With last week’s official introduction of the flagship iPhone 5s and the colorful iPhone 5c now behind us, our attention slowly but surely turns to Apple’s next major product launch. iDB, along with a few other reliable blogs, suspected there won’t be new iPads in September as the company would have been unwise to focus its attention (and waste headlines) on both new iPads and iPhones.
The French blog MacGeneration, which has somewhat of a mixed track record, has now pegged an iPad-related event at October 15 (that’s a Tuesday)…
That wouldn’t be unheard-of: last year, Apple introduced the iPhone 5 and the refreshed iPod touch lineup in September, followed by the fourth-generation iPad and the iPad mini in late-October.
This year, iDB is expecting dual iPad launches in October: a fifth-generation full-size iPad and a second-generation iPad mini with Retina display. If the numerous backplates that leaked in the past few months are anything to go by, the iPad 5 will be just as thin as the iPad mini 2 (see the image top of post), which itself is said to be only marginally thicker than the current iPad mini.
If I were to bet, I’d put my money on a modified A7X chip inside the iPad 5, along with the Touch ID sensor incorporated into the Home button. Some watchers are holding their breath for a gold finish for the full-size iPad and a polycarbonate plastic shell for the iPad mini 2 (akin to the iPhone 5c), but no leads exist to prove the theory.
Other Apple product launches until 2013 wraps up: OS X Mavericks, Haswell-based iMac, Mac mini and MacBook Pro upgrades and perhaps am upgraded Apple TV hardware.
Of course, there’s also the next-gen Mac Pro that Apple previewed at WWDC in June: that system is scheduled to go on sale in November.
As for the rampant headlines that have been spelling doom for Apple and its supposed lack of innovation, Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider did a stellar job dispelling that myth.
Distilled to bullet points by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Dilger basically wrote that while the tech media spent most of 2013 complaining that Apple “wasn’t innovating,” the company was:
• Secretly developing its new Mac Pro supercomputer
• Perfecting its Authentech-based Touch ID technology
• Completing iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks
• Bringing an entirely new 64-bit mobile architecture into production ahead of the world’s leading chip designers and foundries
• As nearly a side project, spending billions to build out a series of new iCloud data centers
• And Apple retail palaces like the new Stanford 2 store Cook drew attention to
As well as the new Apple Campus 2
• On top of all this, it was also financing the construction of a multibillion dollar new chip foundry with TSMC capable of producing advanced new 20nm components.
As for the supposed October 15 event, what’s your assessment?
Will this rumeur get oui’d or nope’d?
Pun intended, of course.