Jason Snell, Macworld, Peter Cohen

Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the Wall Street Journal’s tenth annual D: All Things Digital conference, appearing at the same event that his predecessor, Steve Jobs, had headlined several times before. Answering questions from conference hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Cook said his company is doubling down on Siri, played coy about Apple’s approach to the gaming and television markets, and spoke emotionally about Jobs’s death.

Double doubling down

As with any public appearance of an Apple executive, there was a good-natured give and take about future product releases. Mossberg and Kara tried to cajole Cook into revealing future product details, knowing full well that he would do no such thing. (In fact, the Apple CEO declared that the company was “doubling down on secrecy” when it comes to product releases.) However, he did offer a few tantalizing tidbits, most notably about the Siri feature of the iPhone 4S.

[Tim Cook kicked off this year’s D: All Things Digital conference on Tuesday. The Apple CEO was interviewed by conference hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, in a lively, engaging conversation. Here’s an edited roundup of the highlights.]

When Apple introduced iTunes in 2001, it served one purpose: As a music jukebox app. Later that year, it added its most important feature: The ability to sync tracks with the just-introduced iPod. Originally, you could just drag tracks onto your iPod and they’d copy over. iTunes had automatic music-sync features that were rudimentary, but they did the job.

That was a long time ago. These days, iTunes is simultaneously Apple’s most important and problematic product. It’s a music and video player. It’s a store, the gateway to buying music, videos, ringtones, and iOS apps. And of course, it’s a syncing system, connecting to Apple devices from iPhone to iPod to Apple TV.

The iPad has been a remarkable success story. Apple sold 15 million of the original model in the first nine months of the product’s existence, a number that blew away even the most optimistic prognostications. With last year’s introduction of the iPad 2, things kept accelerating. In a little less than two years, Apple has sold roughly 60 million iPads, dominating the market it created.

Maintaining Apple’s lead in tablet devices is the job of the third-generation iPad, a product that doesn’t mess with success. Like the iPad 2 before it, this new iPad is not a re-thinking of the original concept. Instead, Apple has chosen to focus on a few areas of improvement while keeping the overall package the same. Though it’s an approach that can frustrate people who are disappointed by anything that’s not a quantum leap, Apple executes it to perfection and reaps the rewards.

With Apple's Wednesday introduction of the third-generation iPad, many of the questions people and pundits have spent the past few months obsessing over have been answered-but not all. We know it has a nicer screen, a faster processor, better cameras, 4G networking, and voice dictation. But even if you've read our live blog, chances are there are still bits of info you want to know. Here are all the details we've been able to dig up about Apple's newest tablet.

What's the new iPad's screen resolution?

Apple is holding a press event in San Francisco on Wednesday, March 7, and Macworld will be on hand with live coverage of whatever the company announces. Join us at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT for our blow-by-blow account of Apple’s latest unveiling.

The company is being typically cagey about what’s on the agenda for Wednesday: The invitation announcing the event only shows a hand hovering over an iPad and promises “something you really have to see. And touch.” That’s fueled speculation that Apple is planning to revamp its tablet. While we wait for Apple executives to take the stage Wednesday, we take a look at possible changes for a new iPad, including whether Apple will embrace 1080 video on the iPad 3 and Apple TV. Speaking of the Apple TV, we consider the possibility that it’s in line for an update as well.

You may want to sit down, because we’re going to talk about the iPad—and sitting is really the most comfortable way to use it, isn’t it? Apple on Tuesday invited members of the media to a special event on March 7 at 10 a.m. Pacific.

Any time there's a new operating system, there's bound to be lots of questions about new features and capabilities. And when that operating system's unveiling is as surprising as this week's Mountain Lion announcement was, those questions take on a newfound urgency.

Not to worry: We've had a chance to spend some quality time with the next version of the Mac operating system, and we're prepared to answer any questions you might have about its availability, new features, and enhancements to existing applications. And don't worry if you've still got lingering questions--we have a few months before Mountain Lion arrives to sort everything out.

The actual wording is in flux, but Mountain Lion will warn you if you try to open an app from an unidentified developer.Last year saw the arrival of the Apple-curated Mac App Store, a creation very much in the mold of the iOS App Store. And many people wondered: Would a locked-down version of Mac OS X, one incapable of running apps not approved by Apple, be far behind?

Apple certainly could have done something like that with Mountain Lion, the company’s planned update to Mac OS X that should arrive this summer. But it hasn’t—instead, the company has created a new way for developers to sign their work and a new set of options in the Security & Privacy preference pane. According to Apple, it’s all an attempt to improve Mac security. Here’s how the new Gatekeeper feature works.