Today at 8pm Moscow time, Apple is holding its first fall keynote in fifteen years without Tim Cook on stage — and, if the leaks hold up, its first-ever foldable iPhone reveal. I'm writing this before the event starts. Not another leak roundup — there will be a hundred of those today — but my own predictions, with probabilities attached, so I can come back after the dust settles and check where I was wrong.
A new person on stage — and it matters
On September 1, 2026, Tim Cook moved into the role of Executive Chairman, and John Ternus became Apple's CEO. Cook spent fifteen years in the role and leaves with the company valued around $4.6 trillion. Today's keynote is Ternus's first major public appearance in the new job.
His background matters here. Ternus has spent twenty-five years at Apple, trained as a mechanical engineer, and most recently ran hardware engineering — Apple Watch, AirPods, Vision Pro, and the Mac's move to Apple silicon all passed through his hands. He's not a finance guy or a marketer; his whole career has been about how the physical object works.
And here's the coincidence that's hard to ignore: his first keynote is the one where Apple, for the first time in its history, shows a foldable phone. A hinge, a 4.5mm folded body, a panel rated for 200,000 folds — that's exactly the kind of engineering problem Ternus grew up solving. If Apple timed the leadership handoff to land on the most "hardware" launch of the decade, the timing landed well.
The practical takeaway: expect hardware today, not services. I wouldn't bet on a big subscription or ad-platform announcement closing out the evening.
My bets: thirteen predictions with probabilities
This is the part the whole piece was written for. The probabilities are mine — not a betting line, not analyst consensus — based on how many leaks agree, how many independent supply-chain sources confirm a given spec, and Apple's long habit of surprising everyone specifically on names and prices.
Read it like this: 90%+ is essentially locked in — only a real surprise changes it. 60-80% is likely, but I wouldn't be shocked by the opposite. Below 50% and I'm leaning against it.
| Prediction | Probability | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Foldable iPhone is shown today | 95% | Confirmed across independent supply chains, and the "Surprise and shine" slogan is clearly about this. You don't build hype this size for a camera bump. |
| It's called iPhone Ultra | 55% | The name that shows up most often in leaks, but naming is the one thing Apple keeps secret until the end. "Fold" was on the list too. |
| Foldable starts at $2000+ | 85% | Two OLED panels, a titanium hinge, a new frame. Leaks consistently land on $2000 for the base and $2500+ for higher storage. |
| Touch ID instead of Face ID on the foldable | 75% | 4.5mm folded simply doesn't leave room for a TrueDepth module. A side button is the only way out. |
| No telephoto on the foldable | 70% | Thickness beats periscope optics. Leaks consistently show two cameras: wide and ultra-wide. |
| No standard iPhone 18 today | 90% | Every major source confirms the affordable line is pushed to spring 2027. Apple is splitting the lineup across two seasons. |
| A20 Pro on a 2nm process across all three iPhones | 90% | The 2nm jump is the year's biggest hardware story — no reason to split it by model. |
| iPhone 18 Pro prices go up at least $100 | 70% | Rumored at $1199/$1299. The new process is expensive, but Apple has held Pro pricing before, so a freeze isn't off the table. |
| Variable aperture on the Pro's main camera | 65% | Long-rumored and fits the "pro" narrative, but a moving mechanical part in a thin body is easy to slip a year. |
| Apple Watch Series 12 gets a ceramic case option | 70% | It's been in the lineup before and shows up in leaks, but Apple has delayed such variants to spring before. |
| AirPods 5 with a new H3 chip | 65% | Follows the usual refresh cycle, and two versions (with/without ANC) is plausible. Easy to get overshadowed by the foldable though. |
| A smart home hub with a 7-inch display | 35% | Delayed twice already, tied to a new Siri. I'm betting against a proper reveal sharing the stage with the foldable. |
| Something not in any leak at all | 30% | Recent years' leaks cover almost everything. But a new CEO's first keynote is exactly the moment to keep one card up your sleeve. |
If I had to compress it into one line: I'm nearly certain about the hardware and nearly unsure about names and prices. Specs leak months in advance because thousands of people on factory floors know them. Names and prices are known by maybe twenty people, and they don't talk.
The foldable iPhone: the night's biggest bet
For eight years the foldable phone market existed without Apple. Samsung shipped seven generations, Chinese makers got the crease nearly invisible, and Apple stayed silent. Today, apparently, the silence ends.
What the leaks say: a book-style fold like the Galaxy Z Fold, a ~5.5-inch outer display and ~7.8-inch inner one. 4.5mm unfolded, about 9mm folded. A 5400-5800 mAh battery, A20 Pro chip, 12GB of RAM. Two rear cameras, no telephoto. Two colors: silver-white and deep indigo. MagSafe included. Starting around $2000.
What interests me most isn't the thinness record — it's the Face ID compromise. If Apple really is going back to a fingerprint sensor in a button, this is the first flagship in eight years where biometrics take a step backward. A company that built half its interface — unlocking, Apple Pay, password autofill — around Face ID is accepting a different method because physics leaves no other option. For a company that usually delays a product rather than back off its own standard, that's a real concession.
And that's the real question behind the price. Selling a $2000 device with no telephoto and no Face ID is harder than it sounds. The pitch has to be the screen itself — email, a spreadsheet, and a messaging app side by side, real multitasking, unfolding in one motion. If Apple spends today's demo on real use cases instead of millimeters of thickness, the product could take off. If the whole story is a thinness record and hinge materials, it's a very expensive toy for enthusiasts.
iPhone 18 Pro: an evolution you'll pay more for
Next to the foldable, the regular Pro models look boring — and that seems deliberate. Design barely changes from the 17 Pro. What changes is what's inside: the A20 Pro on a 2nm process (roughly 18% faster, 30% more efficient), a variable aperture main camera with a Samsung three-layer stacked sensor, LTPO+ display, a bigger battery in the Pro Max (~5567 mAh), new colors (dark cherry, light blue, silver — no black, if the leaks hold), and a $100+ price bump landing around $1199/$1299.
The variable aperture is the most interesting bit. Every computational trick of recent years — portrait mode, night mode, background blur — has been software compensating for optics too small to fit in a phone. A mechanically variable aperture is a step in the other direction: not estimating a shot, but actually capturing it. For anyone who shoots seriously on a phone, that's a bigger deal than another megapixel bump.
What won't be shown today — and why that matters more
The most underrated story of this fall isn't what gets announced, it's what doesn't. There's likely no standard iPhone 18 today — the affordable models are moving to spring 2027.
That breaks a decade-plus ritual: September used to mean the entire lineup, base to Pro Max, all at once. Now the year splits in two. Expensive models in fall, mass-market ones in spring.
The logic makes sense. A fall keynote stops being six devices competing for attention — the expensive models get the whole stage and head into holiday sales without internal competition. The mass-market iPhone gets a quiet spring window all to itself with no news cycle competing for headlines.
For buyers, the downside is real: if you just want a good new iPhone without the "Pro" label, tonight doesn't concern you — wait until spring. And the price gap widens: the cheapest new iPhone now arrives six months after the most expensive one, and September's lineup starts at $1200-plus.
Watches, earbuds, and the home
Everything else tonight is background noise, and that's telling too.
Apple Watch Series 12 — no design change, new processor, a returning ceramic case option, and reportedly continuous heart-rate monitoring throughout the day. That last part is the genuinely interesting one: continuous measurement instead of spot checks is a meaningfully different quality of health data.
Apple Watch Ultra 4 — same processor, incremental improvements. An upgrade for first-gen Ultra owners.
AirPods 5 — H3 chip, better sound, lower latency, in ANC and non-ANC versions. Splitting into two versions is a way to occupy a lower price tier without touching the Pro line.
A smart home hub with a 7-inch square display, camera, and video calling is the shakiest bet of the night. It's tied to a new Siri, and Siri has been rocky for Apple the last couple of years. I'm betting it doesn't get a proper showing today.
Separately: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS Golden Gate, watchOS 27, tvOS 27, and visionOS 27 are expected to release September 14. Preorders likely shift from the usual Friday to Saturday, September 12 — September 11 isn't a day Apple opens sales on. Retail availability is expected September 18.
What this means if you write iOS code
If you build for iOS, tonight leaves you work for the fall. A foldable screen isn't "just another size" — it's several new states your app has to handle honestly.
Two genuinely different screens in one device. 5.5 inches outside and 7.8 inside are different size classes entirely — compact phone outside, near-tablet inside. Anything laid out for a single fixed-width column will look stretched on the inner display. Adaptive size classes — the thing many teams have skipped for years because "iPhone is always compact" — suddenly matter.
Live transitions between states. Users will unfold the device mid-interaction. That's a runtime geometry change with state preservation: unfinished text input, scroll position, an open navigation screen. This is where anything that stores state in the view hierarchy instead of the model breaks.
Biometrics. If Touch ID really is back, any code or copy that hardcodes Face ID assumptions will show users something untrue. Check the biometry type on-device — never assume it.
App Store screenshots. A new form factor means a new set of storefront assets. Anyone shipping an app will need another screenshot pass by spring.
The good news: almost all of this is fixed by doing what was already considered best practice — not nailing your layout to fixed sizes, and keeping state separate from the view. The bad news: far fewer apps do this cleanly than people like to think.
What I'd bet on myself
If I had exactly one bet for tonight, I wouldn't put it on the foldable — that's nearly a lock already. I'd bet that the real drama turns out to be pricing, not hardware.
Almost everything about tonight's devices is already known technically. What's not known is how much Apple will actually charge for the first foldable, and whether it will simultaneously raise Pro prices. $2000 for the foldable plus $100 on top of Pro would make this the most expensive September in the company's history — and it'll be announced by someone who's run Apple for nine days.
That's what to watch for at 8pm: not the millimeters of the hinge, but the pricing slide, and how confidently it gets delivered.
All figures above are rumors and leaks as of the morning of September 9, 2026, and the probabilities are my own personal estimate, not analyst consensus. I'll come back to this piece after the keynote and count how many bets landed.
Originally published at klukyanov.ru.
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