Smaller iPad to be announced today

Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will hold a media event at at the California Theatre in San Jose, California.  Apple has not disclosed what it will announce, but the rumors are that the main announcement will be a smaller, 7.85″ version of the iPad.  What will be the major distinguishing features, besides the obvious — smaller, lighter, easy to carry and less expensive?  How much will it cost?  What will it be called — the iPad mini, the iPad Air, just “the iPad” or something else?  And most importantly, should you get one?  We’ll start to get these answers in just a few hours.

The theater will be full of members of the press, and many of the people who are attending plan to
live-blog the event as it happens.  Here are direct links to the live
coverage at some of the sites that I expect to provide the best live
coverage:

• Macworld.  Jason Snell and Dan Moren are perhaps the best live-bloggers in the world for Apple announcements and they will be Macworld’s team today.
• GDGT.  Ryan Block has a great track record of providing excellent live coverage of events.
• The Verge.  The Verge has quickly became one of the very best sources of tech
  
  news, including live coverage of tech announcements.
• Engadget.  I believe that Tim Stevens is covering the event.
• Time.  Harry McCracken and Doug Aamoth will blog the event for Time magazine’s Technologizer column.
• Ars Technica.  Sometimes Jacqui Cheng does these live blogs; I’m not sure who will do it today.
• TWiT.  If you want to watch video or listen to audio instead of reading text, Leo Laporte and others will provide live commentary on the event as it happens.

Apple usually posts a video of the event later on in the day, so you
should be able to watch it on Tuesday night.  I look forward to
finding out what Apple has to announce, and I’m sure I’ll be posting my
thoughts on Wednesday.

[UPDATE:  Apple will be providing a live video stream of the event that you can watch on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.  Click here for more details.]