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I'm calling it: No spring Apple event this year

Statistically speaking, if you're counting on a big April Apple announcement, you're in for a disappointment. Probably.
Written by David Gewirtz, Senior Contributing Editor
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In the past ten years, Apple has only held two product launch events in April. The most recent was seven years ago, when Apple gave held its iPhone 4 "sneak peak." Before that, you have to go all the way back to 2007 for another April event.

While there's still a statistical chance, based on Apple's history of launch events, that it will hold a spring event this year, it's now vanishingly small. Apple has only once, ever, announced a spring Apple event after April 1.

Based on my analysis, then, I'm calling it. Don't expect a big product announcement event this spring. It ain't happening. Of course, I'm basing my statements solely on a relatively finite data set, and Apple can do whatever it wants, so I could be wrong. That said, those of you hoping desperately for a new, big announcement to fill in the gaps in Apple's product line will probably be terribly disappointed.

So what happens now?

Well, Apple just issued a press release update for its base iPad that seems to be a replacement for the iPad Air. Apple also announced a (PRODUCT)RED edition of the iPhone 7, along with a new way to share video clips.

Apple has announced products solely by press release before, most notably for the 21.5-inch 4K iMac introduced in October of 2015. So there's still a chance for those of you hoping that Apple will not bequeath the entire commercial desktop computing business to Microsoft through its apparent apathy or unwillingness to update its Mac product line beyond its problematic MacBook Pro offerings from last fall.

Problems for professionals

If you're a professional, Apple's lack of attention to its pro-level products should worry you. Here's a quick rundown.

The Mac Pro: The Mac Pro, which ZDNet described as a desktop mainframe, was released in December 2013 and hasn't been updated since. For those counting, that was 39 months ago. Apple has been radio silent on the Mac Pro since then. The company still sells that model.

If you want a top-of-the-line machine (and by this I mean a machine that was top-of-the-line back in the days of the iPhone 5c), you're looking at a price tag of over nine thousand dollars. No discount. Yowzah.

The Mac mini: The Mac mini was last updated in October 2014. ZDNet was unimpressed, calling it "new, improved, and slower" compared to previous models. Many pros use Mac minis as workhorse machines for a wide variety of activities. That last, slower Mac mini was released exactly 900 days ago.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro: While the 9.7-inch iPad Pro was released just about a year ago, the big 12.9-inch iPad Pro is showing its age. In a world where iPhones and most iPads get refreshes every year, the biggest, baddest iPad Pro is now more than 72 weeks old.

Is this the beginning of the end for serious pro Apple users?

Keep an eye out for Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference coming in June. That will probably be the next time you're able to get a good indication of where Apple stands when it comes to pro-level users.

For now, those of us who use Apple products for more than playing casual games and emoting emojis have a lot to be concerned about.

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