From the Editor’s Desk: Let’s ’Unpack’ this folding phone trend
- feb
- 16
A new iPhone is almost a sure thing this March, but it's definitely not going to be able to fold.
It's hard to believe that we're already halfway through February. If we're lucky, Apple will hold an event within a month to unveil the much talked about iPhone 9 and maybe a new iPad Pro and those Apple Tags we've been hearing so much about.
There are some major staffing problems with the supply chain in China that may affect whether Apple actually has an event in March or not. If we're not invited to Steve Jobs Theatre in Cupertino next month, we're predicting Apple may just roll out products throughout the month, so we're still betting we'll see that new iPhone 9, no matter what.
Early this week, the entire iMore team did something we've never done before; we started a Discord chat and asked all of you to join us as we watched Samsung's Unpacked event life. It was a blast and a really fun way for all of us to get to know all of you a little better. We'll definitely be doing this again in the near future, so please join our Discord and we'll let you know when our next live chat takes place.
We won't be live chatting in Discord for Mobile World Congress (MWC), unfortunately, because the GSMA canceled it due to rising concerns surrounding the Coronavirus. We're disappointed to see this major tech conference skip this year, but we understand that it's better to be safe than sorry under the circumstances.
As far as how the Unpacked event went, most of us were pretty lukewarm on what Samsung announced. Except for that Z Flip. I don't know about you, but I'm in love with this design and hope Apple will make one like it in the future. I know, I know. Foldable phones are still years from being ready for Apple to join the fold (sorry), but I'm looking forward to how its design team will perfect the market.
If you didn't already see it, you should definitely check out Jonathan Morrison's video where he actually manages to kill a Mac Pro with 1.5TB of RAM by opening 6,000 Chrome tabs. It's quite a spectacle.
Though a March event may be up in the air right now, Apple did already launch something big in the education initiative department this week: Swift Playgrounds for Mac. Apple analyst Rene Ritchie interviewed Sharon O'Mara, Senior Director of Education Marketing Programs at Apple about why bringing Swift Playgrounds to Mac for free is so important to helping kids learn to code. I'd like to add that it's also a big deal for us grown-ups that never learned to code in school, too.
Thanks for stopping by!
- Lory Gil, Managing Editor