These are my predictions for the next few years of Apple’s hardware roadmap. I don’t have any insider knowledge, it’s purely based on my best guess of Apple’s strategy. I wrote these down on June 15, 2024 right after WWDC24.
We just wrapped up WWDC ‘24, and saw a preview of Apple’s next year of OS updates. This gives us some hints of the direction they’re thinking…
Already released, this is a first gen product.
Already released, everyone was surprised these devices jumped to M4. I suspect this was done for longevity as I don’t think we’ll see new iPads again until 2026. The M4 might also play a large role in the thermal efficiency required to achieve the thin design.
We’ll get an iPhone 16 Pro with focus on internal components to sell the AI story. This will be the final revision of this design series.
We’ll get a significantly revised Apple Watch Series X. It will feature a longer screen so you can see part of your Smart Stack on your watch face and tap the top card by pinching whenever you glance at it. It will also feature an upgraded processor to support Apple Intelligence.
This year’s focus is going to be software, particularly multimodal AI which combines visual, text, and audio signals into one model.
The Vision Pro is going to play a large role in the multimodal AI story. While we won’t see a new hardware revision, we’ll see a large jump in the product’s capabilities by giving Apple Intelligence access to your vision. In lieu of a new hardware revision, we might get a new Pencil-like accessory instead.
We’ll get new AirPods Pro with a focus on features to further drive the multimodal AI story. As a side effect, these will also make them even better as hearing aid replacements. Lower confidence, but it might also have some basic health features, like heart rate monitoring, that will be most useful for iPhone and Vision users who don’t also wear a Watch.
A major iPhone redesign inspired by the M4 iPad to help keep sales up after 2024’s upgrade super cycle. According to rumors, this will be much thinner and minimize the notch with an under-screen FaceID system. It will have the same dual-layered OLED screen as the iPad Pro.
I don’t expect any new iPad revision this year.
We might not see a Watch revision for the first time. Or it will be a minor spec bump if there is.
This is the year Apple’s headset strategy really kicks off and we move on from the current dev kit.
We’ll get a lightweight pair of AR glasses with the multimodal AI as the primary use case. Guessing a $2500 starting price point, with upsells for more storage and cellular connectivity. Alternatively if high quality AR glasses aren’t technologically viable yet, we’ll get a lighter Vision Air optimized for entertainment use cases.
The iPad’s will get a spec bump up to M6, but no major changes.
This year will see a major upgrade in the iPhone’s camera quality to drive the upgrade story. It will also play nicely with the continued focus on multimodal AI and visual perception.
Larger internal spec bump but no design changes. If Apple can figure out more health sensors, this will be the year to add them.
This is the year we start seeing the next decade of hardware designs.
Second generation of Apple Vision Pro will be released! It will be lighter, faster, etc. and focus on the prosumer productivity uses. It will also bring optional cellular connectivity to the Vision Pro line for streaming content on trains.
We’ll also get a major iPad redesign! I suspect we’ll get a foldable iPad display, hence why the obsession with ultra thin was so important.
I’m not sure what, but I suspect we’ll get some wearable update this year.
I’m really stretching at this point, but I think these are reasonable guesses for what we’ll see 4 years from now.
A whole new redesign with foldable screen comes to the iPhone!
A new Apple Glasses generation will help revise the shortcomings of the first generation and go more mainstream.
Assuming Glasses are accepted as “cool”, the iPad line will become more niche as their use cases will get subsumed by the foldable iPhone and Glasses lines. This fluid transition of use cases between product lines is also a large reason why Apple has not allowed the iPadOS and visionOS software to diverge too much from iOS.