Why is the 1-megapixel camera the most important component for Apple's AI? A few days ago, MacRumors unearthed a pre-made Apple promotional video directly from macOS Tahoe 26.7 RC: you wear AirPods, pick up a book, Visual Intelligence identifies the book title, and then Siri is asked to save it. The product code name in the video is B790. According to Mark Gurman, it was already on Apple's 2026 product roadmap, and the subsequent mass production version B798 will not be released until 2027. The recently unearthed system code also lets us see for the first time exactly how these headphones "see". The most interesting part is a seemingly underwhelming parameter: The camera on AirPods only has 1 megapixel. Photo | WIRED At a time when the mobile phone industry is already discussing 200-megapixel sensors and 8K video, the camera Apple prepared for its future AI hardware may actually capture images at a resolution as low as 320×320. It is obviously not designed for taking photos. Why does the camera on AirPods only have 1 megapixel? Judging from the currently unearthed code, this camera system has at least two working modes. In active mode, the camera can capture 640×640 images, with a maximum output of 1024×1024 after processing. In passive mode, it captures 320×320 images, and outputs 320×320 or 512×512 images. The code shows that the left and right AirPods can capture RGB still images synchronously, align the two perspectives through the same Frame ID, and then continuously collect data at a certain frequency for Visual Intelligence to process. The system processes ambient audio, changes in surrounding sounds, posture and head rotation information at the same time; the two cameras need to be calibrated, and the camera and motion sensors also need to be calibrated. If the head movement is