Apple’s September 9th event is set to be one of the company’s largest events in history, as is reflected by the expansive size of its San Francisco venue. Besides a pair of new iPhones, the substantially revamped Apple TV set top box, and new bands for the Apple Watch, Apple is currently planning to debut a pair of new iPads at next week’s event: the long-rumored iPad Pro, and a refreshed version of the iPad mini, according to trusted sources…
The “iPad Pro” (which is actually the planned name of the device) is currently scheduled to hit retail outlets in November, following a pre-order campaign that will launch toward the end of October, sources indicate. While whispers within Apple point to the MacBook-sized tablet making its debut on next week’s stage, it is possible that Apple could still hold back the larger iPad for an early October event given the currently planned November ship date. Following recent announcements of Apple iOS enterprise collaborations with Cisco and IBM, sufficient component availability to meet anticipated year-end demand appears to be the only question mark at this point.
Nonetheless, the Bill Graham auditorium (pictured above) is a massive 7000-seat building, and sources suggest that it was deliberately chosen to reflect the event’s scope. They have said that next week’s event will include an “unprecedented” blitz of product introductions, even potentially outmatching last year’s iPhone 6, Apple Watch, and Apple Pay keynote at the Flint Center in Cupertino. If the iPad Pro is indeed shown off next week, sources indicate that the new iPad mini 4 will also be introduced alongisde it. A third version of the iPad Air is also in the works, but sources confirm that it won’t be released until 2016. New Macs are also unlikely to appear next week.
The iPad mini 4 will be a thinner version of the current iPad mini, including a faster A-series chip with support for split-screen apps first introduced in iOS 9. It will likely also include a pair of upgraded cameras. As for the iPad Pro, codenamed J98/J99 internally, the larger-sized tablet will be geared toward power users and run iOS 9.1, support a Force Touch-based stylus, and include speakers on two sides for a more pronounced stereo effect. The new iOS 9.1 operating system is said to bring additional tweaks to the iPad Pro, including optimized versions of the Siri and Notification Center interfaces. If Apple does indeed unveil the new iPads next week, another Apple event this fall can be ruled out.
