Apple’s camera-equipped AirPods are no longer a rumour with a codename attached. A finished demo video for them was shipped inside the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate — Apple’s own software, on Apple’s own servers — where MacRumors found it. Products do not get polished marketing videos compiled into a public release candidate unless a launch is close.
What the leaked demo actually shows
The clip is short. A man holds a book up so the camera in the AirPods can see the title, and a voiceover explains the pitch: “With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later,” per MacRumors’ transcription of the video.
The important limitation is in the plumbing rather than the pitch. The camera is not there to take photos or record video. It feeds what it sees to Visual Intelligence, so Siri can answer questions about the wearer’s surroundings and log things it recognises. The build also contains a direct reference to setting up Visual Intelligence on the AirPods, which is the kind of string that only exists once a feature has a shipping user flow behind it.
One more detail from the build tells you how the hardware behaves in the real world: if your hair covers the AirPods, you get an alert. The wording MacRumors found reads, “To get the most accurate information about things in your environment, make sure AirPods are not covered.” A camera that complains when it is obscured is a camera that expects to be looking at things for extended stretches, not one you point deliberately and then put away.
The privacy question this raises, and the one it does not
Earbuds are not a device anyone takes out of their ears to signal that recording has stopped, and unlike a phone or a pair of smart glasses, there is nothing about a person wearing AirPods that tells the room a camera is present. That is the genuinely new thing here — not what the wearer can do, but what everyone around the wearer can no longer tell.
Two things are worth stating precisely rather than sensationally. Nothing in the leaked material describes an always-on camera, and Apple’s own framing is a lookup tool rather than a recording device. But nothing in the leaked material describes a recording indicator or a bystander-facing signal either, and no capture policy has been published. Until Apple says what triggers the camera and what leaves the device, “it only feeds Siri” is a design claim, not a guarantee anyone can check. Whether it holds up is exactly what the launch announcement should be read for.
Name, codename and timing
- Likely name: a macOS Tahoe 26.7 file referencing the new AirPods is labelled “AirPods Pro” rather than “AirPods Ultra”. MacRumors notes it could still be a placeholder, though it argues a placeholder makes little sense in a build that already contains the finished product video.
- Codename: B790. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has cited the same codename, and macOS Tahoe 26.7 contains several other B790 references. A parallel B798 model exists — Gurman said Apple “famously creates competing versions of the same product internally”, with B790 the one nearer to launch.
- Timing: Gurman has suggested a launch as soon as September, which would put the AirPods on stage at Apple’s iPhone event. That is a revision of his own June position, which had them arriving in September 2027.
- Price: unknown, and no figure has been leaked. MacRumors reasons that the “Pro” label hints pricing may not stray far from the current $249 AirPods Pro 3 — that is an inference about the existing model’s price, not a price for the new one.
Apple has not confirmed the product, the name or the date. What it has done is ship the advert.
