Today at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern, Apple will announce new products at a special event. Instead of renting a larger facility in San Francisco or elsewhere for the announcement, which is what Apple does for major updates to the iPhone and iPad, today's event will be held on Apple's own campus in the Town Hall auditorium in Cupertino, California. Town Hall is a small forum with a capacity of about 300 people. It's the venue that Apple used to announce the iPhone 4S in October, 2011 and the iPhone 5s in September of 2013.
What will Apple announce today? Apple itself is keeping that a secret, but Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac, who has a great track record for predicting what Apple will announce at its events, purports to have the inside scoop on today's announcements. First, he predicts that Apple will once again make a 4-inch phone, the size of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s. He thinks it will be called the iPhone SE, and will pack many of the features of the iPhone 6s into a smaller device.
Second, and continuing on the theme of smaller devices, Gurman predicts that Apple will introduce a new version of the iPad Pro that is the same size as the current iPad Air — a 9.7" iPad Pro. If true, this will be good news for folks who want to take advantage of a much faster processor and have support for the amazing Apple Pencil, but who don't want a larger and heaver iPad.
Apple is teasing the event by saying "Let us loop you in," and Gurman's third prediction is that we will see new Apple Watch bands today. One prediction is a NATO-style Nylon band. Last week at ABA TECHSHOW, I saw that California attorney David Sparks was using an Apple Watch Sport with a NATO-style band that he bought from a third-party. I see that there are a ton of NATO-style bands for the Apple Watch on Amazon right now, most selling for $25 or less. The version that David Sparks was using had plastic lugs in it, which I'm sure won't be the case for any band that Apple introduces today, but it did show me that a NATO-style band looks good with an Apple Watch, so it wouldn't surprise me to see Apple introduce something like this today.
Gurman also believes — and I agree — that we will see updates to iOS for the iPhone and iPad and watchOS for the Apple Watch.
If you want to watch the event live, you can do so on many devices, such as iPhone, iPad or Mac, by clicking here. You can also watch it on an Apple TV.
