Apple event tidbits: $799 iPad Pro price, always-on ‘Hey Siri’, ‘tvOS’ details
We've already run down most of what we're expecting from the new iPad Pro, iPad mini 4, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, Apple Watch bands, and the new gold Apple Watch Sport colors expected to be announced at Apple's September 9th event.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two days out from the keynote, the picture is firming up: reports had already pointed to an iPad Pro debuting September 9 with November shipping alongside a refreshed iPad mini, and yesterday's full 'Hey Siri' event roundup tied together upgraded iPhone 6s models, a revamped Apple TV, and Apple Watch updates. What's new here is the two most concrete data points yet — a $799 starting price for iPad Pro and confirmation that 'Hey Siri' goes always-on.
The $799 figure matters because it puts the Pro tier in laptop price territory before any accessories, making this the moment Apple's tablet line stops being a single ladder and becomes a segmented family — a structure the following years would keep extending, down to a smaller Pro model at the March 2016 event and up through the mini-LED Pro refresh previewed in 2021.
First-order effects
- Buyers face a three-way iPad choice for the first time in this cycle — mini 4, existing iPad, and a $799 Pro — so the purchase decision shifts from size to intended use, with the Pro pitched above casual consumption.
- An always-on 'Hey Siri' changes invocation from button-and-plug-in to continuous listening, putting Siri front-of-house on iPhone 6s and iPad rather than behind a physical trigger.
Second-order effects
- A $799 Pro tier pressures Apple's own lineup: the mini 4 and standard iPad now need distinct identities against a sibling that costs roughly double, forcing clearer software and positioning separation.
- Continuous-listening Siri invites privacy scrutiny of the microphone's duty cycle — a question that attaches to every always-on assistant feature Apple ships across iPhone and iPad.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the 'Pro' label becomes a permanent premium stratum rather than a one-off experiment — the corpus shows the tier surviving, shrinking (9.7-inch), and gaining display technology upgrades over the following six years.
- Always-on voice activation points toward assistants as ambient hardware defaults, where the differentiator moves from whether a device listens to what it does with what it hears — and regulators eventually take interest in the former.
The trend: Apple's September keynotes have become the annual mechanism for stratifying its product lines into good/better/best tiers, with iPad Pro's $799 entry the founding data point of the premium tablet segment.