Oct 18, 2025
3 min read
Even smarter, with better sound and always white.Apple's Kate Bergeron tells GQ about the major AirPods Pro 3 redesign scheduled for 2025.
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AirPods have revolutionized the world of headphones, but there is one detail that often escapes: Apple has been in the world of headphones for more than twenty years.Long before the $3 billion acquisition of Beats in 2014 and the AirPods themselves, every new iPod came with a pair of wired, white, minimalist headphones that quickly became a generational icon.If you could get your hands on him, you were in: Millennials knew that well.
"I started working at Apple about four months after the first iPod came out," says Kate Bergeron, now vice president of hardware engineering."As soon as you arrived, you were assigned a laptop and a CAD workstation: a bulky, unglamorous HP computer. I sat next to Steve Zadesky's team, the designer of the iPod. They all already had an iPod, and I thought, 'I've got to have one'."
In 2025, Bergeron will no longer have to rock his pair of headphones.AirPods Pro 3 are everywhere.Pedro Pascal, Timothée Chalamet and, apparently, half of the subway passengers on our planet have a pair.With 66 million units sold in 2024, AirPods are the most purchased headphones in the world, and the Pro model is the most popular in Apple's line.However, for Bergeron, who signed such explosions as the "Unibody" MacBook Pro in 2008 and the MacBook Air redesign in 2022, the real goal is elsewhere: to recreate these heads so that they can be made available to a wider audience.Although iPod and AirPods headphones have conquered the market, they don't always work for everyone.
“It's true, I can't use the brand's AirPods: without the eartips, they won't stay in the ears,” admits Kate Bergeron.“So when we started working on the first generation AirPods Pro, I said to myself, ‘I need to find a pair that fits my ears.’ When we released them, they ended up in my pocket in October 2019 and never came out.”
Today, in 2025, Bergeron doesn't need a custom fix.Launched in September, the AirPods Pro 3, along with the ultra-slim iPhone Air and the ultra-rugged Watch Ultra 3, retain the iconic glossy white design, but are refined in every detail.A new sound system, four times more effective noise cancellation than the first generation, and a combination of redesigned ear tips, soft foam and silicone make these headphones the best Apple has ever made.Whether it's the whimsical rock of the Ducks or the futuristic R&B of Rochelle Jordan, the difference is immediately noticeable.
Il segreto di questo salto qualitativo? Un’ossessione per le orecchie. Da quando ha progettato i primi AirPods Pro, Apple ha istituito un reparto di “ingegneria umana”: un team multidisciplinare di ingegneri, ricercatori e medici dedicato a studiare l’interazione tra corpo umano e tecnologia. Per i Pro 3, Bergeron sapeva che la vera svolta sarebbe stata ridurre il bulbo degli auricolari, rendendolo più compatibile con la morfologia dell’orecchio. Le orecchie, però, come le impronte digitali, sono uniche. Serviva un modo per mappare la loro geometria 3D su larga scala. «Oggi abbiamo raccolto l'impronta di decine di migliaia di orecchie», sottolinea Bergeron. «Utilizziamo un sistema composto da quattro fotocamere iPhone con tecnologia LIDAR per scattare immagini laterali del condotto uditivo e costruire un database sempre più preciso».
Unlike the iPhone, which can be divided into Mini, Plus or Air versions, the AirPods have a stable, almost sculptural design.They look like jewelry, but if they're too big or stick out unnaturally, the effect is lost.
Integrating a new sensor to monitor physical activity and heart rate in AirPods Pro 3, explains Kate Bergeron, was like playing "Tetris in 3D".Each added component required a cascading change: another element had to change shape or find a new location.After six years of trial and error, the electronics of the AirPods Pro have finally been moved to the stand of the headphones, to the antenna.The architecture of the in-ear presence sensor has also been rethought, freeing up valuable space.
But the biggest task - to improve the durability and stability of these plastic headphones - remains open.Airpods Pro 3 already contains recycled materials such as plastic, cobalt and lithium, but the real goal is to replace the battery with one that is resistant to skin, rain and other everyday elements."One of the best things about Apple is that we're never satisfied," says Bergecon."We have to do it ... the team is already working to overcome these obstacles and they know how important it is."
Despite the technical innovations, the aesthetics of the AirPods Pro 3 remain true to its identity.Do not expect color variations: white remains the only option."In our study, white is considered an iconic color, since the first AirPods and even the iPod: it can be exactly the same white," specifies Bergeron."It was an integral part of the vision: we wanted that, walking down the street, you could recognize that shape and that color. And we decided to stay true to this idea."
