Another Apple event has come and gone. It was exciting. It was magical. It invented all sorts of things that we’ve never seen before until Apple invented them just now. (That’s sarcasm, folks.) It brought a new iPad Air, a new Mac Studio, and Studio Display, powered by even more powerful hardware that’s better and faster and stronger and more beautiful than what came before.
Because that’s how all this works.
But one thing we didn’t see Tuesday at the “Peek Performance” event was new AirPods Pro.
To be clear, Apple didn’t promise that we’d see new AirPods Pro, which are going on 28 months old at this point — a near eternity for mobile tech. Nor did the prognosticators promise new AirPods Pro. Sure, their track records are mixed, at best, and hardware that doesn’t have to jump through all the hoops that phones have to fly through usually is kept under better wraps.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the current AirPods Pro are getting up there in age, and there’s a better-than-average chance that we’ll see something new later this year. Or not. That’s how these things work. Apple announces things when they’re ready to announce them. And not before. (Usually. We’re still looking at you, AirPower.)
And it’s important to remember that AirPods are a huge category for Apple these days. Not just AirPods Pro, of course, but the full suite of four that currently are on sale. The “Wearables, Home and Accessories” segment — which admittedly combines AirPods and Apple Watches, along with HomePod — brought in more than double the revenue of iPad in the fourth quarter of 2021, and 35% more than the Mac segment. While Apple doesn’t break out AirPods on their own, there’s no denying that they’re a big deal for Apple’s big bottom line.
This is why it’s actually a good thing that AirPods Pro 2 weren’t buried deep down in the Peek Performance event. They’re more deserving than that. They’re something that are more slated toward holiday shopping later in the year, and they don’t really fit under the theme of speeds and feeds that we got in this event. New AirPods Pro are something that a lot of us are going to buy later this year.
They’re worth more than a bullet point at the back end of an Apple keynote.
And later this year, they’ll probably get their time in the sun.
