Camera-equipped AirPods coming in 2026, lighter AirPods Max in 2027

I have gen 1 AirPods Max since February 2021, It is still in very good condition. I look forward to the new design, more features, and lossless capability.  

Here we go again with the superlatives for Kuo. Why do articles keep using these laudatory expressions? In this case we have “the frequently-reliable Kuo.” It’s weird. It’s also so common with this one guy that it feels like there’s got to be some sort of contractual obligation to do it when publishing his information. 

AppleZulu said:

Here we go again with the superlatives for Kuo. Why do articles keep using these laudatory expressions? In this case we have “the frequently-reliable Kuo.” It’s weird. It’s also so common with this one guy that it feels like there’s got to be some sort of contractual obligation to do it when publishing his information. 

Now let’s look at the ridiculousness of this particular prediction, cameras in AirPods, “potentially as an alternative to the development of smart glasses.” Ponder for a moment how that would even work. Think about where your ears are and where your eyes are. Seems like one's head, and for many, also one’s hair, would obstruct the view of cameras on earbuds. How does anyone seriously publish this ‘rumor’? It only makes sense if you don’t think about it. 

Ah, but then there’s this other little nugget that the cameras will be infra-red. That’s still just dumb if we’re talking about cameras on earbuds. On the other hand, if we’re taking not about cameras, but IR sensors pointed inward, you could be talking about a way to use AirPods to monitor the user’s body temperature. But that’s not what Kuo is saying, is it?

My question is this: if it turns out to be IR sensors for medical purposes , and right before they come out, Kuo says “yeah… what I meant by ‘cameras’ was IR sensors for monitoring your temperature,” is everybody going to count this currently ridiculous prediction as suddenly “right,” and say that justifies the weird “frequently reliable” label?

This. 👆 I could not have said it better. 

"Frequently-reliable" is far from laudatory or an accolade. It's an observation as would be batshitcrazy for some of the quoted "leakers" of dubious inside information. Referring to someone as frequently-reliable could be an insult to someone who is very reliable. I don't know if Quo ranks above or below .500 nor the stat of any other analyst or leaker. Some have done poorly. Have any done very well?

That said, cameras in AirPods seem unlikely to me. So did AirPods, at one time. There'd be no problem with believing that Apple is working on cameras in AirPods, just for drill. But I can't see any practical value in them.

Unless maybe the infra-red deal is to give Daredevil navigation ability to the sight-impaired. In the sci-fi world, this would have AI describing the environment to the user to guide their steps. A self-contained version of the visual guide Sunny in the bad Sight Unseen TV show. Now that could be too cool.

In a more practical application it might be to provide whistles and clicks to objects surrounding the user's head on a swivel.

Or combine a LASER (!) in each AirPod with an H12 chip to scan the area and feed the info to Apple Vision Pro v7 for a picture superior to Gen 1 NVGs (NODs to the youngsters) !

Though I seriously doubt that's the purpose. If an actual thing, I'd say it would be a proof of concept more than a potential actual product. Like an SPO2 sensor in a Watch. Ok one of those things is not like the other. But it would be so cool.

macgui said:

"Frequently-reliable" is far from laudatory or an accolade. It's an observation as would be batshitcrazy for some of the quoted "leakers" of dubious inside information. Referring to someone as frequently-reliable could be an insult to someone who is very reliable. I don't know if Quo ranks above or below .500 nor the stat of any other analyst or leaker. Some have done poorly. Have any done very well?

That said, cameras in AirPods seem unlikely to me. So did AirPods, at one time. There'd be no problem with believing that Apple is working on cameras in AirPods, just for drill. But I can't see any practical value in them.

Unless maybe the infra-red deal is to give Daredevil navigation ability to the sight-impaired. In the sci-fi world, this would have AI describing the environment to the user to guide their steps. A self-contained version of the visual guide Sunny in the bad Sight Unseen TV show. Now that could be too cool.

In a more practical application it might be to provide whistles and clicks to objects surrounding the user's head on a swivel.

Or combine a LASER (!) in each AirPod with an H12 chip to scan the area and feed the info to Apple Vision Pro v7 for a picture superior to Gen 1 NVGs (NODs to the youngsters) !

Though I seriously doubt that's the purpose. If an actual thing, I'd say it would be a proof of concept more than a potential actual product. Like an SPO2 sensor in a Watch. Ok one of those things is not like the other. But it would be so cool.

The specific terms change but they include things like "oft-correct," "more reliable than most," "better than average," "frequently correct," etc. It's the regular inclusion of the compliments and the way that the language used is weirdly similar across multiple 'rumor' sites. I've noticed this for years. It's singular to articles quoting Kuo, and there's something about it that makes it seem... required. If not that, then it seems repeated without thought to whether it's actually justified. That leads to the question of what the batting average actually is, and how Kuo compares statistically to anyone else. Pursue that question, and you'll find that nobody knows what the actual measure is, because no one has established a statistically meaningful way to measure accuracy and compare one analyst to another. So then it's all just based on a sense of the analyst's reputation, which leads me back to the idea that it's requested or required to add the descriptor when citing Kuo, which then generates the hype that this guy's predictions are more valuable than others.

In Kuo's case, there's a pretty clear pattern of predictions made, then repeatedly modified with new predictions that change dates and details of what's expected. Hence my comment above about the prediction eventually changing from IR camera to IR sensor. Are several wrong guesses on a subject before a correct one counted in the average, or just the correct one? What about predictions for a device or feature to come out in a given year, then changed to the next  year, then changed to the year after that, and the thing hasn't materialized? Apple rarely makes product announcements in the negative, so that could go on for a pretty long time, like the folding iPhone has. If they never produce the folding phone (or cameras on AirPods), does a prediction that they will ever get counted as wrong, so long as Apple never actually announces that they're not going make that?

Of course, these are all speculative predictions, so nobody should be expected to bat a thousand. It's just that the hype around this one guy continues to seem intentional and odd.