After months of secrecy and speculation, Apple has finally officially announced its latest gadget – the iPad tablet. Steve Jobs himself unveiled the 10” touch screen device today at an invitation-only event in San Francisco. The iPad is expected to be a player in the e-book market which is currently dominated by Amazon’s Kindle. At the same time, it will serve as a larger version of the iPod Touch and be able to run the hundreds of thousands of apps in the iTunes App Store. Amazon seems to have anticipated this by putting out a call for developers to create applications for the Kindle.

The iPad also has a built-in iPod and can play iTunes music and video content. At $499, it might just give the Kindle a run for its money. You can see Jobs and the iPad in this YouTube video of today’s presentation. For a different take on the subject, see this blog post from The Onion.

Last October, Apple introduced a new line of iMac computers that included a new mouse device, The Magic Mouse. The unique design of this Bluetooth wireless mouse includes a touch-sensitive surface (called Multi-Touch by Apple). Instead of using mouse buttons and a wheel, users perform selection and scrolling with a swiping gesture. Users of the iPhone and iPod Touch will be familiar with the swiping interface. With The Magic Mouse, Apple has introduced one of the biggest innovations in mouse design to come along in quite some time.

See a video of The Magic Mouse in action on the Apple website.