Stories by Michael deAgonia

This year's Worldwide Developers Conference looks to be unlike any of its predecessors in scope and scale, with Apple CEO Tim Cook likely to talk about everything from iOS 6 to OS X Mountain Lion to new hardware.

Apple's big iPhone event later today has naturally generated a retinue of rumors, almost all them focused on hardware. Will Apple announce one new iPhone or two? Will the next-generation device retain the basic iPhone 4 shape and design? What about the prospect for voice-activated assistance software?

Since its unveiling in January 2005, the Mac Mini has been the cheapest Mac that Apple sells, making it the least expensive way to get hardware that natively runs OS X. In the past, this usually meant settling for older components -- especially compared to the pricier iMac and MacBook Pro lines. Although Apple has updated the Mini's look several times since its debut -- most recently in 2010 -- the internal hardware often received only minor improvements.

Earlier this week at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple finally offered up a look at iOS 5, the planned update to the company's mobile OS. Although it wont be out until this fall -- Apple isn't yet saying exactly when -- iOS 5 promises to deliver much-needed changes to the OS, which is used on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Eleven months ago, Apple released the first iPad, a touchscreen handheld computer that redefined tablets, disrupting the laptop/desktop market just as the iPod did to music players and the iPhone did to smartphones. On Friday, 15 million iPads later, Apple released its successor, the iPad 2. Many people -- myself included -- predicted long lines and sell-outs, just like last year. So did Apple deliver?

Apple's iPad 2, unveiled by CEO Steve Jobs in a surprise appearance Wednesday at an invitation-only media event, is thinner, lighter, faster and more full-featured, and incorporates enough changes and updates to maintain Apple's strong sales in the tablet market.

Apple last week finally released the update to its iOS software for mobile devices like the iPhone and the iPad. And while the big changes -- AirPlay, AirPrint and iPad-focused tweaks -- got a lot of attention, there are a slew of smaller changes and improvements that users will appreciate in iOS 4.2.

Nearly five months after Apple rolled out iOS 4 in tandem with the iPhone 4 launch, it has released the latest update for the software that powers its touch-screen lineup: iOS 4.2.1 (along with version 4.1 for the latest-generation Apple TV). The free update is a major milestone for Apple: It finally unifies the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch so that all are running the same operating system with the same major feature set. The update also adds several key new features.

For more than three years now, Apple TV has been the one Apple product that buyers were uncertain about. Originally billed as an iPod for your TV, early versions carried a hefty price tag -- $299 initially -- and some annoyances, including synchronization errors and a sometimes unresponsive interface. While it wasn't a failure, Apple TV -- which Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously described as a "hobby" -- clearly wasn't going to be a big consumer hit without a major overhaul.