Apple Event

There are Apple events where you come away thinking about a slightly better camera, a faster processor and whether the new colour is really different enough to justify giving it a new name.

And then there are Apple events where something feels as though it has shifted.

Today felt like one of those.

Apple’s September 2026 event introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, the company’s first folding iPhone, the iPhone Duo, new Apple Watches and AirPods, all under the leadership of new CEO John Ternus.

But the interesting bit wasn’t simply the hardware.

It was what all of it told us about the direction Apple is now travelling.

And for those of us already thoroughly embedded in the Apple world, I think the future suddenly became rather more interesting.

For years there has been a feeling that the smartphone had reached its natural conclusion.

Big glass rectangle.

Better camera.

Faster chip.

See you again next September.

Apple has just thrown a folding spanner into that particular works.

The iPhone Duo is Apple’s first foldable iPhone, opening into a 7.6-inch display, supporting split-screen multitasking and even Apple Pencil. It starts at $1,999 in the US and is due to arrive in October.

That doesn’t necessarily mean everybody should rush out and buy one.

I certainly don’t think Apple expects that.

The Duo feels more important as a statement.

Apple is saying that the iPhone can change shape again.

For years Apple watched other manufacturers experiment with folding phones. Rather than being first through the door, Apple appears to have done something very Apple-like: stand outside for a while, watch everybody else bump into the furniture, then walk in when it thinks it has a better answer.

Whether the Duo turns out to be that answer remains to be seen.

But suddenly the iPhone feels experimental again.

And I rather like that.

The other thing that caught my attention was photography.

No surprise there.

The iPhone 18 Pro generation continues Apple’s march towards making the phone less of a convenient camera and more of a genuine photographic tool.

Reports from the event describe 48-megapixel cameras, variable aperture, greater control over shutter speed, improved cinematic video and smarter subject tracking, backed by the new A20 Pro chip.

That distinction matters.

Megapixels alone stopped being exciting years ago.

What matters now is control.

Aperture. Shutter. Focus. Computational processing. Video. Editing.

Those are the things that start moving an iPhone into territory traditionally occupied by proper cameras.

For NIX DRONES that is fascinating, because photography is becoming increasingly device-agnostic.

A photograph might come from a drone.

A camera.

An Action camera.

Or an iPhone pulled from a pocket because the light suddenly looked magnificent.

The important thing is the picture.

Apple seems to understand that.

This may actually be the biggest lesson from the event.

Apple has spent the last couple of years talking about artificial intelligence while companies such as OpenAI appeared to be moving considerably faster.

At times Apple Intelligence has felt like an unfinished chapter.

That is changing.

Apple’s newer Siri AI, announced at WWDC 2026, is designed to use Apple Intelligence much more deeply across Apple’s platforms.

Today’s hardware makes much more sense when viewed through that lens.

The faster processors are not simply there to open an app three milliseconds quicker.

They are increasingly there to run intelligence locally.

To understand photographs.

To work with video.

To understand what is happening on your device.

And Apple continues to make privacy and on-device intelligence a central part of its AI argument.

That could eventually become Apple’s great advantage.

Not necessarily having the biggest AI model.

Having AI woven quietly into the device you are already using.

This was perhaps my favourite conclusion from today.

Earlier I found myself wondering whether the increasingly capable Apple AI and Siri could eventually replace something like ChatGPT.

I don’t think that is actually the right question.

They do different jobs.

Apple Intelligence can become the intelligence inside my Apple world.

Siri can know about the device, control things, retrieve information, understand context and hopefully become dramatically better at getting everyday jobs done.

ChatGPT can remain the place I go to think.

Research.

Write.

Plan.

Build ideas.

Develop NIX DRONES.

Turn half a thought typed into a box into something considerably bigger.

One doesn't have to defeat the other.

In fact, the interesting future is probably when they work together.

Apple provides the beautifully integrated hardware and operating system.

AI services provide the deeper reasoning and creativity.

And I sit in the middle pressing buttons and pretending this was all my master plan.

Perfect.

The new Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 continue another quiet transformation.

Apple Watch started life feeling like an iPhone accessory strapped to your wrist.

It increasingly feels like a health and activity computer that happens to tell the time.

The new generation adds further health and readiness insights, with Apple continuing to push the Watch towards understanding not simply what you did today, but how your body is responding to it.

That is perhaps where the Apple ecosystem becomes most interesting.

The phone knows one part of your world.

The Watch knows another.

AirPods provide another interface.

The Mac and iPad handle the heavier work.

And Apple Intelligence increasingly becomes the thread joining them together.

That is much harder for competitors to reproduce than simply building a good phone.

AirPods are another good example.

The new AirPods 5 reportedly bring improved noise cancellation, adaptive audio and real-time translation.

Translation is particularly interesting.

Because once your headphones can listen, understand language, translate it and speak the result back to you, they are no longer simply headphones.

They are an interface.

That starts getting very interesting when combined with AI.

The future computer may not always involve staring at a screen.

Sometimes it might simply involve asking something.

And that, ultimately, is what I think we learnt today.

Apple sells iPhones.

Apple sells Macs.

Apple sells Watches, AirPods and iPads.

But increasingly the real Apple product is everything working together.

That is why being inside the ecosystem can become rather addictive.

Take one Apple device on its own and there are often perfectly good alternatives.

Put five or six Apple devices together and something different happens.

Photos appear everywhere.

Messages follow you.

Calls move between devices.

AirPods change automatically.

Passwords appear when required.

Files move without cables.

Your Watch unlocks things.

Your iPhone becomes a camera for your Mac.

None of those individual features sounds revolutionary.

Together they create something enormously powerful.

And AI is about to be layered across all of it.

That is the bit I think people may be underestimating.

There was another reason today felt different.

This was the first major September hardware event of the John Ternus era, following Tim Cook’s move to Executive Chairman and Ternus becoming Apple CEO.

That makes the iPhone Duo particularly symbolic.

New leadership.

A new iPhone form factor.

Much greater emphasis on AI.

Apple beginning to experiment again.

Nobody knows whether every idea shown today will become a classic.

Some undoubtedly won’t.

That has always been part of technology.

But I finished this Apple event feeling considerably more excited about the next few years than I expected to.

Because the important story wasn’t really the iPhone 18.

Or the folding screen.

Or the cameras.

Or even Siri.

It was the direction of travel.

Apple seems to be building towards a world where the computer becomes less visible, intelligence becomes more useful, cameras become astonishingly capable and all the little devices around us cooperate rather than behaving like separate islands.

And as somebody who is already rather deeply buried in the Apple ecosystem...

I’m quite happy to see where this goes.

The gadgets are getting cleverer.