On the new episode of The Talk Show that dropped over the weekend, Andru Edwards and I talked first about the September event Apple held three weeks ago at Apple Park, and then moved on to speculate about what they might do in October. The rumor mill says Apple has a bunch of as-yet-unannounced products coming: a new iPad Mini (8th generation), new Apple TV hardware (4th generation — maybe they’ll give it a better name than “Apple TV 4K”?), new HomePod Mini (2nd generation), and an altogether new HomePod-type hub with a display. Also, October is the usual month for new Mac hardware, like maybe M6 iMacs and a new high-end MacBook lineup with OLED displays that (ugh) are also touchscreens.
That’d be a lot to introduce all at once. Maybe they hold one event/keynote movie for all of it, or maybe they split it in two — one for “home” stuff, and one for new Mac stuff. (Not sure where the iPad Mini would go in that split.) Or maybe they announce it all in one keynote but split the product availability, like they did with the iPhones 18 Pro and Duo at the keynote three weeks ago. Maybe the new MacBooks, if they really do have touchscreens, get announced in October but won’t ship until November to give developers time to adopt touch APIs — just like with the Duo. Apple is secretive, but they stick to predictable patterns if you pay attention.
The dates we do know are those for the iPhone Duo, with pre-orders beginning on Friday, October 16 and shipments beginning one week later on October 23. Apple, in my experience, sticks to a very predictable schedule for review units. They typically go into reviewers’ hands mid-week (Tuesday or Wednesday) during the week when pre-orders begin (usually a Friday, sometimes a Saturday, like this month, when the iPhones 18 Pro and new Apple Watches went on sale Saturday, September 12). Reviewers typically get only six or seven days with hardware before the embargo lifts for publishing reviews. (Most reviewers have their reviews ready to publish by that time; others enjoy the whooshing sound the embargo deadline makes as it goes by.) The review embargo thus typically lifts on the Tuesday or Wednesday of the same week when the product is set to begin shipping to customers on Friday.
I have been told absolutely nothing about when, or even if, Apple plans to seed advance units of the iPhone Duo to reviewers. In my experience, even off the record, Apple never talks about these things in advance, nor offers hints. But if they do seed review units of the Duo, I would expect that to start on Tuesday, October 13 or Wednesday the 14th, with the embargo lifting on October 20 or 21, two or three days ahead of the Duo reaching customers on Friday the 23rd. It’s also my experience that Apple does not like shipping review units of high-profile new products like the Duo before they are released to the public. They prefer handing review units like the Duo to reviewers in person. You sign the embargo agreement in person, and they hand you the product in person. One natural way to hand reviewers iPhone Duo units in person would be to hold a media event, for other new products, on October 13 or 14. Kill two birds with one stone.
If they hold such an event in New York that week, it would be really nice if it coincided with a Yankees home game in the ALCS. But now I’m really getting ahead of myself.
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