Apple’s Exciting March Launch Event: A Wave of Innovative Products Await

We’re less than a fortnight away from Apple’s next big event, and while the lower-key ”Special Apple Experience” the company has in store for next week remains something of a mystery, it may simply be the anchor for an exciting full week of product releases.

The actual event isn’t a big livestream from Apple Park, but one of the company’s boutique-style press briefings. Select members of the media have been invited to attend in three cities — New York, London, and Shanghai — to see whatever it is the company plans to show off. The blogosphere has been rife with speculation on exactly what that might be, from a teaser of the new Gemini-powered Siri to Immersive F1 on Vision Pro.

While some January rumors pointed to a Siri reveal event, that was before reports of more Siri setbacks appeared. It’s still possible Apple might provide a teaser to the press, but the global nature of these briefings makes us skeptical, since the new Siri improvements are likely to follow the same phased regional and language rollouts that Apple Intelligence did, and it’s unlikely Shanghai will be at the top of that list.

An Immersive F1 unveiling seems even more unlikely for the same reason. Granted, Apple is about to kick off its F1 streaming schedule, so the timing is right, but as big of a coup as that F1 deal was for Apple, it’s 100% US-only; even Canadian racing fans aren’t getting in on the fun. Immersive MLS might make more sense, but we’ve heard no reports of Apple working on that, and the equipment needed to record these games makes it difficult for something like this to be done without a few hints leaking out.

We always leave room for Apple to surprise us, but it’s seeming more likely that the briefings will be mostly about giving members of the media hands-on time with new products. We already know that Apple has quite a few things waiting in the wings, but in this week’s Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman appears to have nailed down a list of what he’s calling a “three-day flurry of announcements” that will precede an event to show off the physical products.

What to Expect Next Week

The biggest question mark is what Apple is working on that’s special enough to justify flying members of the press into its offices in New York, London, and Shanghai. After all, we know the iPhone 17e and “iPad 12” are just around the corner, but those aren’t expected to be revolutionary designs. If you’ve held an iPhone 16e or iPad 11, you probably won’t even notice the difference in the newer models, as we’re talking about spec bumps and the possible addition of MagSafe to the budget iPhone.

The iPhone 17e, iPad 12, and M4 iPad Air

There’s little doubt the iPhone 17e is imminent. In fact, some expected it to launch last week on February 19 — one year after its predecessor. That obviously didn’t happen, but Gurman acknowledges it’s not a big enough deal for the March 4 event, and suggests it could actually come sooner, possibly just to clear the deck for next week.

The same can be said for the 12th-generation iPad, which is expected to boast a new A18 chip with Apple Intelligence support, but little else, and the M4 iPad Air which will likely also be as underwhelming as last year’s M3 upgrade. That’s pretty much par for the course for the iPad family these days, which settled into a pretty mundane year-over-year routine after they made a big comeback in early 2024 following an 18-month dry spell.

New MacBooks

We’re also in the unusual position of expecting a refresh of nearly the entire MacBook family, as Apple’s latest M5 chip has come to only a single MacBook, and the more powerful Pro and Max variants are still missing.

The past two M-series MacBook Air refreshes have come during the first week of March, so an M5 MacBook Air debut next week would be right on schedule. However, it could also be joined by the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models, marking the first time in the Apple silicon generation that the flagship variants have debuted alongside the more affordable version.

Still, while the chips inside these Macs will be a nice upgrade, these aren’t fundamental redesigns; those will come later this year with the M6 variants, which are finally expected to make the move to OLED screens. The real wildcard here — and the one that’s most likely to justify press time — is the new low-cost MacBook that’s been rumored since last spring.

Beyond just being a boon to education and enterprise, this new MacBook stands to represent a fundamental new chapter in Apple history. Not only will it resurrect a third tier in the MacBook family for the first time since 2015, but it will also fill in what’s essentially been a blank space, unifying all of Apple’s three biggest product families.

The last time we saw a suffixless MacBook introduced was in 2015 in the form of an ultra-portable 12-inch model that felt more like an attempt to relive the glory of the original 2008 MacBook Air than an attempt at a budget model.