iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3 Apple Launch Event Highlights

iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 are expected to be the stars of the Apple special event at Town Hall Theatre in Cupertino on Thursday. The tablets were accidentally outed by Apple on Wednesday, when an iOS 8.1 user guide made an unexpected appearance on the iBooks store.

Apart from the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 names, the user guide also 'confirmed' the presence of Touch ID fingerprint sensor in the new tablets. This feature has so far only been present on Apple's iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

The new tablets from Apple are expected to ship with iOS 8.1, so we are also likely to seen an announcement on the release date of iOS 8.1 software update.

While there's nothing official about the specifications yet, the iPad Air 2 is tipped to feature an Apple A8X processor, 2GB of RAM, a Touch ID sensor, and also come in a new gold colour variant. Other than the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, the iPad mini 3 is being tipped to feature the Apple A8 processor found on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The new iPad mini is also expected to come with same 7.9-inch display and resolution of 2048x1536 pixels as its predecessor. We reiterate, there's nothing official about these specs, and this may well change at launch.

New Macintosh computers, specifically new iMacs, are also likely to make an appearance at the Apple event on Thursday. The Cupertino-based company is also expected to announce a release date for OS X Yosemite, the next generation operating system for its computers.

Apple may also formally kick-off the Apple Pay payment system that it unveiled at the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus launch event back in September.

Stay tuned for live updates from the Apple special event at Town Hall Theatre in Cupertino, California.