Friday, September 18. Apple put iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max on the floor at Apple Store locations worldwide, alongside Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5.
The company posted a photo set the same day. John Ternus, Deirdre O’Brien, and Greg Joswiak were at Apple Fifth Avenue in New York. Team members ran demos. Customers lined up in Shanghai, London, Mumbai, and Kuala Lumpur as well.
What opened in stores on September 18
Apple’s own list is short. The Pro phones. The two new Watches. AirPods 5. No iPhone Duo on that date. Duo stays on the later calendar: pre-orders October 16, availability October 23.
Online orders for Pro models were already slipping in mid-September. Some Pro windows moved toward late September into early October. Pro Max 256GB windows had been pushed further in earlier coverage. Store pickup still mattered for people who did not want to wait on a ship date.
Pro finishes on Apple’s September 9 sheet were black, silver, glacier, and burgundy. The launch-day photos show customers holding units and unboxing Pro Max boxes. Apple did not caption which finish each person bought.
Fifth Avenue, Jing’an, and the other cities Apple showed
New York: Ternus shaking hands, selfies with customers, unboxing shots of iPhone 18 Pro Max, AirPods 5 demos, Watch purchase help. Shanghai Jing’an: outdoor queue photos, Pro handoffs, Ultra 4 and Series 12 on wrists. London Covent Garden and Mumbai BKC got the same treatment. So did The Exchange TRX in Kuala Lumpur, including a color lineup of Pro phones on the table.
Apple did not publish sell-through numbers in that post. It also did not say which finishes sold out first. The photos are the record.
Trade In, Apple Card, and Personal Setup
Apple’s launch note repeats the usual paths. In store. On apple.com. Through the Apple Store app. Specialists can run Apple Trade In, talk through Apple Card financing, Apple Upgrade, and carrier deals. Personal Setup is listed for moving to the new phone.
That is all Apple wrote. No separate carrier-by-carrier table. No claim about how long wait times ran in each city. If you needed a unit the same day, the store path was the one Apple put in front of cameras.
What was already live in software
iOS 27 had been public since September 14. Day-one Pro units still needed attention on builds. Some phones shipped on older images and needed iOS 27 build 24A437 after unbox. Camera buyers chasing the new Fusion Main aperture path had that story in a separate brief on launch day.
AirPods 5 pricing from Apple’s earlier release still stands in our coverage: the open-ear ANC model at $129, and the wireless-case model at $149, with store timing tied to the same September 18 window. Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 sat next to the phones in the same photo package.
Photo: Apple
Source: Apple Newsroom, September 18, 2026
