It's iPhone 16 day, but it's Apple's least-important Glowtime announcement

Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

Read between the lines

Today’s the day! At 10am PT Apple will commence its famous annual September press event, centered around the iPhone update for 2024. The company’s announcements will attract millions of eyeballs and acres of press coverage, and most of it will focus on the wrong thing.

Because the iPhone 16, realistically, is going to be pretty dull. On the Pro side, we expect slightly bigger screens and slightly better cameras (including a more powerful zoom on the non-Max Pro specifically), while all four models should get new processors, new colors, and a new Capture button for instant camera use.

How much will any of this affect customers’ experience with the device? Hardly at all.

The screens are only 0.2 inches bigger along the diagonal, which is barely noticeable; the cameras are already easily good enough for 99 percent of shooting scenarios, just as current processors are easily fast enough for available apps; and the Capture button sounds suspiciously like a control that will get in the way for little palpable benefit (although I may be wrong and look forward to trying it out). If you’re buying one of these handsets to replace a three-year-old phone, then of course the cumulative upgrades will add up to a noticeable improvement, and an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with Apple Intelligence. But regarded in isolation as a one-off launch, the 16-series iPhones can only be a damp squib: something of interest principally to shareholders.

My advice, however, would be to persevere with the event, because there should be some gems on the undercard. Not everything will be mind-blowing, of course: while in some ways it would count as memorable for the iPad mini to get any kind of upgrade at all, we don’t think Apple will celebrate the occasion with anything more than a processor and RAM bump to ready the petite tablet for Apple Intelligence. But the Apple Watch X is headed for a substantive redesign, while we’re hoping that the Apple Watch SE will get a change of material and a price cut to bring it within reach of a larger market. And if we’re really lucky, Apple may put right what once went wrong and release a set of AirPods Max that are actually good.

But what I’m hoping to see at today’s event is the long-awaited set of cheaper AirPods. (AirPods Lite? Air? I’m guessing SE.) Such a device would share the interest factors of both iPad mini and Apple Watch SE: AirPods aren’t updated anywhere near as often as they deserve given their popularity, which makes an appearance more memorable, and they represent an opportunity to make a product, not better, but more widely accessible.

At this point, and in the present economic climate, I’m far less interested than I used to be in watching Apple cram ever more overpowered silicon into a device that costs over a thousand bucks. Unlike the iPad and AirPods, the iPhone gets updated more often than is necessary, and the yearly refresh feels like an exercise in not just gilding the lily but polishing it and placing it in an attractive box: adding more and more gratuitous features and bumping specs beyond the point of usefulness for the sake of being able to announce something new. What I want to see is an update where the product is maintained at the same level of power but the costs, whether in terms of money or power consumption, are reduced. A set of AirPods for under $100 would be a worthwhile improvement, even if the earbuds aren’t quite as magical as the more expensive versions.

Then again, given the reaction following the launches of the iPhone 5c and XR, “budget” may not be something that sells well to an Apple audience or generates the kind of hype the company is looking for. The marketing hierarchy is there for a reason. Just keep an ear out for the stuff Apple isn’t being quite so loud about because you might hear something worth knowing.

It’s Glowtime! Apple event special

How to watch Apple’s iPhone 16 ‘Glowtime’ event live.

Ready to Glow! iPhone, Apple Watch, and everything else to expect at Apple’s event.

This is Glowtime: Experience Apple’s keynote now in our (slightly silly) minute-by-minute preview.

These 10 Apple event keynote moments changed everything.

When will tech companies start solving problems people actually have?

Your Mac might not be as secure as you think it is. But we can help.

Florian Kastner rounds up the silliest iPhone apps of all time.

Thiago Trevisan explains why you should skip the M4 Macs and just buy an iPad Pro instead.

Podcast of the week

“Glowtime” is today! What will Apple showcase at the event? It’s all about the new iPhone and we talk about what we expect with the iPhone 16 lineup, in this episode of the Macworld Podcast!

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Reviews corner

The rumor mill

A cheaper Magic Keyboard for non-Pro iPads is on the way.

Apple’s iPhone 16 cases might not have a cutout for the new Capture button.

The M4 Mac mini might finally have the courage to dump its USB-A ports.

The last iPhone with an LCD display will get an OLED upgrade in 2025.

And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, or Twitter for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.

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