Apple just confirmed that its annual developer conference WWDC 2018 will be held between June 4 and June 8. The developer event is being held for the second straight year at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.
The Cupertino-based company is expected to announce iOS 12, the next version of its mobile operating system. It will also detail the next version of watchOS, macOS and tvOS at the event. WWDC is not really known for hardware announcements, but Apple has departed from that notion to show new devices. At WWDC last year, Apple announced HomePod, its competitor to Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers, and updated iMac with desktop-grade processors.
According to Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, Apple will launch new iPad Pro at WWDC this year. The report says that Tim Cook and team will launch an updated 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and a brand new 11-inch iPad Pro in June this year. It claims that both the iPad Pro models with have thinner bezels than previous models.
The new iPad Pro models will be powered by A11X chipset and support Face ID, and is also likely to ditch the home button with iPhone X. The report does not clearly state what Apple has in store, but the details from its source are in line with previous rumors.
Apart from updated iPad Pro, Apple is also said to bring a second generation iPhone SE 2 to the table. For Apple, the iPhone SE has turned out to be a surprise hit despite older design. It is the best selling iPhone in growth markets like India, and there are reports suggesting the new model will have updated processor but stick to the existing design.
However, the most exciting news so far has been the launch of a new entry-level MacBook at WWDC. Apple updated MacBook Air last year with a faster Core i5 processor, but the laptop seems to have aged a lot in the past year, and it seems to be lacking a quality display right now. The new entry-level MacBook is said to offer a Retina Display at the time of launch.
However, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo doubts that Apple will launch an updated version of iPhone SE. But one thing is certain – Apple will not launch new iPhones at WWDC 2018, and it will instead what the next iPhone’s operating system will look like in September 2018.
