Apple’s biggest event in years, predicted

Then, thoughts on OpenAI’s new GPT-6 and my reaction to Greg Brockman telling a room full of reporters, “Welcome to the AGI era.” And finally, a useful trick for figuring out whether that Amazon email is real or just another extremely convincing attempt to steal your password.

📅 Calendaring note: Because of the timing of next week’s Apple event, things may be a bit all over the place. But I promise you’ll hear from me with videos and more—maybe more than once! 📅

(OK, fine, it started as our End-of-Summer Sale. BUT IT’S STILL ON!)

Upgrade to an annual subscription for 25% off—just $75 for the whole year.

That’s less than one $9 Apple Polishing Cloth a month.

John Ternus’ turn has come. One day I will stop with this pun. Today is not that day.

This was the new Apple CEO’s first week on the job. Next week is his first major Apple event. And it’s a big one. In an email to employees on his first day, Ternus called it a “huge launch.”

The invitations that went out last week called the event, “Surprise and Shine.” Except thanks to the many reports—most of them from legendary Apple reporter Mark Gurman at Bloomberg—the “surprise” part isn’t exactly looking like it’s going to hold up. Here’s my betting board for next week:

🟢 iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max: These are about as close to a lock as it gets. Expect faster A20 Pro chips, camera upgrades and—far less fun—price increases of up to $200. Unlike in years past, the regular iPhone 18 isn’t expected. I’d bet my dongle collection that Apple keeps the iPhone 17 models around as the “base” iPhones in that usual keynote slide showing the full lineup.

🟢 Foldable iPhone: This will be the star of the show. Apple’s first folding iPhone, reportedly with a roughly 5.5-inch screen on the outside and a 7.8-inch, iPad Mini display when opened. It’s expected to have similar proportions to the new Galaxy Z Fold 8 (which starts around $1,900) and a similar price, if not higher. Word is $2,000 to $2,500. Biggest questions: What is this thing called? And what kind of multitasking support does it have?

🟢 Apple Watch and AirPods: Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 are expected, though the Watch upgrades sound minor, with new chips, possible battery improvements and some health/fitness refinements. Also expect AirPods 5.

🟠 Apple HomePod with Screen: Apple’s long-rumored smart-home hub—a HomePod-ish device with a screen—is reportedly coming sometime before the end of the year. There’s a chance the company could hold this announcement BUT I expect Siri AI, which arrives soon with iOS 27, to be a huge part of next week’s event. And this would be another way to showcase all the improvements. So yes, I’m being bold here and predicting we hear about this.

🔴 AirPods Cameras: Yes, a few weeks ago, Apple made a giant mistake and leaked a video showing the future AirPods with cameras that work with Siri AI. (An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment when the leaked video was released.) But I highly doubt we’ll see these next week. Not only do the reports say no, but this is the kind of product that will require a lot of marketing nuance given the AI and surveillance backlash. I don’t see Apple wanting to distract from the sure bets of the day.

Alright, what did I get wrong? Place your bets and I’ll…absolutely not buy you a new iPhone Fold.

We here at New Things think quite a bit about scams. Remember the book scammer that really got me? Some information about me on the internet is unavoidable (I did write a book!), but other details, like my phone number and address, don’t need their own publicity tour. They leave me more vulnerable to scams, phishing, identity theft, harassment and doxing.

That’s where DeleteMe comes in. The subscription service searches hundreds of data brokers and people-search sites for my personal information and works to remove it. And because those listings can reappear, DeleteMe keeps monitoring and submitting removals throughout the year. Data privacy, unfortunately, is not a one-and-done project.

I receive emailed privacy reports showing exactly how many listings DeleteMe found and removed. The company is based in the U.S., never outsources the removal process to third parties and was recently named Wirecutter’s top data-removal service. 

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AI watchers have spent years anticipating the arrival of AGI like it’s moon landing. The problem? There’s no agreed-upon test for when we’ve actually crossed that line.

AGI, by the way, is artificial general intelligence, or AI that can match humans across a broad range of intellectual tasks.

But on Thursday, at a press briefing for OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-6/Astra, company president Greg Brockman effectively declared that, by his definition, the AGI era has arrived. Except it sounded a bit like midcentury Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous test for what counts as pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Even Brockman acknowledged that “AGI” is more of a vibes thing.

“Everyone has a different definition of AGI,” Brockman acknowledged. “When we started OpenAI, we kind of thought that, oh, there’s going to be this well-defined moment that everyone will recognize as, ‘That’s AGI!’ It hasn’t played out like that. It’s a much more gray, fuzzy thing.” 

Without a doubt, these models can already do some absolutely amazing things, and this new one can do even more. But as Brockman rightly points out, we’ve all been anticipating some blindingly obvious breakthrough in AI’s capabilities, but no one really knows how to call it. And as a slew of tech watchers and AI critics have also been pointing out, AI execs have business reasons, especially ahead of an IPO, to promote their technologies as both transformative (which they clearly are) and inevitable (jury’s out).

For the record, my dog just said AGI is here.

Amazon Scam Check

Amazon famously sends a lot of emails—order confirmations, shipping updates, review requests, etc. But sometimes those emails aren’t actually from Amazon, and now AI has made it easier than ever to send convincing scam communications in massive volumes. Enter: Scamazon™. Our term, but feel free to steal it, Amazon.

To address the problem, Amazon has released a new tool to verify whether a message is real or fake. There are two ways to do this: 

The company says it can provide a “definitive answer” on these messages’ authenticity by using AI to scan the context, timing, metadata, etc. and check it against Amazon’s database. 

Name: Stephen Miller

What's your old thing? Olivetti Valentine 

What year is your old thing from? 1970

Why do you love your old thing? Typewriters like this were cutting-edge communications technology for over 100 years. The QWERTY keyboard arrangement, introduced on typewriters in the 1870s, is the same layout used on smartphones and laptops today. Typewriters were nearly always black. Olivetti's red Valentine was radical and way ahead of Apple's foray into multicolored cellphones.

I wrote a novel, titled “Suzy and the Sidecar,” on this “old thing” in 1973. Recently I brought the book back to life through today's self-publishing platforms, editing software, AI (to assist in cover design only) and audio technologies. We could not have imagined any of these 50+ years ago. 

This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.