Apple shows off the iPad Mini in YouTube videos

Want to know more about the iPad Mini's stats while also seeing how it looks and works in users' hands? Well, Apple has posted a video to YouTube showing just that (see below).

Featuring Apple senior vice president of design Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of hardware engineering Dan Riccio, and vice president of iPad product marketing Michael Tchao, the video details the device's components and shows off its streamlined features.

"Our goal was to take all the amazing things you could do with the full size iPad, and pack them into a product that is so much smaller," Ive says in the video. "There is inherent loss in just reducing a product in size. And what we did was we went back to the very beginning. And we took the time to design a product that was a concentration of, not a reduction of, the original."

The new device, which was announced today, is a 7.9-inch version of the 9.7-inch iPad tablet. It is 7.2mm thick and weighs 0.68 pound, making it thinner and lighter than its bigger brother. The device's display has a screen resolution of 1,024x768 pixels, matching the first- and second-generation iPad. It also has 10 hours of battery life, a FaceTime HD front-facing camera, and can be used with one hand. The device goes on sale Friday, ships on November 2, and is slated to cost $329.

The iPad Mini has been rumored for months, with images and details leaking on a near-daily basis. Apple had stayed tight-lipped on its plans for another tablet, but lately, the company's vaunted secrecy machine has shown some weakness: Many of the features shown off today were already outed in leaks over the last several weeks. Still, watching Apple's official videos is a different experience than seeing blurry leaked images.

Besides the specs video, Apple also released another video showcasing the iPad mini's smart cover, which wakes up, stands up, and brightens (see below).