“It’s Been Way Too Long” – Apple Announces iPad Event

Image courtesy of Apple

It’s official. Apple is throwing an iPad launch party on October 16th at the Apple campus in Cupertino, California at 1pm EST.

It is widely expected that Apple will use this time to unveil its new iPad models, which has been rumored to be bigger, and have the Touch ID fingerprint sensors. It’s also said that these new devices will take after their iPhone siblings and be offered in gold.

The big unknown, at least for now, is whether these iPads will have NFC. iPads have transformed the small merchant category by subbing for POS devices. Doing so would provide a local market beachhead for Apple Pay, the NFC-based secure mobile payment service for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus that it launched in September.

In the rumor category, Apple Insider also reports that Apple may also use this time to unveil a new 27-inch iMac with Retina display and could be ready to show its redesigned Mac Air with Retina display. The latter seems uncertain since recent report suggest that the launch may be pushed back to 2015. The new Mac Air is believed to be 12 inches, and will have a fan-less, silent design, a click-less trackpad, with less inputs and outputs.