For the first time in over a decade, someone other than Tim Cook ran an Apple keynote yesterday, and he saved the biggest reveal for almost an hour in.

We watched it last evening so you didn’t have to. This was the first Apple keynote in over a decade where Tim Cook wasn’t the one walking us through the big reveals. That job now belongs to John Ternus, and yesterday was his big debut as CEO addressing its major product launch from Apple headquarters in Cupertino. Cook did pop up for a cameo, in what felt like a clear passing-of-the-torch moment, but this was Ternus’s show.

Ternus set out his stall up front, emphasising that privacy is at the heart of everything Apple does – this is “personal intelligence that’s actually personal”, and private, he insisted. Whether it runs on-device or in the private cloud, there was no ambiguity about where your data goes compared to “other players”, he said. It’s clearly the line Apple wants to be recognised for under this new leadership, and it set the tone for much of the keynote.

iPhone still at Apple’s core

Two new phones anchored the lineup: the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. They keep the same design language as last year’s Pro models, though this time round Apple’s added four new finishes to choose from: black, light blue, glacier (a silvery tone), and burgundy.

Under the hood, both phones get the new A20 Pro chip, which is Apple’s first built on a 2-nanometre process. It packs a 6-core CPU, split between two performance cores and four efficiency cores, alongside a 7-core GPU that Apple says delivers 40pc faster graphics, plus a second Neural Engine, all in service of what the company is billing as its most AI-capable iPhone yet.

Battery life gets a bump too: the Pro now matches what the Pro Max managed last year, while the new Pro Max itself stretches to a claimed 30 hours. On price, in the US, the iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 for 256GB, and the Pro Max starts at $1,299, also for 256GB. European pricing to follow.

‘Digital negative’ for the AI-skeptical era

As the whole world of photojournalism becomes fraught with doubts over the veracity of photos, it was interesting that Apple introduced a Reference Image feature in its IOS 27, which Ternus describes as akin to a “digital negative” of the original image. In practice, it works by attaching metadata to a photo that certifies the image hasn’t been AI-generated or altered. This feature will not initally be available in Europe and China.

On the lens itself, the photography enthusiasts will love that the variable aperture was confirmed on the iPhone 18 Pro line, although not on the Duo. Ternus had teased the move that morning with a cryptic post on X.

The new Apple Watch lineup leaned all-in on health this year, with the Series 12 and Ultra 4 both clearly built around that theme. The new Watch can use its microphone and other sensors to generate an AI recap of your day, and offer a ‘readiness’ reading of what you are ready to take on, in an echo of a popular feature of another popular wearable, the Oura ring.

The slow reveal – the foldable

However, it was almost an hour into the presentation before the iPhone Duo even got a mention, long enough that commentators on social media started openly wondering whether it was going to happen at all. But then it dropped almost as an afterthought: the moment everyone had been waiting for, the long-awaited iPhone Duo, Apple’s shiny new foldable phone.

Open it up and, Apple says, you’re holding the thinnest iPhone it has ever made. It has two screens sharing the same aspect ratio, so that whatever you’re looking at scales between them without distortion. Closed, the outer display measures 5.4 inches and covers 90pc of the screen area you’d get on an iPhone 18 Pro. Open it out and the inner display grows to 7.6 inches. Both screens are Super Retina XDR with ProMotion, Always On, and a peak outdoor brightness of 3,000 nits, and the inner display has a nano-texture finish that cuts down on glare and makes the crease down the middle less noticeable.

The body is built from grade 5 titanium, with Ceramic Shield protecting the back and the tougher Ceramic Shield 2 on the front, which Apple rates as three times more scratch-resistant than the previous generation. It’s rated IP68 for splash, water, and dust resistance.

Rather than Face ID, Touch ID is built into the side button, and you can also unlock the phone with your Apple Watch. The hinge alone is made up of more than 100 components, and there’s no physical SIM tray anywhere so it’s eSIM-only wherever you buy it.

It runs on the same A20 Pro chip as the 18 Pro line, on that same 2-nanometre process, with a 6-core CPU that Apple says is up to 20pc faster than the A19 Pro, a 7-core GPU that’s up to 40pc faster, and a new dual 16-core Neural Engine offering double the on-device AI compute of the previous generation.

To keep all that cool, the Duo pairs the chip with a custom vapour chamber, and it runs on a dual-battery setup, one battery on each side, working together as a single pool. Apple claims up to 31 hours of video playback if you’re mostly using the inner display, up to 44 hours on the outer display, and up to 24 hours if you’re using both about equally. It also charges quickly, reaching 50pc in around 20 minutes over a cable, or about 30 minutes wirelessly with MagSafe or Qi2.

On the camera, there’s a 48MP main sensor with an integrated optical-quality 2x telephoto built in, so there’s no separate telephoto lens to speak of. It can shoot at the full 48MP or default to 24MP, and it’s paired with a 48MP ultra-wide, the same ultra-wide sensor used on the 18 Pro.

A new camera sits beneath the inner display to handle FaceTime calls. There are also a few software tricks that only make sense because of the fold. Smart Take automatically captures a photo the moment everyone in frame is posing, Duo Preview puts a live preview on the outer screen so whoever’s being photographed can check their own framing, and Duo FaceTime lets someone else join a call from the outer display.

On the software side, it runs iOS 27, specifically version 27.1 adapted for the Duo, with the interface rearranged to make sense of the fold, and a new Split View mode that lets two apps sit side by side on an iPhone for the first time.

Apple Playbook

“The foldable launch is straight out of Apple’s playbook: wait for the product to work out its kinks and for the market to offer glimpses of viability, then enter and shape the category,” said VP, Principal Analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee. “Remember the Apple Watch? The difference is that foldables still represent a minuscule share of the smartphone market.

“The test of Apple’s ambition will be whether it can expand that niche into a meaningful new segment. Otherwise, the foldable risks becoming a premium-priced ornament in the portfolio, imparting badge value but not meaningful growth. The difference is that a foldable plugs directly into Apple’s extraordinarily well-established iPhone ecosystem, giving it a considerably better shot at commercial success.”

The Duo comes in two colours, star white and night sky, and starts at €2,369. It will be available for pre-order on 16 October in 70 countries and regions including Ireland, the UK, the US, France and Germany.

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