Apple has confirmed that it will unveil its newest lineup of products on September 9 at the Steve Jobs Theater. This year’s date will bear more importance, as it marks the first major product event under incoming CEO John Ternus, who will succeed Tim Cook on September 1.
Ternus, who built his reputation running Apple’s hardware engineering division, is expected to lead the keynote himself, a debut that will be scrutinized as closely as the products he unveils.
On the hardware side, Apple looks set to break from its usual pattern of revealing the full iPhone lineup at once. Reports point to only the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max taking the stage, alongside the company’s long-anticipated foldable device, likely branded the iPhone Ultra.
The standard iPhone 18 is expected to arrive separately next year, splitting the launch cycle in a way Apple hasn’t done before.
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Inside the Pro models, a shift to a 2-nanometer A20 Pro chip is expected, paired with Apple’s own C2 modem, changes aimed more at efficiency and thermal performance than a dramatic redesign.
The Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 are also expected to join the lineup, along with new smart home devices and, reportedly, a next-generation Siri built on large language model technology.
As for how the previous generation held up, the iPhone 17 series arrived in 2025 as a fairly conservative update, and by most accounts it did its job well, keeping Apple’s premium positioning intact even as competitors pushed harder on AI features and foldable form factors.
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For John Ternus, September 9 is less about the products lined up on stage and more about the precedent he sets walking onto it.
Every CEO who has run Apple’s keynote has used that first outing to plant a flag, and Ternus now inherits a stage built by predecessors who understood its weight, from Jobs’s showmanship to Tim Cook‘s quieter, operational steadiness.
