7.9" tablet finally revealed, ships Nov. 2

Apple's supply chain has grown so big that we'll never see the 'one more thing' kind of surprise again. For example, they announced this morning that 100 million iPads have been sold to date. 

You won't be surprised to hear that Apple announced the iPad Mini at their press conference today in San Jose, California. As expected, it's a shrunk down standard iPad, now sized at 7.9 inches, with the same 1024 x 768 resolution as the original iPad. The Apple A5 chip is doing the heaving lifting inside for this little guy. It weighs just .68 lbs, and is as thick as a pencil. A reduced width bezel makes it holdable with one hand.

It will be available in both white and black, with slate or sliver backs, like the new iPhone 5. It also uses the new Lightning connector, and has the same 10-hour battery life.

The iPad Mini Wifi 16GB model will be priced at $329. 32GB and 64GB are priced at $429 and $529. Pre-orders start this Friday, with the WiFi models shipping November 2.

The 4th generation (non-mini) iPad uses the Apple A6X chipset, doubling the performance for CPU tasks and graphics performance. Wifi performance is now 2 times faster, too. The Retina display returns. Price is exactly the same as always, starting at $499 for 16GB base model.

In related news, Apple also announced a 13" MacBook Pro Retina. 2560 x 1600 is the resolution for this .75 inch thick, 3.9lb notebook. You get a 2.5 ghz i5, 8GB RAM and 256GB Flash for $1699. It ships today.

The new iMac line is ridiculously thin at 5 mm in thickness. The optical drive was dropped, and it's now 8lbs lighter. There are 21" and  27" models in this new line-up, with Intel Core i5 or i7 processors. A new Apple Fusion drive holds 128GB of flash storage and either a 1TB or 3TB drive, fused into a single volume. 

The base model is priced at $1,299 with a 2.7GHz i5 and a 1TB HDD with 8GB of RAM. The 27"goes up to 2.7GHz i5 for $1,799. Shipping starts next month.