Will We See Apple’s New AirPods 3 Arrive on Monday?

With so many new second-tier products in Apple’s lineup, we’re starting to see a trend with recent Apple events. It seems as though every time Apple schedules an event, at least a few leakers or analysts predict new product announcements that never actually materialize.

Once upon a time, Apple’s events were made up solely of high-profile “flagship” products like the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, but over the past few years, these have been joined by a wealth of somewhat less significant products: AirTags, AirPods, Apple TV, and HomePod, to name a few.

These are all products that Apple is actively working on, but they’re also things that are clearly much harder to pin down. None of them have ever deserved an event of their own, so Apple tends to either sneak them in alongside larger announcements, as it did with the HomePod mini and the Apple TV 4K, or it simply slips them out much more quietly via press release.

Such has been the case with every pair of AirPods since the originals made their debut alongside the iPhone 7 back in 2016. To be fair, the first set of AirPods were a big deal, as they represented Apple’s first foray into true wireless earbuds. Hence, they not only deserved a place on stage, but Apple executives needed to take some time to explain what AirPods were all about.

Since then, Apple has clearly felt that now that we understand AirPods, there’s no need to really talk about them all that much anymore. Not only were the second-generation AirPods quietly released in early 2019, which was reasonable in light of their relatively minor improvements, but even the much more interesting AirPods Pro and AirPods Max came out with similarly little fanfare on Apple’s part.

This fall, Apple clearly has the “AirPods 3” on deck, and as usual, the rumour mill has been predicting that they’re going to be unveiled at “the very next Apple event” — regardless of which even that happens to be.

To be fair, the third-generation AirPods are overdue. We’ve been hearing rumours of the new AirPods since last November, and by February, at least some folks were pretty convinced they’d land in the spring, although other sources disagreed.

So, if you’re thinking you’ve heard this song before, you’re not wrong. Every single Apple event this year, without exception, has been preceded by predictions that the AirPods 3 were just around the corner.

First came the Spring Loaded event in April, with a potpourri of predictions that mostly didn’t come to pass. Even after that, however, many leakers suggested that there was too much evidence that the new AirPods were ready, so they had to be coming at WWDC. Spoiler alert: they didn’t.

Well, this must have meant that Apple was saving the new AirPods for its big iPhone 13 event in the fall, right? Yet, that event, which would have probably been the ideal time for Apple to announce the newest AirPods, came and went with nary even a mention of the word “AirPods.”

This leaves us with what most are expecting to be the last Apple event of 2021, the Unleashed event coming on Monday, October 18, where Apple will almost announce its new redesigned M1X MacBook Pro lineup.

Despite this being a Mac-focused event, however, the usual assortment of folks are predicting that Apple will toss an announcement for its new AirPods into the mix. To borrow the words of Hari Seldon from Apple’s Foundation series, we have to concede that there’s a non-zero chance of this happening, but it’s probably not a number worth discussing.

Will New AirPods Be Announced?

Apple has very rarely allowed its Macs to share the stage with anything else during its late fall Mac events, and the only notable exceptions have been when it’s also had new iPad models to unveil. However, it’s safe to say that those are all out of the way already this year.

Combine that with the fact that even the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max were not deemed worthy of taking up stage time, and it would be extremely unusual for Apple to actually unveil new standard AirPods at this event, especially considering they’re expected to be little more than an iterative upgrade.

All that having been said, it’s important to always leave a bit of room for Apple to surprise us.

It’s conceivably possible it has something groundbreaking in the works for its new third-generation AirPods — we’d certainly love to think so — but we wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

That’s not saying Apple might not still choose to release new “AirPods 3” next week — the rumour mill could be right about that — but we’d be very surprised if Apple chooses to mention them on stage at an event that’s expected to be all about the insanely powerful new M1X MacBook Pro lineup.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]