An Apple Watch refresh is also expected.

The September 9 event will be its first under new chief executive John Ternus, formerly the tech giant’s head of hardware engineering.

Ternus, 51, is set to take over from the long-serving Tim Cook, 65, on September 1.

Apple surprised earlier this week by announcing new Mac Studio and Mac Mini models that can be pre-ordered now for shipping on September 22.

The new Mini starts at $1799 with the all-new M6 chip or from $3400 with the M5 Pro, while the larger, higher-specced Mac Studio is priced from $4999.

Big performance boosts are promised for the age of AI. Apple says the M5 Pro-powered Mini will deliver up to 8.5 times faster LLM (large language model) in LM Studio compared to a Mini with the M2 Pro, and up to 4.5 times gains in rendering complex graphics.

But as outgoing CEO Cook warned earlier this year, the data centre-boom-driven “Ramageddon” is being felt by Apple, as it is across the industry.

Boosting the Mini’s included 16GB of memory to 24GB costs $400, a bump to 32GB $800.

Upgrading from the standard 256GB of storage to 1TB (1000GB) will cost $1000, while a boost to 2TB will cost $2000.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.