If you were hoping to get those camera-equipped AirPods that have been rumored for so long, we’ve got some bad news for you. They are not coming until next year at the earliest, according to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman. This would be out of the blue, considering that the product’s demo video was discovered in the macOS 26.7 release candidate that was pushed out earlier this week, which would indicate that the product would be ready to launch.
To recap, the demo video showcased the camera-equipped AirPods in action by showing a user in his home, and he is wearing them as he holds a book up in front of his face. The voiceover says, “With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later.” This suggests that the camera-equipped AirPods would take advantage of Visual Intelligence combined with Siri AI.
It’s quite shocking to see that those AirPods won’t be part of Apple’s major rollout of several products for the fall season. According to Gurman, the reason is that the company is still working to resolve supply shortages and software bugs. What makes the situation even more confusing is his own reporting on the camera AirPods timing. Back in May, he claimed that the AirPods were in an “advanced” testing stage with mass production to soon follow. The following month, he claimed that those AirPods were pushed back to late 2027. However, in early August, he reversed course and indicated that those AirPods could launch as soon as this fall. That report mentioned that there were two variants in the works with the codenames: B790 and B798.
This time, Gurman did provide additional details for those prototypes in today’s report. The B790 is said to be a higher-end variant of the existing AirPods Pro 3, but with cameras, and the B798 model is a future generation of AirPods Pro with cameras. Gurman has also claimed that the camera-equipped AirPods would be called “AirPods Pro” instead of “AirPods Ultra.”
If the camera-equipped AirPods are not coming at all this year, then we could see the launch in fall 2027, when Apple is set to announce its 20th-anniversary iPhone models.
