Earlier this week someone posted on the anonymous revelation app Secret that Apple is developing a new line of biometric EarPods that will be capable of measuring heart rate and blood pressure. The poster also claimed that iBeacon technology would be incorporated in them so that it would be easy to locate them if they went missing. It turns out all that isn’t exactly a secret, just a hoax someone cooked up on the can one morning, literally.
We often cover Apple rumors like many other tech websites but only those that make sense. Normally there’s some patent or other evidence that corroborates a rumor, which makes it worthwhile to take a look at it. That’s exactly what happened with the biometric EarPods rumor. It lined up with a patent that Apple already has which is why this rumor got so much coverage.
The person who started this all on Secret came clean via a Tumblr post in which they linked and verified the original post. No one knows who that poster is but he or she claims that this was made up “while I was using the toilet and worrying about my blood pressure.”
The poster further explains through Tumblr that the intention was never to mislead people but instead to use the Secret app is an “outlet for comedy.” People who might have had gotten their hopes up for biometric EarPods that you could track down would clearly beg to differ.