Apple Vice President Phil Schiller speaks on stage during an Apple special event promoting its new products in San Franciso, the United States, on Oct. 22, 2013. (Xinhua)

Apple, the tech titan has revealed its new tablets - the iPad Air and an upgraded iPad mini - that are lighter and faster than their predecessors.

New MacBooks and OS X Mavericks operating system also were unveiled by Apple on Tuesday.

The iPad Air , dubbed as next-generation tablet computer by Apple, will replace the full-size iPad 3 and iPad 4 models in the lineup when it goes on sale Nov. 1 and will be priced at 499 U.S. Dollars as start.

The 9.4-inch (some 30 cm) iPad Air weighs one pound, compared with 1.4 pounds (some one kg) for older iPads, and is about 20 percent thinner.

Apple also refreshed its 7.9-inch iPad Mini line with four models that include the higher-resolution Retina display found in its big brother and on the company's laptops.

Both the iPad and iPad Mini will have the faster 64-bit A7 microprocessor introduced last month with the new iPhone 5S.

Analyst Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc., said that Apple is intentionally trying to position the iPad Air as a tool that can be used for more than sitting on the couch watching YouTube videos, especially as it tries to stay ahead of competitors like the Samsung Galaxy tablets and Microsoft's just released Surface 2 and Surface Pro.

On the same day, other announcements also showed how Apple wants to keep customers using its products. The company released its latest version of its underlying desktop and operating system, called OSX Mavericks for free. Previous operating system upgrades, like Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, cost 29 U.S. dollars.