How Apple Leaked Itself

[MacRumors]

When Apple pushed out the release candidate for macOS Tahoe 26.7 last week, it contained references to a raft of unannounced products, from home devices to iPhones, iPads, AirPods, and Macs. It's not the first time we've seen this kind of thing, but the sheer amount of references – including a video showing off AirPods with cameras – is a bit unusual.

Code references to unreleased products turn up in early Apple betas quite regularly, but macOS Tahoe 26.7 was a Release Candidate, which means that – barring something unexpected – it's the final version of the software, just provided to developers a few days early for testing. In other words, it isn't meant to include anything Apple hasn't already rubber-stamped as good to go. So what happened?

In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has offered what he believes to be the most likely explanation.

When Apple prepares an update, it doesn't assemble the software release from a single line of work. Instead, it merges separate development branches of code, including bug fixes, assets, and features, into the branch that ships to users. It also maintains internal builds containing software suppport for hardware that it hasn't announced yet so that it can be written and tested well ahead of a potential launch.

According to Gurman, one of those internal builds most likely got inadvertently merged into the branch destined for release. As a result, "something that was supposed to remain inside Apple got tangled up with the shipping software – and made it all the way to the release candidate," he writes. It suggests someone inside Apple got confused as to which versions they were merging. Or was it AI that made the mistake? We'll likely never know. Either way, expect all the references to be stripped out of the public release.

With one exception – the AirPods with cameras – all of the product references in macOS Tahoe 26.7 RC had appeared in previous software, but they still go to show that Apple continues to work on several rumored products. Meanwhile, the camera-equipped AirPods aren't expected until 2027, and the hardware shown in the video is believed to be a version that Apple has already shelved in favor of a newer model.

Article Link: How Apple Leaked Itself

 

[germanbeer007]

surprised they don't just run LLM to check for any unreleased references before release. such a simple step to add

 

[Pitogyro]

Maybe they left it to Siri AI. And maybe it won’t happen ever again.

 

[PixelPanics]

I highly doubt this was an accident. I believe the leaked Airpods video is a controlled leak in order to test the waters before a potential release. there is a huge surge of hate towards camera-equiped wearables and this might explain why Apple would do such thing...

 

[attila]

surprised they don't just run LLM to check for any unreleased references before release. such a simple step to add

Yeah, apple has used LLMs the past 50 years to prevent this from happening, why didn't they this time?

 

[Mayo86]

This has to be the best news article title of all time.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

Tech companies won't be happy until we're living in WALL-E-LAND

 

[Earwolf]

Well they are over fifty now...

 

[D-a-a-n]

I highly doubt this was an accident. I believe the leaked Airpods video is a controlled leak in order to test the waters before a potential release. there is a huge surge of hate towards camera-equiped wearables and this might explain why Apple would do such thing...

I'm doubtful. Spending millions on R&D to develop these, only to then 'test the waters' right before they'll be released? For marketing purposes I could see it being a thing, but not for focus group testing.

 

[DBZmusicboy01]

Software quality the past 2+ years has been horrifically bad. iOS 26 is the biggest pile of garbage in history and even iOS 27 isn’t that much better / still worse than iOS 18 smoothness.
Mac OS has not been good and Golden Gate isn’t better than Sequoia.

 

[Corefile]

What would Steve do?

 

[Diopter]

Or was it AI that made the mistake? We'll likely never know.

Or was it the ghost of Steve Jobs that made the mistake?
Or was it the Pope that made the mistake?
Or the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II?

We'll likely never know.

(lol, come on, just throwing wild speculation about AI possibly being responsible when Apple has accidentally included stuff many times over the years)

 

[Antilogical]

“Bloomberg's Mark Gurman ended his article by suggesting Apple developers run git reset --hard HEAD~1 followed by git push --force origin main, and if that doesn’t work, try turning their Macs off and then on again.”

 

[sprintsucks]

This argument just does not make sense. Why would you have a product video in a development internal build? You would not bundle a marketing/HOWTO video inside of an OS for an internal build. These videos are tightly controlled by a small team with leadership review. Not handed to developers to put in an internal OS build that could mistakenly get shipped to the public. There's just no reason to bundle them at the OS level.

I think it was a severe F up. Someone probably just got put on a PIP for this. And the simplest explanation is that someone on that small team mistakenly put it into their development directory and checked it into source control like Gurman is saying. And then, no one decided to watch the video or notice that there was even a video in the development build and just pressed merge.

Goes to show, "the world is built by people no smarter than you" - Steve Jobs

 

[Nibo10]

I highly doubt this was an accident. I believe the leaked Airpods video is a controlled leak in order to test the waters before a potential release. there is a huge surge of hate towards camera-equiped wearables and this might explain why Apple would do such thing...

Yes this is one of the theories gaining traction at the Verge and other outlets

 

[fullauto]

Could be a clever way to show the world that you did it first, before ‘someone else’ releases their own *cough* copied *cough* version of same..

 

[svish]

Interesting to see all the products Apple is working on. Waiting to see the new iMac and redesigned MacBook Pro.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

I still don’t understand why the video meant to show off the AirPods camera feature doesn’t explicitly talk about AirPods nor does it show the placement of the camera so that you know it’s FOV
All it does is talk about visual intelligence, a feature that’s been around for years

 

[k1121j]

Definitely not an accident

 

[btrach144]

What would Steve do?

Fire the engineer on an elevator

 

[technole]

It's not usually one engineer that just picks up include code. Teams can check-in what they want to lock-in for that release. RC means if you were to release the code today without changes, this is what the final one would look like. It's not out of the realm that 26.7 would be the code minimum for the new pods.

Of course once 26.7 is released you'll know whether it was intentional or not.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I highly doubt this was an accident. I believe the leaked Airpods video is a controlled leak in order to test the waters before a potential release. there is a huge surge of hate towards camera-equiped wearables and this might explain why Apple would do such thing...

People are already calling them AirFlocks.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I'm doubtful. Spending millions on R&D to develop these, only to then 'test the waters' right before they'll be released? For marketing purposes I could see it being a thing, but not for focus group testing.

If they're received like Google's Glasshole glasses or Meta's Pervert Glasses, it destroys the entire Airpod ecosystem. All of a sudden any airpod is part of the AirFlock.

 

[StuBeck]

surprised they don't just run LLM to check for any unreleased references before release. such a simple step to add

Or have multiple people check this, either everyone is asleep at the wheel or they don't have proper processes. For someone whose suing people for reporting on leaks, this is a huge liability.

 

[PixelPanics]

I'm doubtful. Spending millions on R&D to develop these, only to then 'test the waters' right before they'll be released? For marketing purposes I could see it being a thing, but not for focus group testing.

These leaked airpods aren't even coming this year, they have enough time to make changes in case they are badly received from the leak. Plus as other have mentioned, the financial loss of wasted R&D would be so little compared to the financial loss of a potential flop