In 2020, Bluetooth 5.2 was introduced with support for a new LE Audio specification. At least two Apple employees are listed as participants in the development of LE Audio, and Apple is likely to adopt the specification for use in future devices.
According to a newly published filing in the Bluetooth SIG database, Apple recently had an unknown component with Bluetooth 5.3 support tested. The filing does not reveal any other notable details, but along with a similar filing last month, it suggests that Apple is preparing for future devices with Bluetooth versions that support LE Audio.
LE Audio would be particularly beneficial for AirPods, such as the second-generation AirPods Pro rumored to launch later this year. Below, we've outlined five benefits that LE Audio would have for future AirPods Pro, assuming that source devices like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac are also upgraded with support for the specification in the future.
Improved audio quality: LE Audio includes a new low-power audio codec called LC3 that provides improved audio quality compared to the classic SBC codec, even at a 50% lower bit rate, according to the Bluetooth SIG.
Longer battery life: With the low-power LC3 audio codec, future AirPods Pro would have longer battery life for audio playback.
Multi-stream audio: LE Audio would enable the transmission of multiple synchronized audio streams between a source device like an iPhone or Mac and the AirPods Pro. This would allow for an individual left and right AirPod to each have its own Bluetooth audio connection with a device supporting LE Audio for improved reliability.
Connect many pairs of AirPods to an iPhone at once: LE Audio would allow for many pairs of AirPods to directly connect to a future iPhone, iPad, Mac, or other device and play audio simultaneously. Apple already has a feature that allows an iPhone or iPad user with AirPods to share audio with another person with AirPods, but the feature does not work with more than two pairs of AirPods.
No switching between iPhone and Mac required: LE Audio would allow AirPods to connect to multiple source devices like an iPhone and Mac simultaneously, eliminating the need to switch the AirPods between devices.
In July, the Bluetooth SIG said it anticipates availability of products with support for LE Audio to ramp up by the end of 2022.
Saturday October 18, 2025 11:00 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
iOS 26 was released last month, but the software train never stops, and iOS 26.1 beta testing is already underway. So far, iOS 26.1 makes both Apple Intelligence and Live Translation on compatible AirPods available in additional languages, and it includes some other minor changes across the Apple Music, Calendar, Photos, Clock, and Safari apps.
More features and changes will follow in future ...
Monday October 20, 2025 10:57 am PDT by Juli Clover
With the fourth betas of iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, and macOS 26.1, Apple has introduced a new setting that's designed to allow users to customize the look of Liquid Glass.
The toggle lets users select from a clear look for Liquid Glass, or a tinted look. Clear is the current Liquid Glass design, which is more transparent and shows the background underneath buttons, bars, and menus, while tinted ...
Apple plans to cut production of the iPhone Air amid underwhelming sales performance, Japan's Mizuho Securities believes (via The Elec).
The Japanese investment banking and securities firm claims that the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are seeing higher sales than their predecessors during the same period last year, while the standard iPhone 17 is a major success, performing...
Friday October 17, 2025 7:35 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's software engineers continue to internally test iOS 26.0.2, according to MacRumors logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions.
iOS 26.0.2 will be a minor update that addresses bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, but we do not know any specific details yet.
The update will likely be released by the end of next week.
Last month, Apple released iOS 26.0.1,...
Saturday October 18, 2025 10:57 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the new iPad Pro's headline feature is the M5 chip, the device has some other changes, including N1 and C1X chips, faster storage speeds, and more.
With the M5 chip, the new iPad Pro has up to a 20% faster CPU and up to a 40% faster GPU compared to the previous model with the M4 chip, according to Geekbench 6 results. Keep in mind that 256GB and 512GB configurations have a 9-core CPU,...
Sunday October 19, 2025 7:39 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
iOS 26.4 is expected to introduce a revamped version of Siri powered by Apple Intelligence, but not everyone is satisfied with how well it works.
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said some of Apple's software engineers have "concerns" about the overhauled Siri's performance. However, he did not provide any specific details about the shortcomings.
iOS 26.4 will...
Thursday October 16, 2025 9:13 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro with its next-generation M5 chip, but previous rumors have indicated that the company still plans to announce at least a few additional products before the end of the year.
The following Apple products have at one point been rumored to be updated in 2025, although it is unclear if the timeframe for any of them has...
Monday October 20, 2025 1:55 pm PDT by Juli Clover
With the fourth beta of iOS 26.1, Apple added a toggle that makes Liquid Glass more opaque and reduces transparency. We tested the beta to see where the toggle works and what it looks like.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
If you have the latest iOS 26.1 beta, you can go to Settings > Display and Brightness to get to the new option. Tap on Liquid Glass, then...
Thursday October 16, 2025 3:57 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple plans to launch MacBook Air models equipped with the new M5 chip in spring 2026, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple is also working on M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models that will come early in the year.
Neither the MacBook Pro models nor the MacBook Air models are expected to get design changes, with Apple focusing on simple chip upgrades. In the case of the MacBook Pro, a m...
Bluetooth LE simply isn’t enough. It can’t even do lossless standard resolution audio, let alone even dream of doing anything at the high-resolutions offered by Apple Music now. AirPods are not worth getting until they can reliably do bit-perfect 16/44.1 at the very least.
Most radiation is non-ionizing beyond a certain distance. For example, Wi-Fi routers are only ionizing within like 6 inches. Bluetooth is ionizing at such a small distance and such a low level that it is meaningless.
There’s a whole bunch of rules around what power and frequency your waves can be that are set by the FCC for safety reasons.
The reason 5G has lots of smaller towers is partially because it would be unsafe for there to be a super powerful 5G radio, because within the first X meters, it would be ionizing.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t understand the complexity, and they think more towers = more radiation = cancer…. Or they don’t realize that the frequencies and power levels are chosen to be safe at the distances the products are used.
That being said, there is some SMALL, and I mean VERY SMALL evidence that phones might be ionizing within about 2mm while on a phone call. This has led to some recommendations to hold the phone SLIGHTLY away from your face. But truly, even if it was ionizing, the distance would be so short that you’re probably being exposed to more ionizing radiation from the Sun on a daily basis.
In short, don’t worry about it. The sun is a bigger radiation danger than any electronics you are using.
Sorry for chiming in here, but the ionization capability of a certain type of radiation is not a function of its traveling distance (nor its intensity), it's exclusively a function of its frequency or more specifically, a function of the energy of each single quantum/photon. For a photon to have an ionizing effect on matter, it must have a sufficiently high frequency (translating to a sufficiently low wavelength). “Sufficient” depends to a certain degree on the type of atom/molecule subject to radiation (some species of atoms/molecules are ionized at lower frequencies than others). The lower threshold for ionization is given by the mid to high UV spectrum range. Every type of radiation above is able to ionize matter (e.g. X-rays, gamma rays, particles from radioactive decay), everything below is not.
WiFi, Bluetooth, microwaves and other low-frequency electromagnetic radiation is NOT able to ionize matter (knocking out electrons from shells) of any kind including living tissue, not even within the first few millimeters, since their respective photons do not exhibit a sufficient energy to do that. They merely are able to excite the electronic (atoms, molecules) as well as vibrational and rotational (molecules) energy levels of the exposed matter. Thus, they certainly are able to deposit energy into the tissue which leads to thermal (and non-thermal) effects on it and this is the subject of ongoing research in terms of radiation hazards to human tissue.
Really sounds like Apple should have held the $549 AirPods Max until this was ready. This is everything we wanted in AirPods Max and so far it’s rumored that Apple hasn’t even started on AirPods Max 2.
