Apple's First Keynote Without Tim Cook: Here's What Drops Today

Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event kicks off at 10:00 a.m. Pacific today, and there's a detail buried under all the iPhone chatter that's honestly more interesting than any of the leaks.

Tim Cook isn't running it.

He stepped down and John Ternus took over as CEO on September 1. Ternus ran hardware engineering for years, which means for the first time since 2011 the person opening an Apple keynote is a hardware guy, not an operations guy. Whether that shows up in the next 90 minutes is the thing I'll actually be watching for.

Anyway. Here's what we think is coming, what we think it costs, and where we're probably wrong.

Quick disclaimer before we go further: every single thing below is a prediction built on supply chain reports, leaked code strings, and analyst notes. None of it is confirmed. We're putting confidence levels on each call so you can see exactly how much we're guessing. Come back after the keynote and check our work, because we're updating this page live.

The prediction scorecard

What we think happens	Confidence
iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, A20 Pro chip	95%
Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4	90%
AirPods 5 with a new H3 chip	85%
A foldable iPhone, priced $2,000+	75%
Pro prices go up $100 to $300	70%
It's called "iPhone Ultra," not "iPhone Fold"	55%
A new Home Hub with a screen	45%
Under-display Face ID on the Pro	30%
A standard, non-Pro iPhone 18	10%

The foldable is the whole show

Apple is reportedly about to do the thing it's watched Samsung do for seven years.

The reporting lines up on the broad strokes: a book-style fold, roughly 5.5 inches closed and somewhere around 7.6 to 7.8 inches open depending on whose supply chain note you're reading. Four and a half millimeters thin unfolded. A liquid metal hinge that's supposed to make the crease nearly invisible, which is the single biggest complaint about every foldable ever made.

The tell that this is a genuinely hard product: MacRumors reports it uses Touch ID in the side button instead of Face ID, because there isn't physical room for the Face ID array. Apple killing Touch ID on flagship phones was a whole saga. Bringing it back means the engineering constraints won. Two rear cameras instead of three, for the same reason.

Price is the part that'll break brains. Expect $2,000 to start and up to $2,500 loaded. That is not a phone. That's a laptop with a phone plan.

My actual take: it launches, it sells out, and it will be genuinely great for maybe eight percent of people. If you don't already know why you want a foldable, this one won't convince you. Wait for the second generation, when the crease is solved and the price drops four hundred bucks.

The iPhone 18 Pro is a camera update wearing a phone costume

Don't expect a redesign. Everything points to the iPhone 18 Pro looking a lot like the 17 Pro, which is fine, because the interesting stuff is in the camera.

The headline feature is a variable aperture on the main lens. If you've never touched a real camera: aperture controls how much light hits the sensor and how blurry the background gets. Every iPhone so far has had one fixed aperture, and all that dreamy background blur in Portrait mode is software faking it. A variable aperture means the phone does it optically, for real. That's the first genuinely new camera capability on an iPhone in a few years, not just a bigger sensor.

Beyond that: the A20 Pro on a 2nm process, reportedly around 18 percent faster and 30 percent more power efficient than the A19 Pro. New colors, with "dark cherry" showing up in basically every leak. A smaller Dynamic Island, maybe.

Under-display Face ID keeps getting floated. I'm at 30 percent. It's been "next year" for four years running.

Let's talk about the price, because you're going to feel it

Right now the iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099 for 256GB. Reports point to a $100 to $300 bump.

Do that math and the iPhone 18 Pro lands somewhere between $1,199 and $1,399 to start. The Pro Max goes north of that. A maxed-out 2TB Pro Max could brush $2,000, which puts it in the same conversation as the foldable, which is a very strange place for Apple's normal flagship to be.

If that lands, watch for the reframe. Apple will lean hard on monthly financing and trade-in numbers so the sticker never gets said out loud.

The stuff nobody's talking about

Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. Incremental. New chip, better health tracking, ceramic case option coming back. Reports mention a health sensor built into the band itself, which is a genuinely interesting idea if it's real. Ultra 4 gets the same silicon with no design change.

AirPods 5. New H3 chip, better sound, lower latency, ANC and non-ANC versions. This one's near-certain because it turned up in a macOS release candidate, which is about as close to confirmed as a leak gets.

A Home Hub. Seven-inch screen, camera, presence detection, FaceTime. Apple's been sitting on this one for a while and the holdup is reportedly Siri. I'm at 45 percent because Apple has a real history of not shipping the smart display until the assistant is ready.

Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini. Faster chips, no redesign. Might get a press release instead of stage time.

What is not showing up today

Worth saying plainly, because a lot of people are going to be disappointed.

No standard iPhone 18. No iPhone 18e. No iPhone Air 2. All three reportedly moved to spring 2027, which is a real strategy shift: Apple splitting the iPhone line across two launches a year instead of dumping everything in September. No Apple Watch SE 4. No M6 MacBook Pro.

If you were waiting on the regular iPhone 18, you're waiting until spring.

Dates to put in your calendar

Preorders reportedly open Saturday, September 12. Yes, Saturday, which is unusual, and the read is that Apple's avoiding the 9/11 date. Retail launch Friday, September 18. And iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, watchOS 27 and the rest should get release dates announced today.

If you're upgrading anyway, don't forget the PC

New phone day is also usually the day you finally deal with the Windows PC that's been quietly filling up with junk since the last Apple event. Before you copy years of camera roll and app data onto whatever ships this month, it's worth a quick cleanup so you're not dragging that clutter along with you.

That's basically the whole pitch behind FixKon: hold a shortcut, tell it what you need, and it clears space, fixes errors, and answers questions about anything on your screen, phone transfer included.

FAQ

What time is the Apple event on September 9, 2026?

10:00 a.m. Pacific, which is 1:00 p.m. Eastern and 6:00 p.m. UK. It streams on apple.com, YouTube, and the Apple TV app. It's prerecorded, so expect roughly 90 minutes with no technical difficulties.

How much will the iPhone 18 Pro cost?

Not confirmed. The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099, and reports point to a $100 to $300 increase, putting the 18 Pro somewhere around $1,199 to $1,399. Treat that as an estimate until Apple says it on stage.

Is Apple really launching a foldable iPhone?

Multiple independent supply chain reports say yes, with a book-style design and a $2,000 to $2,500 price. It's the most heavily leaked product of the event, but Apple hasn't confirmed anything. Today settles it.

We'll know in a few hours

That's the board. Some of these calls are going to look smart at 11:30 this morning and some are going to look ridiculous.

Bookmark this page. We're updating it the moment the keynote wraps with real specs, real prices, and an honest tally of what we got wrong. No quiet edits.