Most Apple leaks come from a supply chain in Shenzhen or an analyst with a note to sell. This one came from Apple.
On Monday, Apple shipped the release candidate for macOS Tahoe 26.7. Inside it was a finished marketing video for a product that doesn’t exist yet: AirPods with cameras, the ones the rumour mill has been calling AirPods Ultra. A man wearing them looks at a book and asks Siri to remember it.
Siri’s voiceover, word for word: “With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later.”
That’s not a render some guy made in Blender. It’s Apple’s own footage, cut and scored, sitting in a shipping build.
Five things the AirPods Ultra leak actually establishes
I want to separate what’s in Apple’s code from what people are saying about it, because those are very different categories and most coverage this week is blending them.
From the macOS build itself:
- The product is real and internally called B790. MacRumors found the codename throughout the 26.7 release candidate.
- There’s an “image stream” in the code tied to that device. Cameras, in other words, not just a sensor.
- The pitch is Visual Intelligence, not photography. The demo is about saving something you looked at, not capturing it.
- The hardware looks like AirPods Pro 3 with a noticeably thicker stem. The cameras aren’t visible in the video at all.
- Apple built finished marketing for it. That’s the real tell. You don’t score and colour-grade a launch video for something eighteen months out.
Point five is the one that matters. Everything else has been rumoured for two years. A completed ad in a shipping build means somebody at Apple was getting ready to press go.
Where the reporting contradicts itself
Here’s the part nobody’s putting in the headline.
Apple has two camera-AirPods projects running, codenamed B790 and B798. Until this week, the outlets couldn’t agree on which one had the cameras.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has said B790 could arrive as soon as this year, with B798 following in 2027. AppleInsider’s roundup, published three days before the leak, said the opposite: B790 was the boring update without cameras, and B798 was the interesting one in 2027. On that reading, the thing shipping next month was a minor refresh nobody needed to care about.
The macOS file appears to settle it. There’s an image stream attached to B790, and B790 is the device in the video. Advantage Gurman.
Worth remembering that back in July, the leaker Kosutami claimed Apple had stopped work on camera AirPods altogether. Six weeks later Apple shipped an ad for them. I’m not saying that to dunk on one leaker — I’m saying it because this is the third or fourth time this product’s timeline has flipped, and there’s no reason to assume this week’s version is final either.
What they’re actually for
If you’re picturing earbuds that take photos, adjust that now. Every credible report says these use tiny infrared cameras, closer to the sensor behind Face ID than to the lens on the back of your phone. You won’t be filming with them.
What they do is feed Siri a view of whatever’s in front of you, so Visual Intelligence works without you pulling out your phone. Ask what a building is. Get walking directions that account for the actual shopfront you’re standing next to. Ask what you can cook from what’s in the fridge.
The interesting one, if it happens: sign language. Apple already does Live Translation through AirPods, and Google shipped ASL translation on the Pixel 11 this month. Cameras on your head is the obvious next step. Whether Apple gets there depends on gesture recognition, which at least one leaker says isn’t in this model.
The bit everyone’s going to argue about
Cameras on people’s heads, in a room, pointed at you.
Apple seems to know. Reporting says the earbuds will have an LED that lights up when visual data is going to the cloud, so people nearby can tell the cameras are live. And the leaked software includes a note telling wearers to keep the AirPods uncovered for accurate results — which tells you the cameras face outward and need a clear view.
An indicator light is better than nothing. It’s also the same answer Google gave for Glass in 2013, and it didn’t help much then. The difference is that AirPods are already socially invisible in a way Glass never was. Nobody looks twice at someone wearing earbuds in a meeting. That’s exactly what makes this harder.
Expect schools, hospitals and a lot of offices to have opinions about this before Apple does.
What’s still unknown
Plenty, and it’s worth being straight about it:
- The name. “AirPods Ultra” is a rumour, not a confirmation. AirPods Pro 4 is equally likely. Apple hasn’t said a word.
- The price. AirPods Pro 3 sit at $249. One leaker says no increase, others expect cameras to cost you. Nobody knows.
- The date. September is the informed guess because that’s when the iPhone event is. Apple has announced nothing.
- Whether the video reflects the shipping product. Marketing gets recut. Features get pulled.
- Which iPhones will work. Almost certainly needs Apple Intelligence, so iPhone 15 Pro and later — but that’s inference, not confirmation.
Should you wait?
If you need earbuds this week, buy AirPods Pro 3 and stop thinking about it. They’re good, and a first-generation AI wearable is not where you want to be if you mainly want to listen to things.
If you can hold out until the September event, hold out. Either the camera model shows up and you can decide with real specs and a real price, or it doesn’t and AirPods Pro 3 get cheaper. Both outcomes beat buying today.
And if you’re in marketing, the thing to watch isn’t the earbuds. It’s that Apple is building a way for Siri to see what a customer is looking at in a physical shop. That’s a search surface nobody has figured out how to reach yet. Park that thought — it’s going to matter more than the hardware.
I’ll update this after the September event. If Apple pulls the whole thing again, that’s a story too.
Related: LinkedIn quietly shipped a setting that lets recruiters call your phone — another feature that turned up before any announcement.
Sources
Reporting from 9to5Mac, MacRumors and AppleInsider. The demo video was first surfaced by MacRumors and posted by Aaron Perris.
Ashok Kumar has spent over a decade in marketing, including six years running account-based marketing programmes for B2B teams — working day to day in LinkedIn Ads, Marketo and Salesforce.
He writes Digital Marketing Baba 24 about marketing and AI, martech and SEO: mostly the things he has had to work out himself, with the numbers included.
