Apple event on 23 March, says well-known leaker

In the spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of new Apple products. And young men (and women) around the world will be marking 23 March 2021 in their calendars, after a prolific leaker named that as the date of this year’s Apple spring event.

The leaker in question is Jon Prosser, on this occasion dispensing his wisdom via Twitter rather than his Front Page Tech YouTube show. Prosstradamus has a huge following but a mixed track record: he’s got some big calls spot on, but has his share of misses too.

The first tweet was enigmatically brief – just the number “23” – but subsequent follow-ups made it clear that Prosser was talking about the expected Apple spring event. He predicted that “AirTags, iPad Pro, AirPods, Apple TV” are all ready, but stopped short of predicting they will actually make an appearance, with the caveat “Take that however you’d like…”

23

— Jon Prosser (@jon_prosser) March 8, 2021

Prosser has a bit of a habit here: he is often reluctant to make firm predictions. The exception is when he is rashly promising to shave parts of his body if a specified occurrence either happens or doesn’t happen, and he went down that route again last week.

Didn’t you predict an event on 16 March?

Yes. Last month we wrote up a rumour that the next Apple event would fall on 16 March, a prediction made by a pair of lesser-known Twitter leakers and seemingly corroborated by one Jon Prosser back in October 2020.

We also covered Prosser nemesis Mark Gurman’s prompt rebuttal. There’s no sign of a comment on Gurman’s Twitter feed at time of writing, but then again he hasn’t tweeted since 1 March.

But yes, it’s a fair point: why should you believe Prosser now when he previously pointed to a different date? One obvious answer is that we’re now much closer to the event, which naturally means any leaker’s information is likely to be more accurate; and another is that 16 and 23 March aren’t all that far apart, and to remain within a week of the original prediction five months later isn’t entirely unimpressive.

(To that you might point out that a week is actually a fairly big margin when we are talking about a spring event specifically, since they’re usually in March. To which I would add that some Apple events have been in April so we are really talking about a two-month window, but yes, point taken.)

In any case we won’t have to wonder for much longer. If the event really is happening on 23 March we will soon get (virtual) invites, and we can see what new products Apple has in store for us.

For more general discussion of the upcoming launches, read our guide to the new Apple products coming in 2021, and When is the next Apple event?