Apple TV

Bad news if you are planning on pre-ordering the new Apple TV for delivery on March 16. The shipping estimate has slipped to a rather vague 1-2 week instead of the original guaranteed delivery on March 16.

Apple announced the new Apple TV at its media event yesterday along with the new iPad. The new Apple TV now offers 1080p video playback, iTunes Movies in the cloud and also comes with a revamped user interface. It looks like it is going to be a very popular upgrade!

Source: Apple Store

Kicking off the new iPad event, Apple CEO Tim Cook has just announced a new Apple TV, a new Apple TV user interface, new iTunes Movies in the cloud, and most importantly -- full 1080p support.

Apple is set to announce the next generation iPad later today at its media event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Also on the agenda is a revamped Apple TV which 9to5 Mac has garnered some rather interesting information.

Once again, rumors are circulating about an Apple TV 3 update to accompany the new iPad 3/iPad HD.

Apple is rumoured to be launching its own TV streaming service which could be available in time for Christmas. The news comes from a report in the New York Post which claims to have some inside information on the direction Apple is looking to take.

Complete rumor rundown of Apple's upcoming iPad 3 event, from release date to hardware hopes and software speculation

Apple's next generation iPad 3 will almost certainly be announced on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, California. Everything else about it, however, is still up in the air. That's nothing new. The road to every Apple product release is paved and pot-holed with rumors true and fake, and this one is no different.

Still, while Apple is secretive they do tend towards patterns. What they've done in the past can indicate what they may do in the future. That's what we're going to look at here -- sift through all the recent rumors and try to figure out what makes sense.

iMore heard Apple was going quad-core with a full on, next generation A6-powered iPad 3, so did Bloomberg, but The Verge heard dual core and strings have been found identifying a less ambitious A5X chipset instead. Which one is it? Both? Neither? Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac thinks it's almost certainly both.

There's a rumor going around that Apple could be preparing a second product launch to accompany the iPad 3 this March, and the current front-runner is Apple TV 3. Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac reports:

We’ve been hearing that supplies of the Apple TV are severely constrained, but it’s hard to see a reason for this besides an imminent refresh. We’ve been hitting hard with evidence for the past few months that suggests a new Apple TV is in development, and what better time to launch it than alongside the latest and greatest mobile iOS device?

At a recent trade show, Samsung product manager Chris Moseley commented on the recent rumours swirling about an Apple-made TV.

"We've not seen what they've done but what we can say is that they don't have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category. They don't have the best scaling engine in the world and they don't have world renowned picture quality that has been awarded more than anyone else."