries an A6X processor (with double the CPU and graphics performance, apparently) a new image signal processor, 720p FaceTime camera and Lightning connector.

The new iPad is not the only Apple product making a debut. Conspicuously hidden beneath a blanket on was the latest generation of iMac desktop. An impressive looking all-in-one, it is just 5mm thick at the edges and lacks an optical drive.

It carries a quad-core (Intel Core i5 or i7) processor, discrete Nvidia GeForce GTX GPUs, up to 3TB of HDD space and 8GB of RAM. Apple also offers a flash-based storage option-- "Fusion Drive," a hybrid system combining 128GB SSD with either 1TB or 3TB HDD.

Apple also has another product bearing the "mini" name-- the Mac mini, the "smallest, most affordable Mac" yet with 2.5GHz Ivy Bridge Core i5/7 processor, 4GB RAM, x4 USB ports, HDMI out, SD card reader, and up to 1TB HDD or 256GB SSD

And finally we have the "lightest ever" 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It handles 2560 x 1600 resolution (with 300 nits brightness) and comes complete with Ivy Bridge (Core i5 or i7) processor, x2 Thunderbolt ports, x2 USB and HDMI out.

In other words it is very similar to the other Retina-equipped Apple laptop, the 15-inch Pro with Retina Display.

All the above mentioned Apple products will go on sale from November 2012.

Go Apple