Macworld
Apple’s “Surprise and Shine” event might be the most anticipated iPhone keynote in 10 years. It all kicks off today, and like you, we can’t wait! So join us as we count down the hours and minutes with all the latest rumors, leaks, and speculation leading up to the big event on Wednesday, September 9, at 10 am PT.
Surprise and Shine iPhone event: How to watchYou can watch the full keynote right here using the embedded YouTube link below or on Apple.com on your iPhone or Mac. The “Watch Now” tab in the TV app on the Apple TV will also show the stream live.
Surprise and Shine iPhone event: Live blog1 hour ago, By Michael Simon
That's a wrap!
And we’re done, stay tuned to Macworld for full coverage of all of today’s announcements!
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iPhone Duo at a glance
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So what will it cost?
The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 with 256GB of storage. Preorders start on October 16 and will begin shipping on October 23.
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Dual camera for iPhone Duo
As expected, the iPhone Duo has a dual 48MP camera system that’s basically the same as the iPhone 17 and not as good as the one we just heard about in the iPhone 18 Pro. You don’t get telephoto, you don’t get variable aperture, and you’ll miss out on some of the newer features.
However, you can see a video of what you’re snapping on the front camera, and people can see what’s on the front screen too.
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iPhone Duo battery life
Srouji explains optimizations and battery capacities that let users get up to 31 hours when using the inner display and 44 hours when using just the outer display, for a total of 24 hours per charge during a typical day.
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Custom nano texture finish
Apple addresses the elephant in the room: the crease. Johny Srouji explains that Apple has developed a custom nanotexture finish that significantly reduces glare and reflections. The unique texture creates a perceptually flat matte surface that minimizes craft visibility and also feels premium to touch. During manufacturing Apple uses AI algorithms to precisely manage each individual hinge with its best fit housing to ensure perfect alignment.
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iPhone Duo colors
Apple’s folding phone is available in two colors: white and night sky (dark blue).
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Cutting-edge hinge design
Apple describes the hinge: “The central structural plane has support ribs for added stiffness. To make the frame even more rigid, the antenna splits are reinforced with high performance inserts. They’re made from ceramic fibers that are three times stronger than grade five titanium. Together these structural details make iPhone Duo feel exceptionally solid every time you use it.”
Will there be a crease? We’ll have to see.
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iOS gets a folding redesign
Controls on the outer screen have been moved to the side of the screen, seamlessly transtitions to the inner display, and dynamically adjusts to the position its in. Apps have been redesigned to take advantage of the folding screen. Apps run side by side and can be paired for quick switching.
Here’s a picture of it closed:
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One More Thing: iPhone Duo
The rumors are true: Apple’s first foldable phone is here with a widescreen design. Here it is:
Apple
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New colors for Apple Watch
Apple Watch Series 12 comes in space gray, black, light gold, and dark bronze, as well as ceramic options in white and night blue. The Apple Watch Ultra comes in black and naturakl titanium. Both have the same starting prices as before.
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Whoop, there it is
The new design of the Health app, Health Age, and the new Readiness feature are clearly are all clear responses to the recent success of Whoop and similar products, which all have these exact features. Once again it’s not clear which of these software features will be only for the new watches – it seems like they’re for all Apple Watches, and only the continuous heart rate stuff is restricted to the Series 12 and Ultra 4.
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New Apple Watch features
The big new Apple Watch feature is a new health monitoring system that take continous heart rate readings to give users a better picture of their heath and enable completely new experiences. A new Readiness app can tell you when to push and when to hold back, while a redesigned Health app can provide a new Health Age. Live Rewind will record everything in your day and transcribes what was just said.
Another feature, Siri Recap, uses “ambient listening to take high level notes of your conversations like takeaways from a team meeting or a parent-teacher conference.” There’s also a new Siri Modular face to access your conversations and recaps.
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AirPods lines are getting blurry
It sounds like they’re adding enough AirPods Pro features to the standard AirPods, and lowering the price enough, to make the upcoming “AirPods with cameras” the new AirPods Pro. Cameras will be the differentiating feature.
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The 'new' Apple Watch
Looks like another year with the same Apple Watch design! This is what you get when one company doesn’t face serious competition. That’s now 12 generations in a row with essentially the same design, and only occasional minor changes: the last of these was the bump in screen size for the Series 10 two years ago. But the average user would struggle to spot the differences between the Series 12 and the Series 4.
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AirPods 5 now have ANC for $129
Apple is tweaking its base AirPods lineup. The cheaper $129 model now has ANC and the higher-end model with a wireless charging case are $149. They’re not all that different, but feature “an even better audio experience with a new multi-port acoustic architecture and next generation adaptive EQ AirPods 5 deliver richer more detailed sound across a wider range of ear geometries.”
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Higher prices starts at $100 more
The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 and the Pro Max starts at $1,299, a bump of $100 over the 17 series. Pre-order begin Saturday and start shipping nexxt Friday.
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Smaller Dynamic Island
The new iPhone 18 Pro has a smaller Dynamic Island that now has space for three Live Activities at once, a large one in the middle and two smaller circles on either side.
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Camera features on older iPhones?
Apple is describing updates to Photograhic Styles, shutter speeds and other features, but they’re not being clear about whether these new Pro camera controls will be available on any previous iPhones or not. Most of them could be.
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Biggest camera improvement in years
48MP Fusion Camera with variable aperture that adjusts automatically based on the scene. When you’re in a darker environment, the aperture opens to let in around 50% more light, while night mode captures are faster with better quality.
Apple
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45 hours of battery life!!
IPhone 18 Pro has a next generation vapor chamber that helps the system manage even more heat. It has three times the surface area as the one in iPhone 17 Pro. Deionized water is constantly cycled throughout the system for significantly improved thermals. Combined with the new chip’s efficiancy, you’ll get 36 hours on the iPhone 18 Pro and an absolutely insane 45 hours on the 18n Pro Max.
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A20 Pro Chip
Apple’s newest iPhone chip has Apple’s latest six core CPU featuring two of our new super cores that are up to 20% faster and four efficiency cores, all integrated with neural accelerators that power low latency on device AI workloads as a significantly advanced GPU and a new version of the neural accelerators with 2x faster 8-bit floating point math.
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Who needs a new iPhone?
So far, the iPhone 18 Pro pitch is all about how you should be excited for iOS 27 and now about why you would need or want a new iPhone.
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iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max
A20 Pro with new CPU core and GPU core, and “massive advancements in the most important areas intelligence, performance, battery, and camera.”
New colors: Silver, Deep Black, Glacier (Light Blue), and Burgandy (Dark Cherry).
Not only that, you can write and edit with Siri virtually anywhere you type, like generating an email to your kids soccer coach while on the go. Plus Siri AI sounds incredible. That’s because iPhone 18 Pro takes advantage of our most advanced on-device model ever, which powers expressive voices. You can pick from multiple options, then customize the pace and expressivity.” But we’ve seen all this before.
Siri AI will have usage limits but “most iCloud+ plans” will offer increased access.
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Intelligent personal hub
This isn’t a new product category but rather an explanation of what the iphone is: “First, you would want something that is always with you, deeply personal and able to bring intelligence to the moments when it matters most. You’d require a powerful processor that can run incredibly capable on-device models to quickly answer questions in the moment and pervasive networking to access knowledge and even more capable models in the cloud.
There’s no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone.”
Jon is describing Apple Intellgence’s privacy and iPhone’s AI abiltities. “So today we’re going to take these experiences even further with the next generation of iPhone. And here it is.”
3 hours ago, By Michael Simon
This is the opening!
A video montage of actors describing how a show or movie should open and then Tim Cook starts narrating the video of “our main character, no no no,. not me, that’s your guy.” And it’s John Ternus.
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Here we go!
The music has faded and the blue Apple logo has given way to an iPhone 17 Pro camera, with a message, “The following was shot on iPhone.”
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Apple start your engines!
We’ve got less than 10 minutes until we get out first look at Apple’s folding iPhone project! Get ready everyone!
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30 minutes to go!
Get a snack and a drink and meet us back here at 10am PT/1pm ET for the start of the show!
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No surprises at Surprise and Shine
It looks like Apple’s iPhone event will be filled with more Shine than Surprises. According to Mark Gurman’s somewhat playful tweet, Apple is holding back some rumored products that are supposedly ready to launch, including the touchscreen MacBook, Apple TV 4K, and HomePad smart home hub. As he quips, “don’t worry. It’s only September.” So you can probably expect at least one more event later this fall.
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A few thoughts on phone colors (and fun)
For several years now I’ve complained about the fact that basic iPhones, despite costing less, come with much nicer colors than their Pro equivalents. Why can’t Pro users have fun too?
Perhaps Apple heard me, because last year’s Pro-exclusive Cosmic Orange was arguably Apple’s funnest color yet. (I’m using that word deliberately to prepare readers for the likely grammatical crimes of today’s Apple event.) But if the pre-launch rumors are true, that was only the precursor for a huge anti-fun announcement today.
The iPhone 18 Pro, according to our sources, will come in black, silver, light blue, and a charming burgundy branded as Dark Cherry. Less fun, arguably, than the green, blue, and lilac which the iPhone 17 will continue to offer (because its successor won’t arrive until the spring). But infinitely more fun than the poor iPhone Ultra/Duo, which is expected to come in just two colors: dark blue, and white. Despite starting at $2,000, and going all the way up to $3,000 if you want the top storage tiers.
The more you pay, the less fun you get. Make it make sense, Apple.
The color pink. Just one of the advantages of buying a cheaper iPhone.David Price / Foundry
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So, about that Duo name…
It’s been pointed out in the Macworld offices that Microsoft wasn’t the first tech company to use the name Duo on a product. Apple itself had the PowerBook Duo, a line of laptops sold between 1992 and 1999. Which therefore predate the Surface Duo by the small matter of 28 years.
More recently, there was the (not terribly good) MagSafe Duo charger. And in a matter of hours, if Mark Gurman’s sources are correct, we will get the iPhone Duo.
The PowerBook Duo, together with its clever Duo Dock companion unit.Christopher Phin / Foundry
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John Ternus teases the iPhone 18 Pro's top feature
In a tweet to followers ahead of the big event, new CEO John Ternus shared a 12-second video of a beam of light that first shines at the viewer and then pans down to shine on what appears to be a camera lens. It’s hard to see it as anything other than a tease for the iPhone 18 Pro’s rumored variable aperture camera. At any rate, it’s certainly a departure from Tim Cook’s keynote messages, which were filled with little more than vague excitement.
John Ternus shines a light on the iPhone’s new camera feature. Literally.X/@johnternus
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Apple Pencil on an iPhone?
Apple has never allowed you to use your Apple Pencil on anything other than an iPad, but the folding iPhone could change that. According to Mark Gurman, the iPhone Ultra/Duo will indeed support Apple Pencil, so you’ll be able to doodle and draw on the screen just like you can on your tablet. It’s not clear whether both screens will support Apple’s stylus or just the inner one, though.
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iPhone 18 Pro price hike might not be so bad
We’ve been bracing for an iPhone price increase ever since Apple hiked prices on Macs and iPads by hundreds of dollars in June. A new report from Mark Gurman claims they won’t be as bad as that: Apparently the new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max will cost $100 more than the current models, in line with previous price hikes.
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