Although, Apple essentially created the tablet market as we know it today with the release of the original iPad, they won’t be sitting as easy as they have been in previous years as they watch other companies like Microsoft and Samsung release highly capable tablet devices that could potentially compete with the iPad for the first time since launch. Any tablet owner will be concerned with the display quality of the product that they have purchased, and for the first time, the Surface has been scientifically scrutinized alongside the other leading tablets on the market.

We’ve finally gotten our hands on the new iPad mini from Apple, and our resident vlogger Steven Chi has complied a new video in which the new smaller tablet unboxed, and compared with several other key devices in the mobile game.

The iPad 3 has had the shortest shelf life of any Apple tablet in existence. Having arrived only in March in a blaze of glory, it’s quickly been replaced by the fourth-generation iPad, and although the aesthetic changes are negligible (the Lightning cable has replaced the 30-pin job), internally, the newer of the two is said to be “twice as fast.”

Apple really threw up a surprise today by announcing the fourth-generation iPad. We expected to see a few touch-ups to the third-gen, including a Lightning dock connector and a more efficient battery, perhaps, but we certainly didn’t predict so many changes.

Among the three technology media events set for the last week of October – Microsoft’s Surface and Windows 8 launch event on 25th, Google’s event on the 29th, Apple’s event on the 23rd is the most heavily anticipated. It is widely expected to be centered around an all-new smaller iPad which is popularly referred to as the iPad Mini.

Although the chatter regarding the purported iPad Mini has been pretty relentless over the past couple of months, few people – if any – have really suggested how Apple plans to release two products at around the same time. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has built up a reputation of accurately predicting the Cupertino company’s movements, has given his estimations on when Apple plans to release these new devices.

Despite most Apple products being manufactured over in China, the nation is usually behind most other countries when it actually comes to seeing the newest Cupertino device. Some four months since the US and Europe release of the third-generation iPad, the slate has finally hit stores over in China, and unlike the usual frenzied rush, the launch came and went relatively quietly.

Fans of the consumer technology world, specifically Apple related products, will obviously be aware of the fact that when it comes to announcements or releases, the rumor mill always manages to kick into overdrive. Speculation overdrive usually occurs during the standard release schedule for Apple devices, but if the most recent reports are anything to go by then we might be onto something new.

The iPhone Dev Team has released the updated version of their Redsn0w tool which was teased a while back on Twitter by MuscleNerd. The update as you’d expect is a very significant one, and brings with it the support for downgrading the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and the new 3rd-gen iPad to an earlier version of iOS 5 from iOS 5.1.1.

It was only a few days ago when i0n1c tweeted to the world that he had jailbroken the new 3rd-iPad running on the latest firmware. And now, famous iOS security researcher Pod2g has revealed to the world via Twitter that he has managed to jailbreak the new iPad – fully untethered.

For many of us, the launch of Apple’s new iPad device seems like an age away. The early adopters have spent the last six weeks enjoying the Retina display, quad-core GPU, LTE connectivity and the iSight camera which collectively equate to a pretty substantial upgrade.

While many of us have owned (or at least, had the option to purchase) our new iPads for a month now, a handful of countries have yet to see an official release of the Apple’s Retina-shining, LTE-compliant third tablet installment.