Apple's Camera AirPods Not Launching Until 2027 Despite Leaked Video

[MacRumors]

Apple's camera-equipped AirPods will not launch until 2027 despite the demo video MacRumors found earlier this week, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

On Monday, MacRumors shared a demo video featuring the camera-equipped AirPods in action. The video was hidden in the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate, suggesting Apple was preparing for a launch. That's apparently not the case, and people familiar with the product told Gurman the AirPods with cameras aren't going to launch anytime soon.

The AirPods are not on Apple's 2026 release schedule because the company is still working to resolve supply chain and software challenges.

Gurman's own reporting on the camera AirPods timing has been confusing. In May, he said the AirPods were in an "advanced" testing stage with mass production to begin soon, and then in June, he said the AirPods had been delayed until late 2027.

In early August, he reversed course and said the camera-equipped AirPods could launch as soon as September. In that report, he clarified that there were two variants of the camera-equipped AirPods in the works, one with a B790 codename and one with a B798 codename. "Apple famously creates competing versions of the same product internally," he wrote.

In today's report, Gurman says the B790 product is a version of the AirPods Pro 3 with cameras, while the B798 model is a new generation of AirPods Pro with cameras. The B790 AirPods were shown off in the video, which featured a man holding a book up to the AirPods so Siri could read the title and save it for later.

The B790 model was apparently "on the 2026 road map until recently," but Apple no longer plans to release it.

The AirPods planned for 2027 will include low-resolution cameras that feed information to Siri AI for Visual Intelligence features as demonstrated in the video. The AirPods cameras will not be able to capture photos and videos.

Apple could launch the new AirPods in fall 2027 alongside the 20th-anniversary iPhone.

Article Link: Apple's Camera AirPods Not Launching Until 2027 Despite Leaked Video

 

[jz0309]

Gurman at his best LOL

"His reporting has been confusing ..." cause he doesn't know ...

 

[diego.caraballo]

Plot twist: Apple leaked the video itself to taste the waters...

 

[Line_Noise]

Hopefully they never launch.

The pervert glasses are bad enough. We don’t need to also assume everyone with AirPods is also a problem.

 

[Yourbigpalal83]

Oh god, another one with the pervert glasses nonsense. Newsflash, perverts have long existed before smart glasses. The moment a camera was invented some pervert was planing on using it to take pictures of someone without their consent.

Same thing goes for this too. Why is it anytime anything with a camera comes out, people act like its the end of privacy itself?

From what im told these headphones dont even take normal pictures.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

On Monday, MacRumors shared a demo video featuring the camera-equipped AirPods in action.

Anyone have a link to the MR article? They didn't link it here.

 

[Nyx1]

Gurman lost his credibility

 

[EM2013]

Oh god, another one with the pervert glasses nonsense. Newsflash, perverts have long existed before smart glasses. The moment a camera was invented some pervert was planing on using it to take pictures of someone without their consent.

Same thing goes for this too. Why is it anytime anything with a camera comes out, people act like its the end of privacy itself?

From what im told these headphones dont even take normal pictures.

It’s obvious if someone takes a picture with their phone or camera vs someone having glasses recording you. You wouldn’t like it nor would anyone, that’s why they’ve been tampering with the recording light

 

[techfreak23]

Just release a set of AR glasses already. Cameras in earphones is a ridiculous concept.

 

[svish]

Was thinking it will launch next month. Maybe it could be later. April of 2027 is a possibility but don't think it will be released only in next September.

 

[OldNewMBP]

Did Apple just Edge us?!

 

[73CortinaV8]

"leaked" video.

Apple marketing testing the water

 

[Genelec8341]

Thanks Jeremy it gives and gives

 

[turbineseaplane]

Here's your chance to get going on the right foot Ternus.

Just cancel this very bad idea.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Oh god, another one with the pervert glasses nonsense. Newsflash, perverts have long existed before smart glasses. The moment a camera was invented some pervert was planing on using it to take pictures of someone without their consent.

Same thing goes for this too. Why is it anytime anything with a camera comes out, people act like its the end of privacy itself?

From what im told these headphones dont even take normal pictures.

Why don't you run your opinion by some women on the receiving end of unwanted recording and harassment.

 

[Falco McGregor]

Gurman lost his credibility

He absolutely hates it when any information might contradict his reporting. It’s always amusing to see him get triggered.

 

[Yourbigpalal83]

Why don't you run your opinion by some women on the receiving end of unwanted recording and harassment.

Oh men cant be harassed by the same tech too? its only women that get harassed with just Smart Glasses and unreleased Airpods with cameras in them. Cause, you know, no ones ever taken a unwanted photo of a man or woman with a cell phone, or a cam corder, or a rocket launcher VHS style camera, or an old hand crank film camera. Perverts and creeps and people who abuse technology only existed recently with the invention of the smart glasses right? Before then no one ever dared abused a camera and creeped out on someone in public right? I totally forgot, no one ever got harassed or sexually assaulted or violated or had private images of themselves posted online before smart glasses.

I must live in an alternate universe then anyone else. Here in my universe i call reality, everyone that sets foot out their door every single day is bound to show up on a camera somewhere. From traffic light cameras to someone filming something or someone with a cellphone, to various security cameras, the moment you walk into any store what so ever your on a security camera weither you want to be or not. The moment you go into a doctors office they dont have security cameras in the waiting rooms?

Or how about any time you encounter a police officer? they ware these things called body cameras that film EVERYTHING (or supposed to).

The point im trying to make is, camera technology is here and its hear to stay and is everywhere. They use them for security. To capture important moments in peoples lives, to even tell stories called movies that they share with the world.

They have been around over 100 years or so. Most people use them properly. Some people misuse them for creepy stuff towards men, women, and children sadly. Its not the cameras fault. Its the person using it to record something they shouldent be doing in the first place and yes, it sometimes does violates someones right to privacy.

Same as cell phone cameras, same as old style vhs cameras, same as film cameras. The only difference is you wear it on your face...and most do have LED Lights that activate when filming to let people know its filming. Are their ways around that, yes, sadly. But their are also ways to hid a cell phone camera in your pocket and start filming someone with an apple watch acting like a view finder and shudder.

We should get rid of our iphones and apple watches too then i guess cause someone somewhere might misuse that technology...

oh wait, people do. Yet the tech still exists.. Such pesky evil tech huh! lets all go back to the stone age, where their was no modern tech and people never ever abused anyones rights ever....

Oh wait, THAT NEVER HAPPENED!

Silly me!

 

[transpo1]

Just release a set of AR glasses already. Cameras in earphones is a ridiculous concept.

I have a feeling the Airpods Pro with cameras will be used in conjunction with the glasses

 

[deconstruct60]

Here's your chance to get going on the right foot Ternus.

Termus broght the botterfly keyboard and the MBP touchbar ... How do you know this wasn't inspired by Termus?

Just cancel this very bad idea.

Which idea? Your idea about how this works or Apple's? From the lead article of this thread....

" ... The AirPods cameras will not be able to capture photos and videos. .."

If true (which it very likely is), then Apple didn't have your idea. Apple probably doesn't have to cancel an idea they didn't have (or at least did not green-light deep into development. )

There is no battery capacity in the AirPods to support running a camera for a significant fraction of the time. Pictures are also much larger than audio. An three minutes iTunes audio file may be 40-70MB large. Three minutes is about 180 seconds so about 0.22-0.38MB per second. A jpeg/heif out of a typical smartphone camera is about 10-20MB . If take a picture per second that substantially more. More data transmitted... faster battery dies. If a RAW format that is uncompressed then much larger... and more battery drain.

Apple already has a headset that drains a battery pretty fast ... Vision Pro. Do you really think they are trying to match that device's limited battery life numbers? Probably not.

By the way the Vision Pro has 12 cameras. Only two of them take a picture you can store and view. That leaves 10 that are assigned persception ( not recording) duties. You think Apple doesn't know anything about making a perception only camera? They probably do.

One perception camera would be 1/10 the number on the Vision pro. So likely not going to run into similar battery issues there.

Stroing perception data long term doesn't make any sense. Pull the relevant metadata out of the ipicture and throw the picture away. If asked to remember the book than all need is the title/name/author/edition/etc of the book. Even if that was 100 words of data and 10 letters per work that is just 1,000 letters. Even unicode 4 byte encoding that is just 4K. Store 4KB versus 10,000KB for the same info was asked to store. Which one is Apple going to reasonably choose? Nevermind that would have to re-extract the 4K of data again if had to re-process the image to get the data again. ( or the energy overhead of redoing the inference again. )

 

[kerr]

Wasn’t there code in iOS or tvOS last year about a new ATV? 15-18 months later and it still hasn’t been released.

I wouldn’t be sure new APP/APU will be released in 2026.

 

[Lunarman25]

Good! Nobody wants them

 

[JoBlow]

I’m curious how someone is going to use this product, with no way of seeing what your pointing your “camera at”, to then remind yourself of a book title?

How do people believe the addition of a camera to their AirPod will make them better?

 

[fastred]

Gurman at his best LOL

"His reporting has been confusing ..." cause he doesn't know ...

I pretty much immediately switch off the moment I see / hear / realise it's something from that guy.

So unreliably and ... smug at the same time?

 

[Powerbooky]

Gurman at his best LOL

"His reporting has been confusing ..." cause he doesn't know ...

Apple might be feeding him bits of misleading information for fun, and maybe find out who's leaking?

 

[jdavid_rp]

Beside being its own issue, if they release them and see it as success, wait for other companies not so aligned with privacy to sell their own version with great features like actual video recording or live streaming.