We all have those weeks. You wake up late one day, spill your coffee the next and then forget about a meeting on the third. Apple seems to be having one of them.

After a less than enthusiastic quarterly earnings call where revenues saw a third consecutive year-on-year decline, Apple has now announced it will be delaying the launch of the much anticipated (and slightly controversial) wireless AirPod earphones. The initial plans had been to release the new earphones in October, though the team has stated it will need “a little more time” before wowing the world, according to Techcrunch. Maybe the prototypes fell out of someone’s pocket…

The cause of the delay has not been detailed, and we’re not entirely sure whether it’s a challenge to do with the hardware or the software, but considering the Christmas period is just around the corner it won’t be long until you’ll be able to hear the soft echoes of the whip being cracked across the back of innocent Applers.

The earphones were initially announced alongside the launch of the iPhone 7 last month, and received mixed reviews with some iLifers questioning the practicality – there are a couple of examples at the bottom of the article. Apple clearly wanted to announce them at the same time as the phone, perhaps conscious of how unremarkable the event would have been otherwise, so that was at least a cynical soft-launch or at worst the premature unveiling of a product still in need of a lot of work.

So it’s been one of those weeks, but watch out. They say bad things come in threes and only two have been ticked off in Apple HQ so far. Keep an eye out for the final instalment of Apple’s misery tomorrow.