“Apple has sent out press invitations for an October 16 media event, teasing with the tag line ‘It’s been way too long,'” J. M. Manness writes for Seeking Alpha. “Undoubtedly this will be to announce new iPads and the new version of Mac OS X dubbed Yosemite.”
“There will be new Air and Mini iPads announced, both with the new A8 processor, and Touch ID, Apple’s fingerprint authentication system. Surely there will be other new hardware features, but these will be the main ones,” Manness writes. “Look for Apple to announce that the iPad Air has an A8X chip, the ‘X’ signifying beefed up Graphics Processing Unit with more processing cores.”
“Apple will undoubtedly discuss the new Mac OS, including a demo of its Handoff feature. They will announce the release date, and perhaps some updates to their iWork suite,” Manness writes. “The most important of the new services to be announced is Apple Pay. I anticipate an announcement that it will be going live soon – most likely by the end of this month… [Also] look for a major presentation on [the Apple+IBM] partnership. Remember, this was an iPad initiative, so I would be very surprised if it did not play a significant role. Look for guest appearance by IBM folks and brief demos of some of the new ‘enterprise solutions.’ Expect them to be very impressive. They will bring out the best of the best here and wow the audience.”
Manness writes, “Look for a very major presentation of gaming. If Apple has indeed used an A8X chip then the performance should be stupendous – very close to a game console. They might also bring out some other graphic uses such as scientific or medical imaging… Look for a major announcement on the Apple TV, with an A7 or A8 chip, HomeKit built in, and its own App Store. HomeKit is for certain. I give the upgrade and App Store 70% probability. This, to my mind, would be one of the most significant moves on Apple’s part, and open up a whole new revenue stream, while bringing more hard core users into the ecosystem.
Much more in the full article here.