We don’t expect any new hardware until September, but software and services march on in August.
We’re in the doldrums between the big announcements and software betas of WWDC and the yearly September iPhone and Apple Watch announcements. August is not often a big month for Apple releases, and this year is no exception. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any thing new from Apple in August! With so many services and big software releases in beta, Apple still has some stuff going on in August. Here are all the things we expect Apple to release over the course of the month. We don’t expect any new hardware releases at all in August. But then, we didn’t expect anything in July either, and Apple surprise-launched the MagSafe Battery Pack in the middle of the month. So you can never be too sure. In recent months, Apple has released its new 24-inch iMac, iPad Pro, an updated Apple TV 4K, and AirTag. Everyone expected Apple to announce new higher-end MacBook Pros and a Mac mini with updated Apple Silicon (perhaps the M1X chip) at WWDC in June. That didn’t happen, and now we don’t know what is coming up next or when it’s coming. Apple still has a lot of stuff coming this year—new iPhones and Apple Watches, of course, but also new Macs, and maybe new AirPods, iPad mini, and more. We have a rundown of everything still to come in 2021, but based on the latest rumors, we shouldn’t expect anything until September. So while it’s possible that AirPods or a new iPad could pop up randomly on Apple.com in August, it should be a quiet month until the major launches kick off in September. Apple released iOS 14.7 on July 19, and a small 14.7.1 bugfix and security update a week later. There have been no iOS 14.8 beta releases, nor macOS 11.6 or any other point-release. Unless something unusual pops up, it’s likely that the iOS 14 branch will effectively end (barring important security releases) and the next big software release will be iOS and iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, tvOS 15, and watchOS 8 this fall. Those are likely to be released in September. Through the month of August we can probably expect one or two major beta updates along the way.
