Let’s all think way too hard about what the invite to Apple’s iPhone 14 event could mean
Apple’s Fall event season is upon us. Let’s mine for clues in the official invitation.
Yesterday Apple officially announced that its first event of the Fall will be held on September 7 at 10:AM PDT. As with all of its other events of the last two years, this will be a pre-recorded event. We can expect to see Apple use this event primarily to introduce the Fall 2022 iPhone and Apple Watch lineups, but there may be other new products announced or previewed as well. Every time one of these event invitations goes out, we all love to think way too deeply about what clues might be hiding in the invitation’s design and messaging. Before diving too deep into these waters, remember that the design of this year’s invitation could have no significance at all with regard to what Apple is going to announce at the event. But that’s no fun, so let’s speculate!
Artemis 1 - This feels like a long shot, but NASA is scheduled to launch its Artemis 1 mission on Monday if all goes well. The part of this that relates to Apple is that NASA will be sending an iPad to the Moon as one of the many things they’ll be testing ahead of planned crewed missions to the Moon later this decade. I plan to have more on that in Monday’s issue of the newsletter, so go ahead and subscribe if you’re not already.
Satellite Phone Connectivity - One of the rumored features last year that wound up not materializing in the iPhone 13 was satellite connectivity for emergency phone calls. The idea being that if you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere you can still make an emergency call on your iPhone. This would definitely be a great safety feature.
Astrophotography - This is the one I’m personally most hoping comes true. Taking pictures of the night sky with an iPhone has never been great. After all, there are limits to how big you can make the lens and sensor and still fit it into a smartphone. Apple’s Night Mode photography helps a lot, but unless you have a tripod you’re probably still not going to get great photos of the stars. Cameras continue to be the major field of battle between Apple and the top Android phone makers, and it would be great to see the iPhone take a big leap in astrophotography.
VR - Apple has been heavily rumored to be working diligently on a virtual reality headset product for quite some time. Back in June I broke down the state of those rumors. Not much as changed since then, and it’s possible Apple could use this event to preview the VR product. Most of the “evidence” for this comes not from the image above, but from the 3D versions of the invite that Apple has been promoting on social media. I’d still lean against this being announced at this event, but can’t rule out the possibility.
Or again, none of this could be in play and this is all just a clever design for an invitation that really provides no clues to what Apple will announce there. We’ll all find out together on September 7.