Neil Hughes
Breaking with recent tradition, Apple will reportedly not be holding a media event in October of this year, with the company said to be planning to lay all of its cards on the table — including the anticipated "iPad Pro" — with today's media presentation in San Francisco.
Citing "lots of little birdies," John Gruber of Daring Fireball indicated on Wednesday that Apple is not expected to hold an October event this year. In recent years, Apple has held announcements about new iPads and Macs for the month of October, spreading its product unveilings out over two presentations.
Conventional wisdom would have suggested that products such as a rumored "iPad Pro," as well as a 21.5-inch iMac with 4K Retina display, would have been held for an October event.
But from what Gruber has been told, it's expected that a new 12.9-inch iPad will be unveiled at today's presentation, with no October event in the works.
That would make today's "Hey Siri" event particularly jam packed: Apple is also expected to unveil the "iPhone 6s" and a larger "Plus" variant, as well as an all-new Apple TV with App Store. It's also likely that the company will showcase the main features of its soon-to-launch iOS 9 mobile operating system, and may also dedicate stage time to its forthcoming Mac update, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, as well as the Apple Watch update watchOS 2.
Gruber had predicted on Tuesday that he didn't expect new iPads to be unveiled at today's event. Instead, he assumed that the company would hold off on any iPad news until its usual October event, as it has done since 2012.
But with Wednesday's update, the author admitted he was "pretty sure" that his earlier prediction was inaccurate.
"So if there's an iPad Pro, it's coming tomorrow, no matter how much or how little that makes sense," he wrote.
Apple's media presentation will begin today at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern, and AppleInsider will be there live with full, exclusive coverage of the announcements. Readers can install our official iOS app for all of the news as it breaks.
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19 Comments
Very likely. I think they might want to sell some iPads on Black Friday.
I wonder what the Wall Street analysts following Apple would say about this. Would it be "Oh no, Apple doesn't have much to talk about, so they're able to fit it all into a single event, this is not good for future years, Apple isn't innovating anymore, etc. etc.", or would it instead be "Apple is so well prepared for holiday sales, they are getting a jump start by laying all the cards out in a single event"? Not that what the analysts say matters a whole lot...
iPad Pro and 4K iMac are not enough to make an event. There weren't that many changes in OS X either. Maybe the October event is now going to become the March event and Macs will either show up there, at WWDC or if not a major update then just a press release (which they could easily do for the 4K iMac). iPhones, iPads, ?Watch, and ?TV all at one event is a lot to cover in 2 hours. I hope they don't rush through things. But maybe this will force them to not let things drag on like Apple Music did at WWDC. And maybe this means there's not going to be a lot of 3rd party game demos that nobody cares about.
Poor John Gruber at Daring Firebll.
Mark Gurman said it first, so if he's wrong, Gruber's wrong.