Live: Apple to unveil new 'mini' iPad and more - NBCNews.com

1 hr.

Wilson Rothman , NBC News

We have found our way to San Jose, to see what Apple meant when it said, "We've got a little more to show you." Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the stage and presided over an event that launched a super slim new iMac, a 13-inch Retina display MacBook Pro, and a Mac Mini ... and two new iPads.

The fourth-generation iPad is an update to this spring's iPad with Retina display, featuring a faster chip, improved Wi-Fi and, of course, a Lightning connector. It will cost the same as the current one. (No word on whether or not the third-gen iPad will be offered at discount.) This the first time, at least in recent memory, that Apple updated a core product twice in the same year.

But the bigger deal was the smaller iPad, the iPad Mini. It's 0.68 lbs, and as thin as a pencil.

The first news of the day was a new version of iBooks, with continuous reading, language support for Japanes and Chinese, and pages synchronized across iCloud, so like Amazon's Whispersync, your place is saved no matter what device you're on. You can download the new iBooks today.

After iBooks, Cook invited SVP of Global Marketing Phil Schiller came on stage and revealed a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display: It's got 4 million pixels, 4X the pixels of its predecessor. At the same time, it's .75 inches thick, and 3.5 lbs., much more slender than the older model. There's no optical disc drive, of course.

The base configuration, which you can order today, costs $1699, and comes with a Core i5 dual-core processor, 256GB of memory and 8GB of RAM. You can get custom order it with a storage array of up to 768GB of flash memory, and an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor.

Schiller also introduced a new Mac Mini with a neat removable bottom. A base configuration starts at $599 with 2.5GHz dual core i5, and a server model is available for $999.

The star of the Mac show was the next-generation iMac, however. It's incredibly thin.

They got it so much thinner by laminating the display to the glass. It comes in two sizes: 27-inch 2560 x 1440 screen and a 21.5 inch 1920 x 1080 version. Schiller says there's 75 percent less reflection than the previous generation, and from what I can tell from the Retina MacBook Pros, that sounds about right.

This thing is 8 pounds lighter than its predecessor. Still, it's got all the jacks and speakers and cameras you'd expect.

The key under-the-hood feature is the "Fusion Drive," a hybrid drive that has 128GB of Flash memory, integrated with a 1 or 3TB magnetic drive. The hybrid drive is coded into OSX, so that your file management is speedy, delivering "nearly the performance of flash," says Schiller.

The base configuration of the new iMac is $1299, and you get 2.7GHz processor, 8GB of RAM and 1TB regular drive. There's no optical drive on any configurations, just the add-on accessory. 

Cook's tale o' the tape
As usual, Cook started off the Apple event by recapping sales of all his products. There was a video of the iPhone 5 sales, naming it the fastest-selling phone in history. Next was a recap of iPod sales â€" over 3 million of the new ones sold already. 

On to software, where Cook mentioned that iMessages have been sent 300 million times, at a rate of 28,000 per second. 35 billion apps have been downloaded from Apple App Store, and there are 275,000 titles in there that are just for iPad. Developers have made $6.5 billion from selling wares in the App Store. 

From earlier:

Will it be an "iPad Mini" (or "iPad Air") with a display measuring 7.85 inches diagonally? If it's not, Apple will look pretty silly. But what other early Christmas presents will come from the Santa's bag that is an Apple keynote? New iMacs and Mac Mini? A new MacBook Pro? A slightly tweaked full-size iPad? Candy canes? The beauty is, we don't have to wait long to find out.

The event kicks off at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET, and I will update this story regularly with the news. But if you want some pre-show buzz and realtime play-by-play, your best bet is to follow me on Twitter at @wjrothman, where I'll be live-tweeting all of the juiciest bits. (As of 9:15 a.m. PT, reporters were doing their customary milling-around-the-continental-breakfast thing. Talking about ... well, Apple.)

You can also follow Apple's own livestream of the event, but pay attention to the system requirements.

Wilson Rothman is the Technology & Science editor at NBC News Digital. Catch up with him on Twitter at @wjrothman, and join our conversation on Facebook.