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That’s about it for now folks, after teasing us with talk about ultra-thin iMacs, MacBooks and the like, Apple finally got down to business and gave us what we were all waiting for and on first impressions, it looks pretty impressive. What sort of impact it will have we’ll have to wait and see but we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple have another big seller on their hands.

Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the rest of your evening.

Headphone connector on the top and not the bottom like the iPhone, while it will be available in five different colours... oooohhh.

16GB with WiFi will start retailing at $329, 32GB mini is $429 and 64GB $519.

"This is an amazing new addition to our iPad family, and we're going to be so excited to tell customers about it who don't already know about it," Schiller says.

Tim Cook is back and says: "We think we've kept our promise, and I hope that you agree."

Bit of a dig at Android apps and how they are used on tablet devices as opposed to Apple apps before continuing onto more details. Battery life of ten hours for a start, also Dual-core A5 processor, FaceTime HD camera and 5-megapixel iSight camera on the back with 1080p recording.

"Others have tried to make tablets smaller than the iPad and they've failed miserably. These are not great experiences." Wonder what he was talking about at all?

7.9 inch screen with the exact same resolution as the iPad 2, 1024 x 768.

"It's great for reading your email or surfing on the web," says Schiller. "It's great for viewing your photos and sharing them with your family..."

Phil Schiller is glowing about the new product. "There is nothing as amazing as this. It is incredibly thin and beautiful... beautiful from every angle," he says.

And now onto the iPad Mini... finally

CPU and Graphics Performance doubled in the new gizmo, new retina display. Twice the features at the same price.

The chat begins about the fourth generation iPad. "We are so far ahead of the competition I can't even see them in the rear-view mirror," says Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller.

iPads have 91 per cent of the tablet traffic share according to Tim Cook. Interesting.

Now, we're talking about iPads...

21.5 inch models of the new ultra-thin iMac will retail at $1,299 and will ship next month while the 27.5 inch model will be slightly more pricey at $1,799 and will begin shipping in December.

Lighter than before, faster than before and a hell of a lot thinner than before, the Apple geeks present must be drooling at the mouth.

"The most beautiful Mac we've ever made," they say.

2 new Mac Minis available and shipping today in the States, one with 2.5GHz spec with 4GB of RAM and 500GB HDD for $599 and one with 2.3GHz Core i7 with 4GB of RAM and dual 1TB HDDs for $999. No time to dwell on that though 'cos already we've moved onto something else, the iMac.

We knew there'd be something to do with mini today... it's the Mac mini!

The details are flowing out now. Facetime HD Camera, stereo mics and speakers and a Retina display, with more apps now available that support Retina.

Cook goes on to say that it ships from today in the US and will retail at around $1,699 for the base model. Plenty of pre-orders about to be made methinks.

The new Mac Book will weigh 3.5 pounds significantly lighter than before and for those of you interested in the nitty gritty, it will come with MagSafe 2, dual Thunderbolts, SD card, HDMI output and dual USB 3.0.

It's resolution, which Cook glowingly describes as "absolutely gorgeous" will also be four times better than before.

Cook begins to reveal the new 13-inch Mac Book Pro, which is .75 inches thick - nearly forgot the incredibly important decimal point there, 20 per cent thinner than the previous model.

Cook is now talking about the App store and the iBook store but we'll sure he'll get around to what we all want to hear eventually.

By comparison, a 16GB version of the new iPad is currently retailing at around €479, while an iPad 2 with the same capacity will set you back around €400.

While Timmy blatters on about iPhones, iPods and everything but iPads at the moment, we can tell you that the price forecast for the new device is around £249 in the UK, so we're talking around €300 on this side of the pond.

Tim Cook is on stage at the California Theatre and he's talking about the i... Phone. Sold out the first weekend, more than five million units, yada yada yada. Get to the iPad Cook!

So here's what we know so far. The iPad supposedly being revealed this evening is thought to be a 7-inch version of the 10-inch version that current iPad owners will be familiar with. Normally bigger is better but obviously not here. Then again they say more than a handful is a waste... but we digress.

The new device is rumoured to be similar to an Amazon Kindle or a Google Nexus and should be cheaper too. We'll soon find out.

1755:

Good evening folks and thanks for tuning into our liveblog of the launch of the Apple iPad Mini, the new must have gadget for Apple fanatics, even those who already have an iPad, an iPad 2, an iPhoneand pretty much every Apple product dating back to the old Macintosh computers.

Proceedings are due to kick off in about five minutes time, we'll bring you all the details as soon as they are made available.