9 Rumored Apple Products We (Probably) Won’t See in 2024

Third-Generation AirPods Pro

While we can safely expect to see new fourth-generation AirPods appear this year — and probably two new models, at that — by all accounts, Apple’s next-generation AirPods Pro are still well over a year away.

That should be fairly apparent by Apple’s decision to give its AirPods Pro the USB-C treatment in isolation this past fall. The AirPods 3 and even the AirPods Max kept the Lightning port because Apple is planning on updating them sooner — new models could come as soon as March, although that’s by no means a certainty yet — so there’s little point in changing out the port this soon.

Meanwhile, the AirPods Pro are still going strong thanks to their more advanced H2 chip that powers the new iOS 17 Adaptive Audio features. There’s little need to fix what isn’t broken, and if some reports are accurate, Apple is working on even bigger and better things for the “AirPods Pro 3” next year, including the long-rumored health monitoring features.

A Meaningful AirPods Max Upgrade

While the odds are good that we will see a new version of the AirPods Max this year, what we’ve heard so far suggests they may be less of an upgrade than many were hoping for — especially considering that we’ve been waiting for three years since the originals were released.

The main selling point of the “AirPods Max 2” may be the USB-C port and some new colors. To be fair, that USB-C port will probably come with wired digital audio support, enabling true lossless audio for the first time. However, there’s been no indication we’ll be getting the high-fidelity audio codecs that Apple has been working on. We’re hoping they at least get the H2 chip from the AirPods Pro, but there’s been no word on that, either.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple’s high-end cans don’t sell well enough to justify putting a lot of money into research and development, so these will be a minor refresh just to make them “current” again with USB-C and some new colors. Everything else is up in the air, and it seems Apple may be content to let the Beats Studio Pro take center stage for over-ear headphones.

A More Affordable Version of the Vision Pro

Apple’s impressive new Vision Pro is on the cusp of launching, likely landing in stores in the next 4–6 weeks — at least in the US.

However, if you’re hoping a cheaper alternative to the $3,500 headset will show up anytime soon, you could be waiting quite a while. The Vision Pro won’t even launch outside of the US until later this year, and it may take until 2025 before it’s available globally.

Meanwhile, even though Apple is hard at work on a second-generation version of the Vision Pro that may shave a few hundred bucks off the price tag, the more affordable “Vision” or “Vision Air” isn’t yet beyond the concept stages. We’ll undoubtedly see a lower-cost version show up eventually, but even 2025 might be too soon for that.

The MicroLED Apple Watch

While they don’t get a lot of attention, rumors of Apple’s work on microLED displays for the Apple Watch go back to at least 2018. When Apple ramped up its efforts in 2020, many believed a microLED Apple Watch was coming soon, yet the notion quickly died off when we kept seeing the same OLED versions repeatedly show up, and no further news was heard on Apple’s efforts.

That changed earlier this year with a report from DigiTimes that predicted microLED displays would come to the more expensive Apple Watch Ultra. However, even the most optimistic prediction said these wouldn’t show up until 2025, and a later report by The Elec pushed that estimate into 2026.

So, while we’ll probably still see an Apple Watch Ultra 3 this year, it’s expected to sport the same old OLED display. However, with Apple reportedly planning a big tenth-anniversary “Apple Watch X” redesign, some of those changes, like a new band attachment system, will likely find their way over to the premium Ultra model as well.

The iPhone SE 4

Apple’s next-generation “iPhone SE 4” has been through such a cycle of on-again/off-again rumors in the past year that, at one time, we weren’t even sure a new budget iPhone was coming.

However, by late summer, those reports began to gel into something more substantial, but they also pegged the release date for the next iPhone SE model into 2025, quashing any hopes that we’d see it follow the somewhat established four-year cycle.

The iPhone SE began its life in early 2016 as a modestly upgraded version of the 2013 iPhone 5s. Apple followed that trend four years later with a 2020 iPhone SE that copied the iPhone 8 in nearly every way except the chip inside. A very minimal 2022 update appeared that seemed to have been released for the express purpose of adding 5G support, as very little else changed other than a bump to the then-current A15 chip.

That 2022 model was seen as an interim update, and many believed that the next real iPhone SE update would follow the established trend by showing up on schedule in 2024 and once again adopting the design of its 2.5-year-old predecessor — the iPhone 13, in this case — while adding a current chip like the A16.

However, with the iPhone SE 4 expected to arrive in 2025 instead, it looks like it will be based on the iPhone 14. That would still have it following a similar trend, albeit a year later. If the reports are accurate, though, it could adopt Face ID for the first time, effectively kicking Touch ID to the curb, at least as far as the iPhone is concerned. It will, of course, get a USB-C port and perhaps even the multi-purpose Action Button that’s exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro right now.

Next-Generation AirTags

Considering how long Apple’s original AirTags took to go from rumors of their impending release to their actual release, it probably shouldn’t come as a big surprise that the so-called “AirTags 2” may follow a similar trend.

After all, if there’s one product that likely isn’t a huge priority for Apple, it’s these $29 trackers for lost items. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo originally predicted that Apple would mass produce the “AirTags 2” later this year, but he now suggests that won’t happen until at least 2025, aligning with the timeline offered by LeaksApplePro.

We’ve heard little about what the new AirTags will do from anyone other than Kuo, who claims Apple is building some unique “spatial computing” integration that would allow them to work with the Vision Pro. That vague statement may sound more sophisticated than the reality, which could be little more than what LeaksApplePro calls “3D Precision Finding,” which sounds like the ability to locate an AirTag on a vertical axis and perhaps pinpoint its location in the Vision Pro’s immersive field of view.

It’s been clear for a while that Apple had greater augmented reality ambitions for the AirTag, so perhaps the Vision Pro and “AirTag 2” will help make these a reality.

The 32-inch iMac Pro

Another one of these rumors that’s been swirling for about two years now without gaining much traction concerns the development of a larger iMac.

Rumors of a 30-inch iMac or 32-inch iMac go back to at least 2021, but instead, we’ve seen the last of the 27-inch iMacs go away, with the 2020 Intel iMac being quietly discontinued when Apple released the Mac Studio and Apple Studio Display. That duo seemed like an obvious replacement for both the 27-inch iMac and the legacy 2017 iMac Pro, but Apple also never ruled out the possibility that a larger iMac could someday arrive.

Last fall, Apple refreshed the 24-inch iMac with an M3 chip — but not much else. Even the accessories remained laden with Lightning ports. Many were disappointed that a larger iMac remained missing in action, but most sources had already predicted it wouldn’t appear until late 2024. More recently, those have been revised to 2025, which seems more likely. The iMac has clearly become less of a priority for Apple; even the popular 24-inch model went two years between updates, skipping the M2 chip entirely.

The Mythic Foldable iPhone

Apple has been toying with the idea of a foldable iPhone for years — reports go back to at least 2016 — and it’s even tested displays and likely built prototypes. However, analysts were way off their game on this one, with reports that Apple would preview a folding iPhone in 2021 and Ming-Chi Kuo’s 2021 prediction that Apple would sell 20 million foldable iPhones by the end of 2023 clearly not coming to fruition.

If anything, this proves that Apple works on many things that never see the light of day. A source once told us that many Apple executives saw foldables as just a passing fad, and with Apple selling hundreds of millions of iPhones every year and continuing to increase its market share, it probably doesn’t see a huge need to diversify its smartphone offerings. After all, unlike Samsung and Google, Apple competes on a largely separate playing field where it’s often the company’s own devices that are pitted against each other. A Google Pixel owner can be lured to a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip far more easily, as they both run the same Android operating system, more or less.

While Apple is still sourcing displays for foldable devices, recent reports suggest it’s more likely to tackle a foldable iPad or MacBook before it looks at an “iPhone Flip.” There’s a slight chance we might see an “iPad Fold” later this year, but a foldable iPhone doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the horizon.

The Apple Car

Do we even need to say that the Apple Car is nowhere close to showing up this year? While Apple’s automotive ambitions have been one of the company’s worst-kept secrets, most analysts have finally come to a consensus that we won’t see this legendary vehicle until at least 2026 — and when we do, it won’t be quite the futuristic dream that many hoped for.

The earliest rumors predicted the Apple Car would arrive by 2019, so it’s easy to see how any of these should be taken with a very healthy dose of salt. Apple had a long, winding, and tumultuous road in developing what was originally supposed to be a fully autonomous vehicle, reportedly changing directions to focus on self-driving systems for other vehicles before returning to the idea of building a fully Apple-branded electric car that some analysts predicted would arrive between 2023 and 2025.

However, since that time, the project has been through major staff changes, high-profile executive reassignments, and new talent acquisitions, plus reports that Apple has tried courting manufacturing partners from Hyundai to LG.

The most ambitious 2021 timelines suggested Apple might have something to show off by the end of 2024, but these have since been revised to 2026, and sources say that Apple has given up on some of its most ambitious designs

that would have been fully autonomous with no steering wheel and passengers facing each other. Instead, Apple has prioritized getting a car built and onto the market rather than taking another few years to perfect its self-driving technology — which is understandably a much tougher nut to crack.

Instead, the first-generation Apple Car we eventually see will likely be limited to autonomous driving features on highways only, where there are far fewer variables for the system to contend with. Ideally, this could allow a driver to relax on a more extended trip and maybe even watch a movie, leaving the Apple Car to handle the task of staying on the highway and maintaining speed relative to other vehicles.