This time of year can be a little boring if your job writes about Apple (or presumably working for Apple). There is WWDC at the beginning of June, which is not more likely than will not see the launch of hardware products, and then the rest of the summer tends to pass with only the most perfection of messages from Cupertino’s PR machine. Just as newspapers fill the warmer months with a silly seasonal frivolity, Apple’s news room site finds itself focusing on baseball plans and executive retirement.
Of course, when we’re going to fall, that will all change. Over the course of six weeks and conceivable in a single day we get new iPhones, new Apple Watches and new iPads, possibly an updated Vision Pro and a MacBook powered by an iPhone processor. Don’t remember insanely well, it gets insanely busy. Will no one think of the journalists?
This bleak view was brought to mind last week when a report circulated that one of the previously expected autumn releases, the M5 MacBook Pro, has been pushed back to the first half of 2026. I say the first half of 2026, but these laptops are much more likely to be launched in March or April than June or January (even if the latter would not be unnoticed). The chance is that Apple simply changes a component from its overloaded autumn plan and adds it to its overloaded spring plan.
As my colleague Jason points out in this article, the spring of 2026 now looks as if it will see the launch of iPhone 17E, new iPad and iPad Air Models, some new MacBook Pros and an external Mac screen. While some may be advertised outside a dedicated spring event (assuming Apple has one), they are nevertheless probably clusters around the window Spring Launch. And it is objective for many products to launch in a short time when the previous, significantly longer season has seen almost zero launch activity.
Of course, there are contiguous reasons for Apple’s season-on, season-off launch strategy. The company is targeted at the fall because it stands out nicely with the holiday purchase period and Black Friday, suitable for retailers who change newly obsolete stock. It avoids winter because most people lack cash after Christmas, and summer because people are gone and less likely to pay attention to the media (hence the silly season I mentioned earlier). And that leaves spring by default to advertise something that can’t wait until the following fall. There is a logic behind the lunnacity.
Apple does not hold any more live events, but its schedule is stricter than ever.
Apple
But there are certainly problems with this strategy. As I always point out, Apple inadvertently adopts periodic cicadas starving predators by hiding underground for years at a time (often a primary number of years to avoid syncing with other species’ shorter life bikes; it is honestly fascinating!) And then everyone comes at once in overwhelming numbers. To be clear, the cicadas in this analogy represent information about new products, and the predators are journalists and customers trying to get this information. Apple adopts a strategy that is used extremely successfully in nature to achieve the exact contradiction to what Apple wants to happen, which is for the customer’s wasp to eat the tasty Cicada product messages. Learn from Cicada, Apple. Learn from Cicada.
In other words, leaving the realm of entomology, the problem of launching everything on a single mad day is that things are lost in the noise. After major Apple Press events, we often write an article on important messages that readers probably missed and you will be amazed at what Apple is unable to push into its several hours of presentations. Even the titbits it is Explicitly mentioned during the video can fly under the radar because the audience has so much else to take in, and the presenters do not have time to spend any time dwelling on it.
I can imagine that there is something appealing to Apple’s PR team about delivering a quick-herring headtaler with so many products to hurry through that there is nothing on screen on screen for longer than a few minutes: It has the frenetic “But wait there is more!” Quality that involves an abundance of innovation and gives the audience no chance of getting bored.
As a sight, it can be pretty intense. (Although curious, there is usually still time for some cringeworthy sketches and songs.) But as an information resource it is a disaster. And the better alternative would be to hold separate events or send separate press releases for each new product or batch of densely allied products. In this way, interested parties could see the event or read the press release as they want and digest the information at their free time. And you wouldn’t have Apple Watch fans sitting restlessly through the iPad Spec dumps.
This can still become a reality. Apple has many products to launch for the rest of 2025 and more than five months left to launch them in; While a late summer Bonanza is unlikely, the quite plausible could return to the Covid-influenced model from 2020 when three virtual events were held in consecutive months from September to November. (Defying conventional wisdom even launched the company Airpods Max in December of the same year. They could focus on the details and benefits of the products.
At that time 2026 rolls around, I hope Apple will adopt a deliberate diffuse launch policy. The new Vision Pro could be held back for a few months and launched in January/February, just like its predecessor. The new iPads could be released (probably via press release) in March, followed by the iPhone 17E at a dedicated press event in April; The MAC launches can be displayed in May or held back to WWDC. Each product gets its own place and gets appropriate attention from both the press and the customers. And most importantly, journalists like me are not to have to get mad twice a year to cover everything.
Foundry
Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all Apple News you missed last week in a practical Bite size Roundup. We call it Apple breakfast because we think it goes well with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you also want to give it a reading in lunch or dinner.
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