When the iPad first launched, then Apple CEO Steve Jobs remarked in an interview that the company would never built a 7-inch version of its tablet. Customers, he said, wouldn’t want them.

Since then two things have happen. First, sadly, Steve Jobs has passed away. And, second, a slew of 7-inch tablets have rocketed in popularity, cutting significantly into Apple’s market share. Three tablets in particular saw their sales climb: the Google Nexus 7, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Barnes & Noble Nook HD.

The combination of both of those events lead Apple to launch their own 7-inch tablet: The Apple iPad mini. So how does it compare to those competitors mention above? Our review:

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The year was 1984. Ghostbusters was asking movie goers who they were gonna call. Mustached East German athletes were dominating women’s speed skating at the Sarajevo Olympics. Michael Jackson won Album of the Year—and then burned his scalp filming a Pepsi commercial. And Apple launched the Macintosh, the first commercially successful personal computer with a graphical user interface.

No person can go back to 1984. But now, thanks to purveyor of cool things ThinkGeek, your iPad can—sort of. Their new Padintosh iPad Cover will make your Apple tablet resemble a (thinner) version of that classic 1984 Apple computer.

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The third generation iPad is out. Whether you call it the iPad 3, the iPad HD, the iPad 2012 or simply “the new iPad,” the latest tablet computer from Apple has features and improvements sure to thrill iPad fans. It also fails to deliver any major new functionality or fix the shortcomings noted by detractors of the “old iPad” (eg. the iPad 2).

So is it worth the money to upgrade to a new iPad if you already own an old one? Spot Cool Stuff’s take:

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Black is the color of nearly every iPhone (and other cell phones), iPod (and other MP3 players), iPad (and other tablet computers) and Kindle (and other e-book readers). So putting a skin covering on your electronics devices is as much about making it distinctive as about protecting it. Fortunately, GelaSkins has you covered in both regards. Their skins are both durable and personality-full.

Gelaskins are available for a huge variety of gadgets, including virtually every major smartphone, all the recent models of the iPod and Zune and the most popular ebook readers, gaming consoles and Apple MacBooks variations. You can even get a skin for a Magic Trackpad.

For each of those, you can choose from hundreds of pre-designed skins or—and we find this very cool—design your own.

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How many different iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch speaker docks does the world need?

The tech industry seems to think it needs many hundreds. At least that’s the impression one gets roaming around CES 2011, where it seems everyone from the mega-electronics companies to the relatives of Bob Marley is coming out with an Apple iDevice dock.

Curiously, the vast majority of these docks are designed under the assumption that the iPod/Pad/Phone is not inside a case. One exception stood out to us: the iHome iA100B.

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Well that didn’t take long. A few short weeks after Apple started selling the iPad a manufacturer started selling iPad-compatible clothing. That manufacturer is Scottevest; Spot Cool Stuff regulars might remember our review of Scottevest’s full-of-pockets travel jackets.

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Is the Apple iPad a revolutionary device every tech savvy person should own? Or is it an over-hyped over-sized iPhone?

The answer is: a bit of both.

Here’s Spot Cool Stuff’s take on the 8 best and 8 worst features of the iPad:

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When Alice tumbled down the rabbit hole into Wonderland she found herself in an entirely new world in which nothing worked how she expected it would.

You might get that same surreal feeling the first time you experience Lewis Carroll’s classic tale on an iPad.

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