“In case you missed it, Apple has sent out its annual iPhone event invitation, and as predicted by just about everyone, it’s set to take place on September 12 at the Steve Jobs Theater at the new Apple Park campus,” Michael Simon writes for Macworld

“But while the date isn’t so interesting, the rest of the invitation is. Set against a black background, it features a gold circle with the phrase ‘Gather round’ — as in ‘Gather ‘round y’all, we got some some new iPhones to show ya!'” Simon writes. “But aside from that more literal meaning, Apple could be referring to any number of things with its crypto-vite.”

“Apple could be dropping a hint that it’s also launching a circular watch this year,” Simon writes. “In gold, of course.”

MacDailyNews Take: Nope. (See Take below)

“This event will serve two purposes: announcing all the new stuff and saying goodbye to the Home button once and for all,” Simon writes. “Rumor has it that the iPhone X design is expanding to the rest of the iPhone lineup as well as the iPads, meaning there won’t be any new Apple products that use the iconic button for navigation. It would be a very Apple thing to give the home button a proper goodbye.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Goodbye and good riddance, Home button! iOS is a fluid masterpiece without you.

As for the invitation:

As for round Apple Watches:

Round is wrong. — MacDailyNews, September 9, 2015

Apple Watch Series 4 revealed; massive edge-to-edge display, dense watch face, and more – August 30, 2018

Square displays allow you to do round watch faces, but round watches do not accommodate rectangles or data that’s best presented in rectangles very well. – MacDailyNews, March 12, 2018

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As if the very first question Apple asked themselves in designing the Apple Watch wasn’t “should it be round or square?” No, Apple just chose square without any consideration at all in a reckless act of industrial design neglect. Because this is how Apple works, they never carefully consider anything during the design of their products. Jony Ive just assigns new category products to the newest intern and that’s how it all gets done at Apple Inc.

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” — Steve Jobs

The majority of consumers today think they want a round-faced smartwatch because the majority of wristwatches through history have been round since basically all they have done/continue to do is to tell time and, ta-da, most clocks are round. Obviously, Apple Watch is much more that just a clock. Consumers thought they needed a beard of plastic keys on their phones and floppy drives in their computers, too. Because that’s all they knew. And then, somehow, they learned to Think Different™.

「これまでずっとこのやり方でやってきた」というだけでは、それを続けることが正当化されるわけではありません。

「もし人々に何が欲しいかと尋ねたら、彼らはもっと速い馬が欲しいと答えただろう。」—ヘンリー・フォード

そしてもちろん、Appleは消費者の圧力に屈し、考えなしのデザインを市場に急ぎ足で投入することで有名です。これはよくあることです。だからこそAppleは、少なくとも2年遅れることなく、大画面のiPhoneを早く市場に投入できたのです（大型のスマートフォンは、きちんと設計できるようになるまで発売しませんでした）。そして、あのAppleネットブックを発売したのも、そして、市場シェア獲得のためだけに、途上国向けに49ドルのフィーチャーフォンを製造しているのも、このためです。

「Androidウォッチメーカーは、正方形のディスプレイを作る必要があることを（まだ）理解する必要がある（リストは丸ではなく正方形であり、スマートウォッチの用途はリストが主流である）…」 — MacDailyNews、2015年8月14日

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もしAppleが丸いApple Watchを発売するとしても、それは消費者の根深い習慣や誤解、あるいは圧力によるものではなく、丸い形を必要とする何か新しいものをAppleが思いついたからだろう。— MacDailyNews、2015年9月27日

関連記事：
Appleが「Gather Round」特別メディアイベントを2018年9月12日から8月30日まで開催することが正式に発表されました