Apple Announces October 27 Event

Apple Mac invites are out! Next Thursday will be my MacBook Air’s last day trip to Cupertino FOREVER! pic.twitter.com/w0T5YxswMC

— Joanna Stern (@JoannaStern) October 19, 2016

As first reported yesterday by Ina Fried at Recode, Apple announced a media event for October 27 at 10 AM San Francisco time. The event will be held at Apple’s campus in Cupertino. As shared by Jason Snell at Six Colors, the invitation simply reads “hello again”.

Recode’s article and other recent speculation suggests that this media event will be primarily dedicated to unveiling new Mac products, many of which are well overdue for an update. In particular it is expected that the MacBook Pro laptop line will receive a significant update with a new touch screen strip that replaces the function keys, a thinner design, improved performance, and potentially Touch ID.

It is also expected that the iMac line will be refreshed. Less likely, but still plausible, are updates to the Mac Pro (last updated in December 2013), MacBook Air (last updated March 2015), and Mac Mini (last updated October 2014).

It is also possible that Apple may announce a ship date for the new wireless AirPods that were announced last month at Apple’s iPhone 7 keynote. At the time, Apple said that the AirPods would be available in “late October”. The iPhone 7 Plus’ new Portrait mode, which creates a depth-of-field effect, has been in a public beta of iOS 10.1 since late September and its official release date could also be announced at this event.