Apple's September 2020 event is over! It was a tight one by Apple's standards, coming in at an hour, but here are the highlights, with links to the full stories, and you can watch the full event below.
- Apple Watch Series 6 announced, with Blood Oxygen monitoring, new colours, faster processor, and brighter always-on screen. $399, on-sale Friday September 18th!
- Apple Watch SE unveiled, with same design as Series 6, but fewer advanced features (no ECG or Blood Oxygen sensors). Still with fall detection, and the same processor as the Series 5 Watch. Just $279, and also on-sale Friday.
- Fitness+ is a new fitness service from Apple, with workout videos to follow, and personalised recommendations. It can pull in data from your Apple devices while you work out, so you know you're hitting the right levels. $9.99 per month, or $79 per year. 3 free months with new Apple Watch purchase.
- Apple One is Apple's services in one bundle. You get 50GB of iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade for $14.95/£14.95 per month for an individual, or $19.95/£19.95 per month in the family plan. There's also Apple One Premium, which is £29.95 in a family bundle only, and includes all of the above, plus Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+, and upgrades you to 2TB of iCloud.
- New 8th-gen iPad brings the more powerful A12 processor to the cheapest iPad, so it's 40% faster with twice as powerful graphics.
- New iPad Air with a design drawn from the iPad Pro, A14 processor, and Apple Pencil 2 support.
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Original article continues below...
The latest rumours say that Apple is likely to reveal Apple Watch Series 6, a cheaper Apple Watch model that may be called the Apple Watch SE, a new iPad Air (maybe with an updated design to match the new-style iPad Pro) and an Amazon Prime-like subscription service at this event, and normally we'd expect a September Apple event to be all about the iPhone 12 too.
But some noted Apple leakers are saying they think this event will be only about the new Apple Watches and iPad, with the iPhone not being announced until October in a separate event.
In some ways, this fits with Apple having already said to expect a later iPhone launch than usual this year, but that doesn't rule out the iPhone 12 appearing at this event in itself: Apple never releases phones until weeks after their announcement, and with this even not happening until mid-September, an announcement here for an October launch still fits with Apple's history.
Apple often seems to drop little hints/references into its event invitation designs, and the one for this event is notable in two ways: first, the design of the Apple logo looks drawn, perhaps referencing the iPad Air and Apple Pencil; but the more interesting theory comes from the tagline "Time flies" and a hidden easter egg on Apple's event page. If you're on an iPhone or iPad and you tap the logo, it switches to an augmented reality view, with the logo twisting and turning to form the date of the event.
It's possible that these actually point to an iPhone announcement in this event, because one of the most big (and likely to be true) rumours about the iPhone 12 is that it will have a 3D depth sensor in the camera array, matching the one on the 2020 iPad Pro. This depth sensor really helps to make augmented reality more stable and realistic, and one of the most common names for this type of sensor is a 'time of flight' sensor. "Time flies", indeed.
There's also a remote, minute, teeny-weeny chance that "Time flies" refers to the Apple Watch. Possibly.
There's a big chance that new AirPods are coming this year too, and just before Christmas seems like the time Apple would want to launch them, so perhaps we'll hear about these at the event.
And we know that Apple is planning to launch its first Macs made with Apple processors before the end of the year, but we would expect to see those a little later, again with their own event: we have no idea how many Apple will launch, or exactly what form they'll take, or even exactly what the processors inside will be like, so we suspect Apple will really want to give them their own spotlight.
However, the latest rumours suggest that a 14-inch MacBook Pro will be launched next week. We're a little skeptical, since the 13-inch MacBook Pro was just refreshed, but perhaps Apple plans to offer both Intel and Apple-chip versions initially.
Whatever happens on the 15th, we'll bring you all the news!
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