Other How do you think Apple is going to maintain a foldable, 20th Anniversary, and flip?

[thadoggfather]

I could see the 20th anniversary being a one time edition in 2027.

and speculatively the Air 2 will take the place of the regular iPhone model in 2026 with a reduced entry point price, and with a staggered release of regular iPhone 18 in spring 2027 but... are they also going to juggle regular/ Pro / Pro max WITH foldable and flip every year moving forward after 2028 when they've both been released in 1st gen form?

Or will foldable and flip be every other year?

Seems crazy to think they'll have:
regular
pro
pro max
air as of now will probably be on chopping block by then like mini and plus, UNLESS price is main issue and it getting demoted to entry level place with more cameras / better speaker, etc. will make sales soar since entry level slot always does well with the tech 'normies'
foldable
flip
some e edition in the background?

EVEN more choices to decide between. Seems crazy to think about. Equally, introducing new form factors every year and spending copious R&D and fading them out after a year or two also seems insane.

 

[JPack]

The XX will likely replace the Pro/Max, in other words, Apple’s high volume products.

How did Apple slot the iPhone X? It was a replacement for the iPhone 8. Next year, they came up with XS Max, a replacement for 8 Plus.

 

[deuxani]

From a hardware perspective is one thing, but thinking about the software side of things is where I can't really wrap my head around it. iOS 26 has been a major change and I expect Apple to be busy till iOS 27 to iron out all the bugs. But they already promised a rerelease of Apple Intelligence with a renewed Siri in 2026, probably even for iOS 26.4, so that is going to be coming on top of all the regular iOS 26 work. Then iOS 27 will no doubt introduce new features, giving them even more work.

On top of that.... Apple will be releasing a foldable in 2026! This will run either a fork of iPadOS or iOS or something that merges them both, but it will be something new. The inside screen will be something similar to the iPad Mini and you would expect multitasking and windowing like iPadOS or else what's the point of the almost 8" screen. Then the outside screen will be small, so you would be expecting something like iOS, but different. Both completely new Home and Lock screen layouts, default app designs, etc.

All this is going to be released in less than a year from now..... it's hard to imagine at this point in time.