by Dan Moren
Bloomberg on Apple’s fall lineup
Bloomberg’s Debby Wu and Mark Gurman have a rundown of much of what Apple’s expected to announce this fall:
Among a comprehensive product refresh in the fall, Apple is also preparing a new iPad Air with an edge-to-edge iPad Pro-like screen, two new Apple Watch versions and its first over-ear headphones outside the Beats brand. A smaller HomePod speaker is in the works, too. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
That is, of course, in addition to the upcoming iPhone updates, a launch of new Macs powered by Apple silicon, and possibly the long-gestating Apple Tags. All in all, there seems to be a busy fall in store. (Bloomberg also mentions an improved Apple TV box with a Find My-enabled remote, though says that it’s not likely to ship this year.)
Amongst the tidbits in the article include an updated design for this year’s iPhones (“squared edges similar to the iPad Pro”) and a new color (“a dark blue color option on the Pro models to replace the Midnight Green of 2019’s iPhone 11 Pro line”), along with the inclusion of LIDAR on “[a]t least the larger of the Pro phones.”
It also seems that the phones might ship in separate batches, with the two lower end models (probably the iPhone 12) available earlier than the high-end (likely iPhone 12 Pro) units. However, the Bloomberg story also suggests that iOS 14 will ship in September, before the new phones arrive.
That would seem to suggest that Apple may still hold an event in September, if perhaps in the second half of the month, and announce its new phones, even if they don’t ship immediately. Over the last several years, major iOS updates have almost always been released in the third week of September.
Back in July, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that the new phones would ship a few weeks later than usual, but that could mean either that such a delay would push back all of Apple’s announcements, or that it might take a more staggered approach to its fall releases. In more recent years, Mac releases have trailed the iPhone/Apple Watch releases, with macOS updates typically shipping in late September or early October.
And, of course, the company might choose to hold either one or two events this fall (though any event would almost certainly look more like this year’s virtual WWDC event than what we’ve been accustomed to). No matter what, it seems probable that nothing about Apple’s plan for its annual fall releases will be exactly as in years past.