As expected, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at a special event in San Jose this morning to announce their latest lineup of life-changing, line-forming Apple products. After trotting out some impressive iPhone 5 sales numbers and iOS 6 upgrade rates, Cook and Senior VP Phil Schiller announced a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina Display, redesigned iMac, the anticipated iPad Mini, and more.

The heavily anticipated 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro offers many of the features that popped up in the 15-inch retina model a few months back: the Retina screen that has more pixels than your HDTV, USB 3 connections, HD FaceTime and 7-hour battery life. The 13-inch model will be a teeny bit easier on the wallet (relatively speaking) at $1,700 and weighing almost a full pound lighter than your suddenly obsolete previous-edition MacBook Pro, it'll be a little easier on your back as well.

After the high-definition laptop, Schiller introduce a similarly lighter, thinner and more powerful iMac desktop machine. Like the other revised products announced today, new manufacturing processes mean clearer screens, performance improvements like the SSD + HDD Fusion Drive and HD video chatting through FaceTime. Also on the desktop lineup: more powerful hardware for the Mac Mini.

In addition to iMacs and MacBooks, Apple also introduced an updated, fourth-generation iPad with a faster A6x processor and the new Lightning connector that has been rolling out to all iOS products.

After beefing up the specs on the iPad, Schiller also introduce the smaller, 7.9-inch screen iPad Mini that everyone saw coming. At just 7.2 mm thick, the diminutive iPad is "thinner than a pencil" and less than half the weight of the 10-inch iPad.

The iPad Mini runs a dual-core A5 processor with an HD FaceTime camera, faster WiFi and 10-hours of battery life. According to Schiller's wordy discussion about the 7.9-inch screen and a commercial narrated designer Jonny Ive, the iPad Mini is designed to be easily used in one hand, while scaling apps and web pages at the same ratio as its bigger cousin. Starting at $329, it's the cheapest iPad yet. You can probably even afford to give one to your grandmother when they ship on November 2nd.

Apple also released a new version of iBooks today. The revised iPhone/iPad app now offers continuous scrolling, so you can read Pride & Prejudice like a blog, if you felt like it. Or On the Road just as Kerouac wrote it (except, you know, on a screen). The new iBooks also offers support for Chinese and Japanese text and appropriate left-to-right page turning.

To end the announcement event, Tim Cook took a moment to pat his company on the back and thank all of Apple's design teams for a "prolific" year full of innovation and making things thinner and easier to use. There was no mention, however, of that whole Maps fiasco.