I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I’m a born and raised Apple junkie that only deviates into the world of the PC for work. I’m currently the owner of a gorgeous 27″ iMac, a first generation iPad and a lovely little iPod shuffle that I call ‘Shuffleufagus’; despite being hounded on by about 60% of my friend group, I’m proud to say that I have not (and will not) cave and purchase an iPhone because I’m head over heals for my Droid.  I have gaming systems, I have cable, I have internet – I basically have the entire e-gamut covered, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a genuine interest in what those Apple Guru’s will come up with next.

In attempts to remain competitive across the breadth of the mobile market, today Apple introduced it’s first tablet – set to hit stores on November 2nd.  The iPad Mini comes in around 8 inches and costs a pretty penny – a 16GB mini without a cellular plan comes out to $329 and with one comes out to $459.  It’s weighs roughly .7lbs and is crazily less than 8mm thin.  Conversely, the iPad 2 comes to $399 and the brand new iPad with Retina Display comes in at $499 – both devices are roughly 10 inches tall.  There’s a considerable amount of flack that Apple is receiving – and many are wondering how they can remain competitive in a market where there are euivalent products at a much lower price.  The Amazon Kindle Fire HD, for example, is a seven inch tablet that comes in either a16GB or 32GB version depending on your preference, and respectively costs $199 or $249 – significantly less than the retail of the new iPad Mini.

Fortunately for the Apple camp, there were a few other unveiling today that made the nerd inside me go SQUEE!  A 13 inch Macbook Pro with Retina Display, a MacMini and a new generation of iMac. The new iMacs are being rolled out in two different sizes with 27 and 21.5 inch screens, respectively. I have to say – I’m head over heals for retina display anything; I was playing around on my dad’s new Macbook Pro over the weekend and I kind of fell in love with it.  The design is sleek, sexy and slim – it’s light weight and gorgeous, just the way a laptop should be!

The main selling point of their new laptop and desktop computers is the idea of a ‘Fusion Drive‘ – granted, I didn’t know what one was until the conference, but after doing some digging I think I figured it out. A fusion drive basically the marriage of a solid state drive (SSD) and a magnetic drive (HDD), eventually giving your computer the quickness of having a flash drive and the storage space of a magnetic drive. As I understand it, applications in high rotation will sit on your flash drive so they can be used with ease, but the rest of your files will sit on the magnetic drive to be accessed at your leisure.  The hybrid drive is in no way a new idea, but the Fusion Drive is an example of Apple branding at work. Now, I’m not about to run out and snag myself some new Apple swag – but if a Retina Display laptop happened to wind up under my Christmas tree this year I wouldn’t be at all upset about it…