Although there has been a great deal of speculation surrounding the specifications and possible launch date of the purported iPad Mini, we are still waiting on official confirmation from Apple itself related to the device. With that said, we are pretty sure that Apple will remain on track to officially introduce us to the new baby iPad this month, and it is being reported that the very media event that will be held for the iPad Mini could also focus heavily on the company’s iBooks platform as part of the presentation.

Apple has always been extremely quick to refer to the Apple TV as their “hobby” project whenever the little black box gets a mentioning at any kind of press event. When the second-generation Apple TV was announced and launched, I got the feeling that it was a result of damaged pride, with the company needing to prove that it could be a viable product after their initial soiree into the set top box market failure. Even though they have continued to develop the product, release a new and improved 1080p version of it, and dumped significant resources into it, they still publicly refer to the gorgeous little entertainment provider as a hobby.

Up until his recent return to the jailbreak scene, you had to go back to August 2010 to see any sign of public activity from legendary coder PlanetBeing. With French security researcher Pod2g having some issues with Apples sandbox, PlanetBeing stepped in to become a part of the jailbreak Dream Team, and in doing so brought himself back into the public eye and out of the wilderness.

After waiting for approximately three months, owners of the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 rejoiced when hearing the news that iOS security researcher Pod2g and his development Dream Team had overcome all of the technical hurdles in front of them to get to a position where they could publicly distribute an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5. The ‘Corona’ untether had previously been released for owners of older A4 powered devices, but the lack of a usable exploit on the newer, dual-core A5 devices meant that the team had no way of injecting the necessary files.

As Apple has just posted record-busting sales figures for the opening fiscal quarter of 2012, the amount of intrigue in the company based in Cupertino, California is at an all-time high.

If anyone wondered whether Apple’s entry into the world of digital textbooks was a good idea, then they should feast their eyes on this not inconsiderable number – users have downloaded 350,000 textbooks in just three days.

Phil Schiller and associates took to the Guggenheim Museum in New York today to hold a special event which couldn’t have been further away from the traditional format that we grace Apple product launches for. In a smaller, stripped down event, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing introduced a strategy which was all about education. No specifications, aesthetics or launch dates for the media to speculate and report on, instead we saw a straight to the point presentation which featured innovation, new applications and a vision to change the face of education across the world, not for profit, but for the good of change.

Roger Rosner demonstrated the beautiful new iBooks 2 application for iPad, which allows users to view and interact with beautifully presented, and highly engaging virtual books, but just where do these books come from? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, there is an app for that.

Phil Schiller took to the stage in New York to open the much anticipated Apple education event and took little time in introducing the first of the three new releases. One of the first concerns he addressed was the state of the US education system, stressing that even the lucky kids who graduate may find themselves unable to compete in the global business world.

The pursuit of the untethered iOS 5 jailbreak has been a non stop, full on roller coaster ride which started in November, and looks set to continue for the next week or so at least. The development past has been anything but smooth, and all involved have had to overcome a series of technical hurdles just to get to the position we find ourselves in.

If you were one of the many people who were eagerly awaiting the iOS 5.0.1 untethered jailbreak, then I am pretty sure that on December 27th you took the plunge and liberated your device as soon as the tools were released by the development teams. Although everything may have seemed perfectly functional at first, chances are that if you attempted to launch iBooks, or various other applications then you would have experienced a crash.

A major update to Apple’s eBook solution iBooks has been released today, Redmond Pie has learned. The news comes straight from our iPhone in the form of an update for iBooks pushed out through the App Store.