Apple can’t keep selling expensive AirPods Max headphones at the same price without the slightest update for four years — and then expect us to be glad when they make the weakest “upgrade” possible.
Apple announced loudly and quite proudly that it was going to reveal updates to the entire AirPods line at the “It’s Glowtime” event. They weren’t lying, but if you got excited for new AirPods Max, you were in for a bad time.
It is not true that the AirPods Max got the least of all the updates announced at the “It’s Glowtime” event. There’s the Apple Watch Ultra 2, which is now available in black but is otherwise the same device as last year.
And actually, while it seemed to be getting a more substantial update, AirPods Pro didn’t really move the needle much at all. For all its new hearing health functionality, Apple itself is still calling it AirPods Pro 2 instead of AirPods Pro 3.
It’s only two years since the AirPods Pro 2 first came out, though, so for coming close to abandonware, AirPods Max wins. It’s as if there is just no one at Apple who likes these headphones.
This lack of attention has been going on for so long that it’s no longer surprising. It would have been more startling — if more welcome — if the AirPods Max had been given any new features beyond a different charging port.
There are new colors
Instead, as was rumored back in February 2024, Apple chiefly just swapped out the Lightning charging system for a USB-C one. It’s not as if that’s a bad change, as it’s certainly one that users have wanted.
Then, too, Apple has updated colors that the AirPod Max can be bought in. It’s now available in midnight, blue, purple, orange, and starlight.
AirPods Max comes in new colors
Plus with a future iOS 18 update, AirPods Max should support Personalized Spatial Audio.
But there is still no listening to high bitrate lossless audio wirelessly. This means that a headline feature of Apple Music Classical is entirely wasted on the AirPods Max.
It’s no longer a technical barrier, and hasn’t been for years. Bluetooth 6 can convey high bitrate lossless audio wirelessly.
For some reason Apple didn’t bother with it, and stayed on Bluetooth 5.0.
And, there’s no sign of Adaptive Audio. This is AirPods Pro feature that has leveraged Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency — which the AirPods Max models have — to intelligently adjust the audio mix.
So this is how AirPods Pro can know to tune out loud city noises at one moment, but then switch immediately to let in conversation.
There’s an argument that AirPods Max might be aimed at people working in studios, instead of walking across cities chatting to people. Maybe, originally, but we’ve seen a startling number of them in public, just walking the streets of America.
Most of these are features Apple champions in its other AirPods. All of them seem to be ones that could easily have been added to AirPods Max over the years.
Apple has the H2 chip, it’s just not using it
That plus a host of other seemingly straightforward additions to the AirPods Max — such as listening for “Siri” instead of “Hey, Siri” — all come down to the same thing. AirPods Max has been using Apple’s H1 processor from the start.
And it still does. AirPods Max still use H1. Thw new AirPods 4 feature the H2.
H2 is an Apple processor that handles Spatial Audio, and really just about everything in the AirPods Pro and now AirPods 4. Apple launched its first devices with the H2 processor in 2022.
So it’s not as if Apple has lacked options for upgrading the AirPods Max. To be fair, it also isn’t that the AirPods Max are in some way bad, it’s just that they should so easily be better now.
AirPods Max are over-the-ear headphones
It’s also not that there is an apparent lack of demand. Only Apple knows the actual sales figures for the AirPods Max, but only the calls for a USB-C version have been more vocal than demands that Apple fix condensation problems.
And then there’s this — as well as practically ignoring the AirPods Max for so many years, there’s also one more thing Apple has failed to do.
It hasn’t touched the price.
AirPods Max seemed costly at $549 when they were first released in December 2020. The exact same model, entirely untouched, was still $549 yesterday, and the barely-updated new ones are too.
Or at least, AirPods Max have stayed locked on $549 if you’re buying from Apple. Just about everywhere else keeps discounting them, and sometimes by as much as 30%.
That’s still about twice with AirPods Pro 2 cost.
The outlier in the AirPods range
Where all other AirPods are small and white, AirPods Max and large, bulky, and brightly-colored. They’re also practically shunned by Apple.
Apple didn’t have to move AirPods Max to USB-C, they could have just carried on with Lightning. The EU isn’t forcing USB-C on old AirPods Max, for instance.
But then, no one is forcing Apple to even carry on making the AirPods Max.
They must be selling in sufficient quantities to make it cost-effective to continue producing them. But sometimes it seems as if there is only one person at Apple who likes AirPods Max — and he or she has little clout with the executives.
