Apple’s ‘It’s Glowtime’ Event: How to watch and what to expect

Techtember is finally upon us. Apple is gearing up for a blockbuster event on September 9th, 2024, where they’ll unveil the latest iPhone and Apple Watch models. Since it’s been a decade since the Watch first graced our wrists, expect some juicy Watch updates. But let’s be real—most of us will have our eyes glued to the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro reveal. Don’t be surprised if they throw in some tweaks for the Watch Ultra, Watch SE, and maybe even the AirPods and AirPods Pro. And who knows, we might just get a shiny new Mac Mini to complete the set!

The September event, tagline “It’s Glowtime,” is rumored to be centered around the Silicon Valley giant’s flagship phone offering, which may be upgraded to support artificial intelligence capabilities and improve the phone’s camera.

Apple is gearing up to unveil the iPhone 16, which promises to be their most powerful and camera-savvy phone yet—especially for the Pro models. It’s also set to be the debutant of Apple Intelligence, making it the smartest iPhone in town. The iPhone 16 is rumored to be swapping its camera setup from the diagonal mess of the iPhone 15 to the sleek vertical arrangement of the previous Pro models. According to 9to5Mac, this rearrangement is all about making spatial video recording a reality. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has taken to social media site X to spill the tea: the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are expected to come in a rainbow of colors—black, green, pink, blue, and white.

Besides the iPhone 16 lineup, expect a parade of new watches and AirPods. Apple will also likely showcase more AI wizardry, including the ability to actually comprehend what’s on your screen, plus the cool features introduced at WWDC in June: an upgraded Siri, image generation, AI-powered rewriting, and the magical art of call recording and transcription.

And then there’s the mysterious “glowtime,” which probably refers to the snazzy glow effect that pops up around the screen edges when Siri makes an appearance in the latest iOS 18 betas. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, “glow” is also the secret code name for macOS Sequoia, which might just make its grand entrance around the same time as iOS 18.

Back at WWDC in June, Apple dropped its approach to generative AI—rebranded as Apple Intelligence. It’s the quintessential Apple spin on AI, keeping things compact and tailored to improve your experience, unlike the massive “black box” models from OpenAI and Google. The real test will be seeing how this plays out in practice, as generative AI is always a work in progress.

So, how does this all fit into “Glowtime”? The key lies in Siri’s makeover. Apple’s latest update revamps the old Siri circle into a snazzier glowing border that lights up when Siri is in action. It’s a small change, but it’s meant to make the smart assistant’s presence a bit more… glowing.

Out of all the iPhones ever launched, only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will handle Apple Intelligence. According to Apple, this is due to the limitations of older chips. Given that the non-Pro iPhone 15 models essentially use last year’s chip, Apple’s reasoning is that only one chip has been designed to fully harness Apple Intelligence. You can decide for yourself whether this is a hardware limitation or just a clever marketing ploy.

The event will likely feature the release schedule for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 and macOS Sequoia. The operating system was revealed at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June where Apple showed that the system would integrate Apple Intelligence.

Apple’s event will be live on September 9th at 1PM ET / 10AM PT / 8PM EAT, and TechED Africa will be live blogging all the news. The event will also be livestreamed on YouTube, Apple TV, and Apple’s website.