New AirPods Max
There’s been some debate on whether Apple’s AirPods Max have been much of a success. Released in late 2020, Apple’s premium cans were arguably overpriced even at launch. Now, they’ve just passed their third anniversary and they’ve been eclipsed by the Beats Studio Pro, which offer many of the same Apple-exclusive features like dynamic head tracking and Personalized Spatial Audio at a substantially lower price.
Nevertheless, while the AirPods Max may not be a huge priority for Apple, there’s clearly a niche that Apple wants to serve with these high-end headphones. By all reports, it plans to refresh them this year with a USB-C port and some new color options.
Don’t expect any other significant updates, though; the USB-C port will hopefully support wired lossless digital audio, and they’ll likely pack in Apple’s latest H2 chips that could bring new software features like Conversational Awareness and Adaptive Audio over from the AirPods Pro. However, despite Apple’s hard work pushing beyond Bluetooth, we haven’t heard any recent developments on new wireless codecs that could deliver lossless audio.