New iPad, iPad mini expected at Apple event on 22 October

Apple has officially announced a 22 October event in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Centre at 10am PDT (6pm BST).

The invite's tagline "we still have a lot to cover" suggests that Apple will touch on multiple products at the event.

Coming almost exactly a year after it last refreshed its iPad line and introduced the iPad mini, the new models are expected to have a slimmer and lighter design than the current generation. The 9.7in iPad is expected to get a thinner body and bezels, to match the design of the iPad mini. It is also expected to run Apple's new 64-bit A7 chip, and could include Apple's Touch ID fingerprint sensor introduced in the iPhone 5S in September.

The iPad mini is also expected to be updated with a higher-resolution display - although there are mixed reports about whether it will move to a "retina" display.

Even before the sale date had formally been announced, the retailer John Lewis forecast last Wednesday that the iPad mini will be its best-selling technology device this Christmas. It reckons it will outpace Microsoft's Xbox One for sales. But it forecast that Samsung's Tab 3 tablet and Google's Nexus 7 will be the third and fourth best-selling.

Expectations are also high that Apple will announce the release of the latest version of its desktop software, OSX "Mavericks", which recently completed its testing phase, and set a date for the release of the new Mac Pro desktop computer. The latter was trailed in June, and will be the first update to the Mac Pro line since June 2012.

Recent rumours also suggest that the MacBook Pro line might receive an update with Intel's latest generation "Haswell" processors.