Apple to Unveil New Mac Mini Alongside iPad Air 2 at October Event: Reports

With Apple's anticipated October event - expected to see the release of the next-generation iPad tablets and Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite - closing-in, rumours about the much-anticipated new Mac Mini have started brewing up again. In the meanwhile, some details about the 3rd generation iPad mini tablet, and the long-rumoured iPad Pro tablet are doing the rounds of the Internet, along with a Q2 2015 release date.

Apple is being tipped to announce the upgraded version of its Mac Mini at its October event, a product line that appears to be quite neglected by Apple, as it was last updated two years ago in October. Macrumors claims it has not yet received any other reports corroborating the information, but noted the source is reliable. No other details, including specifications, were provided.

The report points out that an October release for the new Mac Mini is a little odd, as Intel will only be releasing the 'appropriate' Broadwell processors early next year. Of course, as the Mac Mini is not meant to be a workstation level laptop, and as Macrumors notes, typically uses refreshed versions of current generation MacBook Pro processors, the company may very well launch the Mac Mini with Haswell processors seen on the Retina MacBook Pro lineup refresh launched in July. The picture will of course become clearer once the Apple's October event happens.

As for iPad models, a recent Taiwanese report (via G for Games) suggests that only the iPad Air 2 will launch at Apple's October event, while the 3rd-generation iPad mini and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro will only launch sometime in the second quarter of 2015, probably after the anticipated Apple Watch launch.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is also tipped to be powered by the Apple A8X SoC, which while not official, does fit in with Apple's tradition of using boosted iPhone chipsets for its iPad tablets, with more powerful GPUs - as was the case with the A5X and A6X chipsets (there was no A7X chipset). The company is also expected to use the new Apple A8X processor on the iPad Air 2 that's due in October. The publication adds that the iPad Air 2 will also feature 2GB of RAM, supposedly meant for its split-screen functionality, as has been widely-anticipated.

If the rumours from earlier this year are to be believed, the iPad Air 2 would include the TouchID fingerprint sensor and would be around 1mm thinner than the existing iPad Air tablet. Also, the speaker grills on the bottom might be changed to bigger circles in one row from the smaller circles in two rows.