Apple’s Big September Product Event: What to Expect
Apple announced a streaming event that might not focus on the iPhone 13
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Will Tim Cook unveil an iPhone 13? That’s the million-dollar (or multi-billion-dollar) question circling next week’s big Apple product event.
Just as we were still shaking off the sleepy vestiges of a long Labor Day Weekend, the Cupertino technology giant sent out invites early Tuesday for a “Special Apple Event broadcasting from Apple Park.”
Almost two years into the pandemic and many months from our last in-person product event with any company, we’ve all grown used to these streaming product productions. Apple, in particular, appears more adept at it than most. It tends to keep them shorter than the in-person ones, knowing that most people are probably splitting their attention across multiple screens, and delivers production values we expect from televised events.
What remains, though, are huge questions about what this “#AppleEvent (as it’s known on Twitter) will be about. There’s the name of the event: “California streaming,” which might be an on-the-nose reference to the nature of the event: It’s streamed! and its origin: It’s in California!
But I doubt it.
Let’s go back a year to recall the new precedent Apple set when it launched exactly ZERO iPhones in September and instead unveiled a new iPad, a new Apple Watch, and a pair of new services (Apple One and Apple Fitness+).
The iPhone 12 lineup didn’t arrive until a month later.
Now, with the pandemic restrictions subsiding (or at least our lockdowns mostly over), you might expect Apple to reverse the script again and deliver the iPhone 13 next week. Unfortunately, we’ve not yet escaped the pandemic’s spiny tendrils, as its long-term economic and supply-chain impact reverberate throughout multiple industries. Chip supplies are plaguing the auto industry, the tech industry at large, and, yes, Apple. On a July 28 earnings call, Apple CFO Luca Maestri warned: “Expect supply constraints during the September quarter to be…
