Apple's September 9 'Surprise and Shine' event preview: new CEO Ternus debuts, with a foldable iPhone and an AI-first Siri on stage

First, why this event carries an era-defining weight. In late August 2026, Tim Cook — who led Apple for over a decade — handed over to John Ternus, a hardware-engineering veteran known for steering the Mac chip transition; on his first day as CEO, Apple shares rose 3% against a falling Nasdaq, and Wall Street has high hopes for the product-obsessed executive. The consensus is that Ternus's first job is not sales but fixing Apple's AI gap: over the past two years, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft sprinted ahead on large models, while Apple Intelligence drew criticism for being 'early to the party, late to the dance' — Siri's intelligence lags ChatGPT and Gemini, and even former Apple executives publicly admitted the company has 'fallen seriously behind' in AI. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management says Ternus's most urgent task is talent — attracting top AI engineers. The September 9 event is his first public answer sheet on Apple's AI roadmap.

On the product side, the star is Apple's long-rumored first foldable iPhone. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and multiple outlets agree Apple will unveil it at this event, possibly branded 'iPhone Ultra' — positioned above the Pro Max with a book-style horizontal fold and a roughly 7.8-inch inner display, aimed at productivity and big-screen experiences. It will not be cheap: analysts expect a starting price above $2,000 and constrained initial supply. Alongside it, the regular-upgrade iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are expected with a next-gen A20 Pro chip, a thinner body and a new Dark Cherry color option. Notably, the base iPhone 18 is reportedly being held back until early 2027 for a separate launch — Apple wants the Pro-first strategy to drive demand for its highest-margin models. The Verge also notes that a DRAM shortage-driven memory price surge may push the whole iPhone 18 line higher — 'iPhones are about to get more expensive' is becoming a certainty of 2026.

But the real headline inside the headline is Siri AI, Apple's great hope. Apple already teased at WWDC 2026 that iOS 27 brings a completely rewritten Siri — no longer a weather fetcher but a generative-AI personal assistant: it understands on-screen content (Screen Awareness), handles multi-turn complex conversations, helps draft and polish text, generates and edits images, and executes tasks across apps. Multiple outlets note that this Siri will for the first time genuinely match the experience of ChatGPT and Gemini — and its differentiator is deep system integration: Siri can reach every app and piece of data on your iPhone, something no third-party assistant can do. On stage, Ternus is expected to lean on extensive live demos to prove the polish of 'Apple-style AI': not just another chatbot, but an agent living inside the operating system. For developers, iOS 27's Siri AI also means new App Intents and AI capability interfaces — apps can hand their functions to Siri, adding a fresh variable to the app ecosystem.

Beyond the iPhone and Siri, the supporting cast is substantial. Apple Watch is expected to see Series 12 and Ultra 4: rumored upgrades include stronger health sensors (blood-pressure trend monitoring, blood-glucose risk alerts), longer battery life, brighter displays, and a new titanium finish for Ultra 4. AirPods 5 will arrive as the new flagship earbuds, rumored to add health monitoring like heart rate and body temperature while pairing with Siri AI for more natural voice interaction — the camera-equipped AirPods Ultra reportedly remains in the pipeline, possibly until 2027. A new-chip Apple TV and a smart-home hub (a rumored 7-inch-screen HomePad with Siri AI and facial recognition) may also appear or get teased. Macworld calls this September 'Apple's most important month in years' — a new CEO, the biggest OS updates in years, the first foldable iPhone and an all-new AI Siri, with every pent-up strategic card laid on the table at once. For consumers, the real question is not specs but whether Apple can prove, once again, the value of tight software-hardware integration in the AI age.

Seen against the AI backdrop of 2026, Apple's position is intriguing: it is the world's most profitable consumer-electronics company, yet OpenAI, Google and even Meta have stolen the AI narrative; it has the most loyal user ecosystem and the strongest in-house chip capability, yet Siri AI has failed to deliver on the 'intelligent assistant' promise. September 9's 'Surprise and Shine' is, at its core, Apple's collective answer: the foldable iPhone proves hardware innovation is alive, Siri AI shows the software and AI gap is being closed, and the new CEO signals a company willing to reinvent itself. Of course, one event cannot fix everything — AI talent attrition, the frontier-model gap, and whether 'Apple-style AI' truly wins over users all need time. But for hundreds of millions of Apple users worldwide, tomorrow night (1 a.m. Beijing time on September 10) is worth staying up for: this could be Apple's most information-dense fall event in a decade.