What apple will release in 2017

When is the next Apple launch event and what will be launched?

15th March 2018

When is the next Apple iPhone, iPad, iOS or Macbook launch event, what new products will Apple launch and how can I watch the event live? Here’s all you need to know about what Apple is set to launch in 2018, plus a recap of the biggest reveals of 2017.

The Cupertino company has had a busy time of late. In the past few months alone we’ve seen the launch of several new iPhones, iPads and Mac computers. On top of that there’s the new Apple Watch, Mac computers and the HomePod speaker, to rival Amazon’s Echo and Google Home.

That’s just on the hardware side, too. The past twelve months have also brought us some big software updates, in the form of MacOS High Sierra, iOS 11 and beyond.

Here’s a recap of the most exciting Apple launch news from 2017, as well as a preview of upcoming Apple launches expected in 2018. From WWDC 2018 to the iPhone 9 and new smart home kit, we’re expecting it to be a big one.

What did Apple launch in 2017?

The first reveal of 2017 was on March 21, where the Cupertino company unveiled its all-new 9.7-inch iPad. This is an affordable (ish) tablet at just £339, offering slashed specs compared to the 9.7-inch iPad Pro but at a much more enticing price point. In other words, it’s great news for anyone who just wants to watch video and play games, on a full-screen device.

Apple also launched its new PRODUCT(RED) iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, as well as slashing the price of the iPhone SE and iPad Mini 4. We also saw the launch of some lovely new Apple Watch bands.

Check out our full Apple launch round-up to see everything that was announced in March.

Next up came WWDC 2017, where we saw a whole bunch of new hardware and software launched in just over two hours.

What was launched at Apple’s WWDC 2017 event?

WWDC 2017 kicked off on June 5 and Apple used the event to launch iOS 11. This is the latest version of the operating system found on the iPad and iPhone. Loads of great new features were announced, including significant updates to existing apps.

We also saw the new WatchOS 4 software launched for Apple Watch devices, to keep those wearables fresh. Plus we saw a fresh new MacOS update called High Sierra.

As if the software side wasn’t enough, Apple also revealed a new 10.5-inch iPad Pro and a good-looking iMac Pro. That’s some seriously high-end kit. Unsurprisingly, these devices come at quite a high price, as they’re aimed at professional users.

For all you need to know about what was launched at WWDC 2017, check out our complete WWDC 2017 guide. You can also have a gander at our WWDC feature hub.

What happened at Apple’s iPhone launch event in September 2017?

Of course, Apple’s biggest reveal of the year came in September, with the launch of the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. The 8 and 8 Plus offer a standard upgrade over the year-old iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, while the highly desirable iPhone X is absolutely stunning as well as smart as a barrel full of nuclear physicists. This phone sure isn’t cheap.

Check out our iPhone hub for full details on all of Apple’s new smartphone tech.

This massive launch event also saw the reveal of the Apple Watch Series 3. This new smartwatch offers full cellular support, so you can use it independently of your iPhone. With WatchOS 4 on board it’s smarter than ever as well. Check out our Series 3 review for our full thoughts.

When is the next Apple launch happening?

Apple still already released the HomePod speaker here in the UK, back at the start of the year. Chances are you’ve seen the adverts.

So what about other new hardware and software? Here’s what we’re expecting Apple to launch in the coming months.

When will WWDC 2018 happen, and what will be revealed?

WWDC is just as predictable as those iPhone launches. As always, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference will take place in June 2018, in the US of A. The company has already announced that kick off is June 4. The event will run all week, until June 8.

So what will we see launched at the event? Chances are good that we’ll be treated to an early look at iOS 12, which should hit our iPhones and iPads around September 2018. That’s when the latest iPhones will be launched. You can also expect more talk around Siri and how she’s evolving to work in smart home setups, via HomePod. Plus the latest WatchOS software (WatchOS 5) and new MacOS should be teased.

If WWDC 2017 is anything to go by, WWDC 2018 could also serve up some fresh new hardware. Early talk points to some new Mac devices, although we won’t know for sure until that keynote on the Monday. That’s when the major announcements are made.

When will Apple launch a new Macbook or Macbook Pro?

Apple launched its latest Macbook Pro on October 27, 2016. This super-powered laptop boasts top-end specs, powerful graphics processing and some really cool new features like the Touch Bar control panel and Touch ID sensor. You once again have a choice of sizes too, between 13 or 15-inch models.

Check out our Macbook Pro 2016 vs Macbook Pro 2015 comparison review to see what’s new in the latest Macbook Pro.

Both the Macbook Pro and the standard Macbook model were refreshed at WWDC 2017, with a single significant specs update. These new models sport the same general design, specs and features, with an upgrade for the chipset to a Kaby Lake processor. You also get an increase to the memory count (up to 32GB maximum), for improved performance.

As a result of that refresh, we’re not expecting any new Macbook laptops to be launched until late 2018.

When will Apple launch a new Macbook Air?

Will we ever see a new MacBook Air? Right now it’s looking unlikely and we expect Apple to concentrate on its iPad Pro range instead. After all, the iPad Pro offers the same portability benefits of the Air, with seriously impressive performance. Not to mention the added bonus of the Apple Pencil support.

When will Apple launch new iPads?

On March 21, 2017, Apple revealed its first standard iPad refresh in ages. The all-new 9.7-inch iPad is a much cheaper alternative to the iPad Pro 9.7, starting at just £339 here in the UK. Those specs have been slashed of course, to match the lower price. However, this new Apple tab is well up to the task of watching movies and playing games.

Apple’s last iPad Pro launch before 2017 was the reveal of the iPad Pro 9.7, back in March 2016. Which is why no-one was surprised when Apple finally revealed its new 10.5-inch Pro tablet at WWDC 2017.

This latest Pro is the first iPad ever to strike a new sweet spot of 10.5-inches. This device is designed to allow for a more comfortable typing experience, with a full-size virtual keyboard or Smart Keyboard. The gorgeous ProMotion screen and seriously slim bezels make it an instant winner.

We haven’t seen a new iPad Air or iPad Mini since the end of 2015, and it’s now looking like those ranges are extinct. That said, some rumours have also pointed to a fresh new 7.9-inch model called the iPad Pro Mini. If these rumours are on the money, the Pro Mini will likely mean the death of the standard iPad Mini. Right now however, we can’t see any new Mini tablets being launched by Apple.

Will we see any new iPads launched in early 2018? Well, check out our rumour round-up for all you need to know. However – spoiler alert – we’re not expecting anything more for a while.

When will Apple launch a new iPhone?

We saw the launch of the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X in September 2017, which should be the last iPhone reveal for a while. Of course it’s possible that Apple will reveal a new cut-price iPhone model, such as a new version of the iPhone SE, in the near future. That super-powered mini mobile was popular and hasn’t seen a refresh, so perhaps early 2018 will bring us an update.

Either way, you can expect the iPhone 8s and 8s Plus to be launched in September 2018. Apple is as predictable as crap British weather when it comes to mobile tech, so it’s never a shock when the invites land.

Check out our huge iPhone comparison guide to see how the new 8 and 8 Plus stack up against older iPhones.

When will Apple launch a new Apple Watch?

We’re big fans of the Apple Watch Series 2, which took the best bits of the flawed original (mostly that gorgeous design work) and slashed almost all of the bad bits. With a bit of WatchOS 3 magic, built-in GPS support and waterproofing, the Watch Series 2 was a great all-round wearable.

Although there was a big gap between the Apple Watch and the Apple Watch 2, the Series 3 model was launched just a year later, in September 2017. The third Watch is less of a jump in terms of hardware updates, so this wasn’t too surprising.

The Apple Watch 3 comes packing the new WatchOS 4 software, which adds greater customisation and some cool new watch faces. The WatchOS 4 update has also rolled out to existing watches, to bring this new functionality to earlier adopters. However, if you want cellular connectivity, you’ll have to upgrade to the Series 3.

When will we see the Apple Watch Series 4 launched? Well, we’d assume September 2018 at the earliest. There’s not much more that Apple can do in terms of hardware improvements, so a new model will likely offer some minor upgrades such as a more slender build. We’re also hoping for longer battery life, thanks to improvements in energy efficiency for the on-board chipset.

How can I live stream the next Apple launch event?

You can watch Apple’s launch events live on your Apple TV, or by heading to the Apple Events page on its website. Bear in mind that if you visit the website, you’ll need to do so using Apple’s Safari browser. The likes of Google Chrome won’t work.

How can I watch Apple events like the iPhone 8 launch after they have finished?

Apple keeps videos of its recent launch events and keynotes on the Events page of its website. Just browse there using Safari and you can watch them in full.

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iPhone 8, AI and Trump: Welcome to Apple in 2017

What will Apple do in 2017?

The TL;DR version is: pretty much what they did in 2016. Update popular hardware, expand services, steer clear of new product categories and make a boatload of money.

However, buried inside those pat and rather obvious observations is a company that may be in search of its mojo. There is nothing wrong with Apple or its offerings, but the company that reinvented and reinvigorated numerous product categories has spent the last two years polishing its own Apples.

In my totally anecdotal Twitter poll on which word best described Apple in in 2016 — Aggressive, Innovative, Slipping, Successful — Slipping won by a commanding margin. Why do people perceive one of the world’s most successful tech companies this way? Didn’t Apple do enough in 2016?

This year’s iPhones — the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus — are excellent, exquisitely designed pieces of hardware with updated cameras, water resistance, better components and a spanking new operating system. They’re also still iPhones, devices that look very much like the models Apple introduced in 2014.

Apple has failed to reignite interest in its tablet line.

Apple has failed to reignite interest in its tablet line, despite introducing its best iPad ever, the iPad Pro 9.7. Sure, they had to raise the price by $100 to squeeze iPad Pro 12.9 hardware into the smaller frame, but it’s Apple, so you forgive.

Two years since the Apple Watch introduction, the design remains virtually unchanged. Series 2 is a solid update — especially its new waterproofing that lets users take it for a swim — but the best changes came, as they often do, through the much-needed operating system update: watchOS 3.

Apple TV has grown in stature and gotten a brand-new touch and voice-friendly remote, but it’s simply evolving and not changing into the TV set we once thought Apple was building. Like the Apple Watch, Apple TV’s software has seen far more radical changes thanks to tvOS.

The most radical thing Apple did in 2016 (apart from taking on the DoJ and FBI) was introducing its new AirPods. People really lost their minds over these wireless audio devices and not necessarily in a good way.

Poor Apple. Seems like it’s damned if it does and dammed if it doesn’t. But don’t cry any tears for the company with an enviable bottom line and hundreds of billions of dollars sitting offshore. It’s fine and it should be even more fine in 2017, even if there isn’t a single new product category to ogle.

iPhone at 10

No tech moment will be bigger in 2017 than the launch of the new iPhone in September, which will happen just a couple of months after the 10th anniversary of the very first iPhone launch. While most expect Apple to call this new hardware “iPhone 8,” there’s a possibility Apple could skip a number or two and go right to “iPhone 10.”

“The tenth anniversary of the iPhone will be a big thrust going into September of 2017,” said Analyst and Creative Strategies President Tim Bajarin via email, echoing most other Apple experts I talked to.

Rumors about this huge update started flowing months ago and only picked up steam on the day Apple officially unveiled the iPhone 7. If the rumors prove to be true, your next iPhone could be an all-glass confection, complete with a palm-hugging curve.

People have been talking about the possibility of a curved iPhone screen for years, especially after Samsung introduced its Edge devices. However, as much as people want to think Apple copies other people’s good or interesting ideas, Apple prefers to find ideas that work and then tries to improve them. There really isn’t a lot of “me too,” ethos at the company. My guess is that while we’ll see more glass (or sapphire) on the next iPhone, it will not have a noticeable curve.

Better bets are on an A11 CPU, which likely will be the first Apple-made chip to use 10-nanometer chip tech — and wireless charging.

Apple may swap the iPhone’s Lightning port for a do-it-all USB-C connector.

“If Apple sticks to their heritage, they won’t bring anything out that’s not ready,” wrote Patrick Moorhead, President and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy in an email. Moorhead, though, does expect a lot of new technology in the iPhone 8 (or 10). He agrees with rumors that call for an OLED screen on at least one of the iPhone 8 models and, if not curves, at least an edge-to-edge display.

The iPhone 8 could also mark yet another port shift; Apple may swap the iPhone’s Lightning port for a do-it-all USB-C connector.

The most interesting new technology, though, could be augmented reality. Apple CEO Tim Cook has already made clear he’s a big fan, telling the Washington Post earlier this year, “I think AR [augmented reality] is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology.”

Bajarin told me that Cook sees AR as a real growth area and the company is already doing a lot of work behind the scenes in this space.

Adding AR to the iPhone in 2017 would make sense for consumers who are not ready to put on VR headgear, but want reality-enhancing experiences as well as for developer partners who can build AR experiences into their iOS Apps.

Whatever Apple does with the iPhone in 2017, it has to be big. “Apple needs to knock something out of the park,” wrote Forrester VP and Principal Analyst J. P. Gownder in an email. He thinks Apple has the opportunity to “reinvent the smartphone entirely with a radical departure on an iPhone 8.”

Getting out of the car

I think 2017 is the year we finally learn what Apple is up to in the car space. It will not be a car.

Everything Apple has done in the last 12 months indicates that it’s cooled to the idea of home-grown automotive hardware. I’m sure millions has been spent reaching this decision and we know jobs have been lost, but building a car is a no-win situation for Apple (acquiring an electric car company that starts with the letter “T” is also highly unlikely).

Analysts I spoke to agree that some car news will be forthcoming in 2017, but it will probably be focused on software, dashboard integration and situation- and location-based AI.

Tune out

You can also probably shelve those Apple TV set dreams right next to the car. Apple cares deeply about television, but realized sometime last year that the quickest path to someone’s living room is through a tiny set-top box and not via the more considered purchase of a full-sized HDTV.

Apple TV, however, will shift to center stage in 2017 as the company updates the device’s tvOS and continues negotiating with streaming services like Netflix, as well as content creators and networks (especially local channels), to consolidate access on its Apple TV devices. The sticking point will continue to be the ability to search across all the services at once. At issue is how Apple basically hides third-party branding from the results. Yes, you’ll still watch The Crown on Netflix, but won’t know it’s on Netflix until you start watching, which is why Netflix isn’t participating.

2017 will bring a handful of Apple-supported streaming TV shows, but don’t expect Apple to launch its own channel full of streaming programs.

Apple Watch family

Apple calls the Apple Watch one of the most successful watches on the market. That’s right, not just for smartwatches, but for all watches. According to the Vontobel Watch Industry Report, its annual sales are just behind luxury watchmaker Rolex. We also know that Apple Watch is a multibillion-dollar business. That’s all good news, but the Apple Watch simply isn’t a success on the level of, say, the iPhone or even the iPad.

Even so, Apple is probably just getting started in the wearable space and 2017 may be the year it branches out, a bit.

Forrester’s Gownder told me that smart glasses featuring augmented reality is a possibility. Apple has floated a few goggle patents over the years, but I’m not convinced. The more likely scenario is Apple builds out from its wearable center, adding Apple Watch variations: a more affordable composite model or a more connected option. Moorhead agrees that we should expect “an Apple Watch connected over a low-power flavor of LTE like LTE-M or Narrow Band-IoT.”

Artificial Brain

Aside from the next big iPhone, Apple’s biggest focus in 2017 may be on AI. In 2016, Apple executives were, shall we say, a bit annoyed that people saw them as playing catch-up in a field they claim to have all but invented for consumers. Siri, Apple’s groundbreaking voice assistant arrived with the iPhone 4S in 2011, but AI didn’t become a part of a larger public conversation until the surprising success of Amazon Echo and its Alexa voice assistant and, more recently, Google Assistant on Google Home. Suddenly people were asking Apple where its home assistant was. In Tim Cook’s lengthy interview with the Washington Post, he took umbrage at that assumption, adding that, going forward, AI will be a critical part of the Apple ecosystem.

“AI will make the [smartphone] even more essential to you. It will become even a better assistant than it is today,” said Cook.

Artificial Intelligence is not just about Siri and the iPhone, though, Apple made it clear to me in 2016 that AI is threaded throughout numerous Apple products and services, a strategy it will continue to pursue.

“Apple is moving us more and more toward the role of voice as an extension of their influence on user interfaces and making Siri more powerful and more contextually accurate is a big goal,” said Bajarin.

However, 2017 will not mark the beginning of Apple doing it at the expense of privacy.

A battle won and a line drawn

2016 marked the year Apple took on the Department of Justice and the FBI, refusing to build a tool that would crack is own encryption code for fear that the hack would get released into the wild. The FBI never actually backed down — instead it found a third party to do the work — while Apple escaped without ceding the moral high ground.

Even so, Apple’s Artificial Intelligence efforts may only go as far as the data it’s fed. How, in 2017, will Apple maintain the balance of individual privacy and tools smart enough to know what you want before you want it?

The company introduced the concept of Differential Privacy at WWDC in June, but has done little to explain it to consumers. The idea is that instead of collecting user profiles and the data that goes with them, Apple takes data samples and inserts noise to anonymize the data.

In 2017, Apple may try to come up with a more consumer-friendly name for differential privacy and a more palatable explanation, especially as its AIs get smarter and smarter.

The big, bad market

Apple sells tens of millions of iPhone each quarter, which makes them a chief source of revenue. However, those sales numbers have been declining and experts like Moorhead predict “single-digit growth» for the smartphone market in 2017. There will be a nice Q1 bump reflecting full-quarter iPhone 7 and 7 Plus sales (it might even beat projections), but the rest of the year won’t hold up as well.

The potential iPhone sales decline in 2017 could be cause for concern.

Moorhead told me that the once-promising narrative in China has changed, and not in a good way. He also doesn’t agree with Tim Cook’s belief that India is a big growth opportunity, at least in 2017. Lacking those growth engines, and with saturated North America and Western Europe markets, the potential iPhone sales decline in 2017 could be cause for concern.

That is, if those predictions hold true. My take is that it will not be a stellar iPhone year, but it will still be good by most measures. The next blockbuster year, though, won’t arrive until 2018, when Apple can start counting all those iPhone 8 (10?) sales.

Services will play an even larger role in Apple’s 2017 bottom line (Cook predicted that part of his business alone will be the size of a Fortune 100 company next year). Next year, Apple will diversify existing services and add new ones as well.

The X Factor

A Trump White house is probably something Apple and Tim Cook didn’t predict or, possibly even prepare for. Tim Cook briefly spoke to the President-Elect on the phone in November and was one of the guests of honor (at least judging from the seating) at Trump’s recent Tech Summit in New York City.

The substance of the phone call and summit haven’t been fully disclosed, but Cook revealed his thinking to Apple employees in a leaked memo, explaining that it was important for Apple to engage with government since it controls policy that directly affects the company. What Cook and company do to influence that policy will all be predicated on what Trump attempts push through Congress in his first year. The fallout will come in 2018 and beyond.

There is one thing that is a certainty in 2017: Apple will finally open and start moving into its brand-new spaceship campus. Within that massive circular structure, Apple will dream up the future of its products, services and innovation. If Apple hopes to reclaim the mojo some believe it has lost, the effort will lift off from there.

Related Video: The 3 best things about the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar

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