According to some new tweets from Mark Gurman, Apple has scheduled a mandatory meeting for all Apple Store employees shortly after the iPhone 16 event, which is expected to take place on September 10th. The meetings are happening on either the evening of September 12th and the morning of September 13th, depending on the store.

Gurman notes that these meetings are on an unusual schedule, since Apple usually holds these meetings on a Sunday rather than during the week. However, it seems Apple will be following a different strategy for this year’s iPhone launch.

In a follow up tweet, Gurman also says that Apple has begun training retail employees on Apple Intelligence, and that he expects it to be a key part of the sales pitch for iPhone 16 at Apple Stores.

Apple Intelligence isn’t expected to be available in September alongside the iPhone 16 launch, as it got officially delayed to iOS 18.1 in October. Features like Writing Tools, Notification Summaries, and the new Siri interface will be available then, although more advanced features like Image Playground, Genmoji, and ChatGPT integration won’t be available until iOS 18.2 or later.

Some analysts have predicted that AI will increase iPhone 16 sales by up to 10 million units, so it isn’t necessarily surprising that Apple plans to pitch the features to users in store.

Source: 9to5mac