What we expect from Apple in 2020 | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

Every year, Apple announces new releas­es, each designed to take a step for­ward from its pre­de­ces­sors. Apple does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent some­thing rev­o­lu­tion­ary, but it still tries hard to impress users. The last batch of releas­es hit the shelves, it would seem quite recent­ly, but in fact enough time has passed to announce in which direc­tion the com­pa­ny will move on. Today we will dis­cuss what announce­ments we are wait­ing for the most and what we expect from the com­pa­ny that con­quered mil­lions.

Before pro­duc­tion was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed, Apple planned its own event for March. It, of course, had to be can­celed, so the dates of announce­ments and releas­es are still unknown. How­ev­er, this does not change the fact that we have some infor­ma­tion and rumors sur­round­ing the fol­low­ing devices from Apple.

Source: Forbes

2020 iPad Pro

In 2020, it’s time to update the iPad Pro line­up with a new ver­sion. The tablet, accord­ing to reports, should have a triple cam­era, the same as on the iPhone. It was also expect­ed from the iPad Pro 2019, but this did not hap­pen. One of the cam­eras needs to be ToF to pro­vide the abil­i­ty to cap­ture 3D mod­els on the iPad and then edit them with apps. A wide-angle cam­era and tele­pho­to are also planned.

In 2019, the first pho­tographs of dum­mies appeared, which were cre­at­ed based on descrip­tions and dia­grams of devices. Cas­es for new mod­els were also announced, which con­firm the pres­ence of sev­er­al cam­eras.

The Infor­ma­tion also report­ed that Apple is work­ing on a smart key­board that will fea­ture a track­pad and will also work with the iPad Pro. The IOS 14 code sup­ports this assump­tion, as it has smart track­pad sup­port. So we can expect that the tablet will come even clos­er in its capa­bil­i­ties to a full-fledged lap­top.

Oth­er reports claim that there will be two mod­els and a larg­er screen size of 12.9 inch­es. It’s not exact­ly com­mon for a com­pa­ny to release two new ver­sions of the iPad Pro in the same year. But every­thing is pos­si­ble.

Apple ana­lysts believe that the tablet will be pow­ered by a new A14X chip and a mini LED dis­play.

5G sup­port would be anoth­er log­i­cal solu­tion.

iPhone SE 2

One of the most antic­i­pat­ed smart­phones from Apple is the bud­get ver­sion of the iPhone. SE has become incred­i­bly pop­u­lar, and a smart­phone that was orig­i­nal­ly planned as a bud­get mod­el — iPhone XR has become not at all the most afford­able device. Now, users quite right­ly expect the iPhone SE 2.

Accord­ing to rumors, the smart­phone will have a diag­o­nal dis­play of 4.7 inch­es, and in terms of exter­nal design it will look more like the iPhone 8, and not like oth­er mod­els. The chip inside will be A13, and the rest of the spec­i­fi­ca­tions are about the same as the SE — 3GB of RAM and an esti­mat­ed price of $399. The smart­phone will be lim­it­ed to only a sin­gle main cam­era and Touch ID.

Of course, users would like a more pre­mi­um design and per­haps a more mod­ern user expe­ri­ence from the new bud­get iPhone. We have yet to find con­fir­ma­tion of this announce­ment.

AirTags

Apple planned to announce not only devices, but also var­i­ous fea­tures. With OS 13, the com­pa­ny intro­duced a new “Find My” fea­ture that allows iOS and MacOS devices to track each other’s where­abouts even with­out a net­work con­nec­tion, just Blue­tooth is enough. Accord­ing to rumors and press reports, Apple plans to cre­ate a spe­cial Blue­tooth tag that can be attached to items. It will be some­thing like key fobs with alarms. This is a slight­ly unusu­al direc­tion for the com­pa­ny, but in prin­ci­ple, there is noth­ing sur­pris­ing in this — sim­i­lar devices are incred­i­bly pop­u­lar, but major brands do not cre­ate them yet.

Source: The Verge

Head­phones Power­beats 4

Since Apple acquired Beats, new releas­es have been hap­pen­ing all the time, with the only dif­fer­ence being that they are not ded­i­cat­ed to the com­pa­ny’s major events. How­ev­er, Apple is work­ing on an update for Power­beats head­phones — mod­el num­ber 4. Reports of the devel­op­ment of Power­beats 4 appeared after the rel­e­vant sec­tions of code were found in the iOS 13 code. Accord­ing to pre­vi­ous­ly leaked con­cept art, the Series 4 ear­phones will get a bot­tom-mount­ed wire rather than the side of the Series 3. In addi­tion, the head­phones will be pow­ered by the H1 chip, which will pro­vide improved com­mu­ni­ca­tion and inter­ac­tion with the “Hey Siri” voice assis­tant func­tion. In this regard, Power­beats 4 will fol­low the exam­ple of oth­er Apple devices. The Power­beats 4 won’t be true wire­less ear­buds, so they won’t get a charg­ing case, but will charge using a Light­ning cable. The sound qual­i­ty will remain the same as the Pro mod­el, as will the esti­mat­ed bat­tery life of 15 hours. The head­phones are already ready for release, on Feb­ru­ary 27 they received FCC approval, but the exact date is still not known, since the head­phones were planned to be announced at the March 31 event. The exact cost is also not yet known, but experts believe that the head­phones will cost $199.95, the same as the Power­beats 3 cost at the time of release.

Mac­book Pro

The 16-inch Mac­book Pro was released as recent­ly as Novem­ber 2019. And the device has received some wel­come changes, such as an old-style key­board. In 2020, of course, it may be too ear­ly to update the mod­el line, but there was infor­ma­tion that the com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing a new mod­el of a 13-inch lap­top with the same scis­sor key­board. This is not sur­pris­ing, since the but­ter­fly has cre­at­ed a lot of prob­lems for users, and the soon­er the com­pa­ny com­plete­ly aban­dons this design, the bet­ter. How­ev­er, it may turn out that the com­pa­ny is work­ing on a new ver­sion of the Mac­Book Air mod­el, and this would be good news. The minia­ture light­weight lap­top has not received updates for a long time, while it remains one of the most pop­u­lar and afford­able mod­els. Poten­tial­ly, the release could take place in the first half of the year, how­ev­er, if the sit­u­a­tion does not change, then it will have to be post­poned. It is also not yet known whether the com­pa­ny plans to aban­don the touch­bar, since this fea­ture has not gained much pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Head­phones

Accord­ing to Apple ana­lyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the com­pa­ny is also devel­op­ing a pre­mi­um mod­el of Blue­tooth head­phones, and the release is sched­uled for the first half of 2020. Some rumors report­ed that the head­phones would not be in-ear, but over­head, some­thing akin to beats.

In addi­tion, Apple’s announced wire­less charg­er nev­er saw the light of day. How­ev­er, the release is still pend­ing. How­ev­er, again, accord­ing to the rumors, the device will be small, unlike the one that was pre­sent­ed at the event. Air­Pow­er was designed to charge mul­ti­ple devices at the same time: smart­phone, head­phones, watch, etc. The nov­el­ty will be designed exclu­sive­ly for charg­ing one device.

Source: Ars Tech­ni­ca

Oper­at­ing Sys­tems

iOS and iPad OS 14 are expect­ed at the annu­al glob­al devel­op­er con­fer­ence, that is, in June 2020. Even a leaked ver­sion of the oper­at­ing sys­tem has leaked online, reveal­ing some details, includ­ing a new fit­ness app, track­pad sup­port for tablets, and more.

WatchOS 7 is also expect­ed at the same event and is rumored to include sleep and blood oxy­gen track­ing capa­bil­i­ties. The func­tions will, of course, be intend­ed for new Apple Watch mod­els.

Sim­i­lar­ly, an update is planned for tvOS for Apple stream­ing con­soles and macOS 10.16 for lap­tops and desk­top com­put­ers. But noth­ing more is known.

Fall 2020

iPhone 12

The iPhone line­up in 2020 should also be replen­ished with new devices. Accord­ing to the leaks, 5G net­work sup­port is planned for the iPhone. Apple plans to also add a main ToF cam­era for 3D sup­port. In addi­tion, it is pos­si­ble that all new smart­phones will receive OLED pan­els, which means that the com­pa­ny will com­plete­ly aban­don LCD screens for its devices. A 5.4‑inch smart­phone is also expect­ed, 6.7 and 6.1‑inch. Most like­ly, two pre­mi­um mod­els and one more afford­able one are planned, that is, approx­i­mate­ly the same com­po­si­tion as we saw in 2019.

Apple Watch Series 6

It’s per­fect­ly log­i­cal to expect a new watch from Apple, espe­cial­ly giv­en the pop­u­lar­i­ty of pre­vi­ous mod­els. The watch is slat­ed to be intro­duced in 2020 and will fea­ture faster per­for­mance, improved water resis­tance, and enhanced Wi-Fi and 4G or 5G capa­bil­i­ties. Also, accord­ing to the details of the new WatchOS 7, a new sleep track­ing app is planned.

Source: Engad­get

Additional releases

Apple TV is a pop­u­lar TV, series, and movie stream­ing con­sole. This device is updat­ed less often than oth­ers, but accord­ing to iOS 13, a new Apple TV mod­el is planned to be released. So far, experts do not know any­thing more about the con­sole.

Anoth­er device that is talked about a lot, but the release is not planned yet. Accord­ing to rumors, Apple is final­ly plan­ning to ditch Intel proces­sors and switch to its own chips. And it should have hap­pened in 2020. There­fore, it is safe to assume that dur­ing the year we will still see a new Mac, or at least learn about the com­pa­ny’s plans. Apple is already mak­ing its own chips for the iPhone and is also adding T2 proces­sors to some of its lap­tops.

These are far from all the devices that are talked about. Among the rumors, one can sin­gle out aug­ment­ed real­i­ty glass­es, that is, a more per­fect ana­logue of the failed Google Glass. Apple is already work­ing on the project and the glass­es should get a dis­play, a proces­sor and their own rOS oper­at­ing sys­tem. The project has not yet been offi­cial­ly announced, and no one will be sur­prised if the release does not take place, since the project is very ambi­tious.

Anoth­er equal­ly promis­ing project is the Apple Car, an elec­tric car from the com­pa­ny. Of course, this release is sur­round­ed by a lot of rumors, and the exact stage of devel­op­ment is not yet clear. It is also said that the com­pa­ny plans to cre­ate soft­ware for cars. This release is planned between 2023 and 2025.

2020 has already become a very prob­lem­at­ic year for vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers, as all pub­lic events, exhi­bi­tions and events had to be can­celled. How­ev­er, this does not mean that mar­ket lead­ers will refuse to release new devices.