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We already knew about the smart-home unveiling in a week, but sources now hint at Mac announcements near end of October.
September is the most important month in Apple’s calendar, featuring updates to the iPhone, Apple Watch, and (frequently) AirPods. But this year, October looks set to be even busier, and perhaps even more critical to the company’s long-term prospects.
Hints from the rumorsphere last week strongly suggested that Apple will announce a raft of smart-home products on October 13, likely including a HomePad smart hub and potentially including a new Apple TV and HomePod mini as well. But separate sources now indicate that this momentous unveiling won’t be the last set of Apple launches this month.
Citing “multiple sources familiar with the matter,” the Apple news site MacRumors this week predicts Apple “is planning to unveil additional new products in the final week of October.” The site doesn’t claim to know any details of the products that will appear at this second launch, but several Mac models are due to come out in the near future and seem plausible. These launch candidates include the M6 MacBook Pro, the M6 iMac, and perhaps even a new MacBook with an OLED touchscreen display.
We’re also hopeful for an A20 Pro iPad mini before the end of October, but that could be squeezed into either of the predicted launch groupings.
MacRumors pointedly doesn’t use the word “event” even once in its article, so we shouldn’t assume these will both be full events to rival the iPhone reveal last month. The last time the company held two full events in the same calendar month was back in 2004, when Steve Jobs announced an expansion of the iTunes Music Store at a music event in London on June 15, before hosting WWDC later the same month.
The nearest thing to a precedent for a dual-event month in the last two decades is 2020, when Apple also held three separate fall events due to the pandemic. These were neatly allocated to September, October, and November, which was the latest Apple has ever held an event. The closest was in 2018 and 2023, when Apple held events on October 30 following the mid-September iPhone event. All of this is to say the choice of dates is essentially arbitrary, and it would make almost as much sense to hold three events in early September, early October, and very late October.
On the whole, though, we’d expect Apple to make one or both sets of announcements via a press release and an update to its website rather than a full live-streamed press event. Stay tuned for more news as we hear it.
