Enlarge / The waiting area of the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple's Cupertino campus. (credit: Samuel Axon)

On September 14 at 10 am PDT (1 pm EDT), Apple will host its first product-launch event in several months. Once again, it will be an online-only event . But as with other recent online events from Apple, we expect it to be as jam-packed with announcements as ever.

It's likely to focus on the iPhone, but revelations about the Apple Watch, AirPods, and maybe the iPad are likely, too. We'll be liveblogging the event as it happens on Tuesday, of course, but until then, consider what you're about to read our best attempt at setting expectations and making predictions about what's coming.

In so many ways, Apple has gotten easier to read and predict in recent years—certainly compared to the years during Steve Jobs' second tenure as CEO. Apple has settled into something of a cadence with its main product lines, making it a bit easier to see what may be coming. The company's products are still disruptive, but now they do it in a subtle, iterative ways and often in areas that aren't as flashy as what we saw in the 2000s—like health care, for example.

Enlarge / The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro. The next iPhones aren't expected to change in look very much. (credit: Samuel Axon)

This weekend, business publication Bloomberg ran a plethora of articles sharing details about various upcoming Apple products. We previously covered what Bloomberg's sources said about the Mac lineup, but another report details upcoming iPhones.

According to "a person familiar with" Apple's work, the 2021 iPhone will be a small, iterative update and may carry the "S" label, which Apple has used to denote smaller upgrades to the iPhone in the past (for example, iPhone 6S or iPhone XS). This is in part because the iPhone 12 lineup introduced last fall was particularly loaded with new features and design changes, but it was also because COVID-19 restrictions have slowed Apple's engineers down, according to the report.

While the iPhone 13 wouldn't have a radically new design, the report does describe one potential change of note that Apple is testing internally: the addition of an in-screen fingerprint reader.