Rumor Replay: iOS 26 AirPods upgrades plus new iPhone features

This is Rumor Replay, a weekly column at 9to5Mac offering a quick rundown of the most recent Apple product rumors, with analysis and commentary. Today: last-minute iOS 26 leaks covering AirPods features, new app updates, plus iPhone 17 details and more. Here are this week’s Apple rumors.

9to5Mac’s Marcus Mendes exclusively reported this week on five new AirPods features in the works for iOS 26.

New features include:

AirPods Pro 2 are easily among my absolute favorite Apple devices, and one key factor is the impressive number of new features Apple has added via software. Headphones used to be a simple iPhone accessory, but now every year Apple upgrades its AirPods products in lots of ways at no extra cost.

All of these reported iOS 26 features sound great to me, and I’m eager to see what else Apple has in store for AirPods this year.

Marcus Mendes also broke news this week on several new iOS 26 features expected for Apple’s built-in apps. Those changes include:

Additionally, Mark Gurman reported that Apple’s working on a revamped Shortcuts app that offers actions for tapping into Apple Intelligence models.

The App Store remains a strong ecosystem of third-party app options. But as a heavy user of Apple’s built-in apps, including Messages, Music, and Notes, I’m always especially excited by OS updates because of the new features they introduce.

Until this week, rumors specifically about iOS 26 app changes were pretty scarce. I’m glad that’s finally changed, and expect much more for Apple’s built-in apps to be revealed next week.

This week brought several updates about Apple’s iPhone 17 Air and base model iPhone 17.

On the 17 Air front, Jeff Pu corroborated a report on the device getting 12GB of RAM, just like the 17 Pro models will. Additionally, a Weibo leak indicated the Air might get a 120Hz display but lack ProMotion’s always-on capability.

For the base iPhone 17, reliable display analyst Ross Young says it’s getting a larger screen than last year’s 16 model. The new display will be 6.3 inches, up from 6.1. This means the base 17 and 17 Pro will have the same display size again, following last year’s divergence.

Apple’s Pro models always get a lot of attention, but this year the iPhone 17 Air especially is changing that. 12GB of RAM is a nice upgrade for a model that otherwise shares a lot in common with the base option. But I really hope the ProMotion rumor proves false, or else I may need to reconsider my purchase decision.

There’s a naming shake-up happening with this year’s software updates, wherein iOS 19 will actually be iOS 26, and every other platform will follow the ‘26’ scheme too.

But it seems Apple isn’t abandoning its unique macOS branding pattern.

Mark Gurman reports that macOS 26 will carry a name inspired by Lake Tahoe in California. He says ‘macOS Tahoe’ is the expected moniker.

There’s something comforting about knowing that macOS will continue getting a special brand name each year, despite Apple’s efforts to unify all of its software platforms around the year-based numbering.

Bring on the beautiful, Lake Tahoe-inspired new Mac wallpaper.

What are your takeaways from this week’s Apple rumors? Let us know in the comments.

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Ryan got his start in journalism as an Editor at MacStories, where he worked for four years covering Apple news, writing app reviews, and more. For two years he co-hosted the Adapt podcast on Relay FM, which focused entirely on the iPad. As a result, it should come as no surprise that his favorite Apple device is the iPad Pro.