What We Won’t See
Apple likely still has more up its sleeve for this fall, but while there’s at least one big product category that still needs to be covered, we’re not expecting it to get any stage time next week.
We’re talking of course about the Apple Silicon MacBooks. Apple announced its transition to using its own first-party chips back at WWDC in June, strongly suggesting that we’ll see the first A14X-equipped Macs appearing this year in the form of updates to Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lineup, as well as the possibility of the resurrection of the 12-inch MacBook in Apple Silicon form.
When it comes to Macs, Apple has almost never debuted new hardware at an iPhone event; instead, when it does have something significant enough to announce in the Mac family, it hosts a second event in late October. Although next week’s event will technically be a second Apple event in October, this isn’t going to be about the Mac, and in fact, Apple Silicon MacBooks are too big of a deal to share the stage with the iPhone 12 lineup. We’d say to expect Apple to host a third virtual event this year, likely in November, to actually show off its first Apple Silicon machines.
Along the same lines, even though Apple’s new iPad Air now features the fastest chip found in an iPad, we’re not holding our breath for a new iPad Pro next week. Most reports suggest that we won’t see any new iPad Pros until early next year, when they’ll be moving to Apple’s new mini-LED display technology, although there’s a very slight possibility that Apple could have something to announce this fall — there are reports that the 12.9-inch iPad Pro may be ready ahead of schedule — we’d expect that to coincide with Apple’s Mac event, especially since the next-generation iPad Pros are expected to feature the same A14X chip as Apple’s new MacBooks.