Pre-Apple Event Thoughts
A lot of the rumors and leakers have been suggesting that tomorrow’s Apple event won’t feature new iPhone hardware. Allegedly, the even will focus on Apple Watch, iPad, and the long-rumored “AirTags” tracking devices. My gut instinct is that they’re nuts to say we won’t see iPhones.
My inside sources can’t confirm whether we’ll see new iPhone hardware tomorrow or not, but it’s hard for me to imagine a September Apple event with no new iPhone hardware. Of course, Apple did let us know on their earnings call a few months ago that iPhones will be a few weeks behind schedule this week, but I didn’t take that to mean that we wouldn’t still hear about them in September. After all, the iPhone X wasn’t released until November of 2017, but it was announced in September. The iPhone XR was announced in September of 2018, but didn’t ship until October of that year. It’s not unprecedented, particularly in recent years, for Apple to announce new iPhones several weeks before they’re ready to ship.
For a few reasons, an event that focuses on Watch and iPad (and AirTags) doesn’t seem to pass the sniff test for a couple reasons. First, it’s difficult for me to imagine Apple announcing new watches before new phones (especially if the rumors about a new, “midnight blue” color option for the watch are legitimate; it would give the game away for the new “midnight blue” iPhone, which was rumored long before a blue watch). Second, a whole event for Apple Watches, iPads, and AirTags would feel a bit lean to me, unless the watch gets some pretty major upgrades, which again, based on the rumors, doesn’t seem likely. Perhaps, if we truly don’t see new iPhones, we’ll see an Apple Silicon Mac or something else that will take a bit of time to introduce.
So, I’m not saying the leakers and the rumor sites are wrong, I’m just saying it’s hard for me to believe they’re right on this one.