Apple event – live: AirPods 3, new MacBook Pro, Apple Music voice discount and more products unveiled

This is how the new Apple AirPods line up will look, and how much they’ll cost.

Some news about AirPods, which Tim Cook claims are now the most popular headphones in the world.

AirPods will now support spatial audio to “create something truly multi-dimensional”, offering “a whole new way to experience music”.

It works with AirPods Pro And AirPods Max.

You can read more about Apple’s new Voice Plan for its Music streaming service here.

First up is former Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, who appears to have fully swallowed the iPill by transitioning from Apple Music host to product unveiler. He introduces a new Voice Plan for Apple Music, which will be available across 16 countries.

After an intense build-up that felt like flying at warp speed through space, a much more sedate opening video is here to launch the event.

It’s a man in a garage making music from sounds made by Apple devices and software. Mac startup sound, iPod wheel scrolling, all providing a soundtrack building up to... Tim Cook.

“We’re focussing on two important areas: Music and the Mac,” he says

“Apple has forever changed the way people listen to and create music.”

With just a minute to go, the live stream for the Apple Unleashed event is here.

You can find it at the top of this page.

Previous Apple events suggest that most products announced at today’s event will likely be made available to pre-order immediately and ship before the end of next week.

This pattern could be complicated, however, by a global component shortage and logistics issues that have already impacted the roll out of the iPhone 13, which was unveiled last month.

Apple has been forced to slash production of its latest iPhone due to a lack of chips, with reports suggesting that the tech giant may end up selling 10 million units less than anticipated. You can find out more about it here:

One of the rumours ahead of today’s Apple event involved a major upgrade for the AirPods headphones.

According to a report in the The Wall Street Journal last week, Apple is looking at ways to make next-generation AirPods read your body temperature, improve your hearing and even help fix your posture.

It’s not clear if or when such an upgrade might come, though the report warns that the new features aren’t expected to come until some point next year.

You can read more about the latest AirPod rumours right here.

With less than an hour to go until show time, we thought we’d take the chance to give a quick plug for our IndyTech newsletter. It comes out on Tuesdays, so you’ll be able to read all the analysis from today’s event tomorrow, together with all the latest tech news.

You can sign up to the free weekly newsletter by clicking right here and scroll down to the tech icon.

After Apple ditched Intel chips and switched to its own in-house hardware for its Mac computers, the CEO of the processor giant has said he hasn’t given up on supplying Tim Cook’s company in the future.

“What I have to do is create a better chip than they can do themselves. I would hope to win back this piece of their business, as well as many other pieces of business, over time,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a new episode of Axios on HBO.

“In the meantime, I got to make sure that our products are better than theirs, that my ecosystem is more open and vibrant than theirs, and we create more compelling reason for developers and users to land on Intel-based products. So, I’m going to fight hard to win Tim’s business in this area.”