Apple held its “Surprise and Shine” product event on September 9, 2026, marking John Ternus’s first keynote as chief executive after Tim Cook shifted to executive chairman on September 1. The company introduced a redesigned Siri AI assistant, a new A20 Pro chip built on TSMC’s 2-nanometer process, the iPhone 18 lineup, Apple’s first foldable iPhone Duo, AirPods 5, and Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4.
Siri AI represents Apple’s biggest rework of its assistant since 2011. It runs on an architecture that blends on-device models with Private Cloud Compute for heavier requests, and is powered by Google’s Gemini technology under a deal reportedly worth about $1 billion a year. The assistant can hold conversations, reference what is on screen, and take actions across more than 300,000 third-party apps without requiring users to re-explain context. It ships in beta starting this month on devices set to a supported region, but Apple confirmed it will not work on any iPhone or iPad in the European Union at launch.
Apple also detailed the A20 Pro, calling it the fastest chip ever put into an iPhone. It is the first smartphone chip built on TSMC’s 2-nanometer process. The six-core CPU is up to 20% faster than the A19 Pro, the seven-core GPU is up to 40% faster, and memory bandwidth is up 50%. The Neural Engine has been doubled to 32 cores, after three generations at 16 cores, and a new vapor chamber cooling system has triple the surface area of the previous design to sustain heavier AI workloads.
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max keep 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch displays, respectively, with Black, Silver, Glacier, and Burgundy finishes. The Pro starts at $1,199 with 256GB, and the Pro Max starts at $1,299, a $100 increase from the corresponding iPhone 17 Pro models. Battery life is up to 24 hours on the Pro and up to 30 hours on the Pro Max.
Apple’s first foldable, the iPhone Duo, pairs a 5.5-inch cover display with a 7.8-inch inner screen. It starts at $1,999 for 256GB and climbs to roughly $3,000 for the 2TB model. The Duo uses Touch ID instead of Face ID, is the first iPhone to support the Apple Pencil, and will not reach stores until October, a month after the rest of the lineup.
iOS 27 arrives September 14 and supports devices back to the iPhone 11 and second-generation iPhone SE, though Siri AI and Apple Intelligence features are limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and newer. AirPods 5 start at $129, or $149 with wireless charging, and add active noise cancellation to the entry-level model. Apple shares were down about 1.5% following the event.
