Apple A6

Back in August iMore reported that Apple was planning to update all current iOS devices to the new Lightning connector. That included the new iPad (iPad 3) that went on sale last March. Today MacRumors reported a developer had started seeing iPad 3,6 show in his or her app analytics, and what's more, it appeared to be running an iPhone 5-class, ARM v7s-based, Apple A6 custom system-on-a-chip.

We talked about the "iPad 3 mark II" (or rev A, for lack of a better term) on last week's iMore show Sunday edition, but here's the gist --

At the iPhone 5 event on September 12, Apple not only announced a new iPhone, but also a new system-on-a-chip (SoC) sequentially named the Apple A6. While we'd heard about this new chipset prior to the event, we hadn't heard anything specific. Rumors ranged from an updated, higher clocked version of last year's dual-core ARM Cortex A9-based Apple A5 with a PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, to a bleeding edge ARM A15 and PowerVR 6 "Rogue". Turns out the Apple A6 is nothing as conservative or futuristic as either of those things -- it's something even more exciting. It's Apple's first custom-designed ARM chipset.

Apple is expected to announce their next generation iPhone on September 12, 2012, and while there have been a lot of leaks about what it may look like, there have only been a few about what will power it. That's not surprising. Apple seldom gives specifics about the processors inside the iPhone, or any of their iOS devices. They'll typically announce the name of the processor, maybe the number of cores, but they'll mostly just tell us how many times faster it is than the last generation, both in terms of computing and graphical power. And the amount of RAM is has? Forget about it. We'll likely not know the full details about the iPhone 5 processor until after it's launched and after it's been thoroughly torn down by third parties. That's the Apple way. In the meantime, all we can do is speculate based on past behavior and present technology.

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.