Today’s AirPods Max Are Likely All They Will Ever Be
Credit: Simon Hrozian
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The AirPods Max that we’ve known for the past four years are likely to remain unchanged. Apple has no plans to significantly upgrade its premium on-ear headphones anytime soon, according to sources speaking with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Considering the lackluster upgrade we saw to the AirPods Max in September, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. However, some had hoped that this merely represented an interim move to unify the entire AirPods family with USB-C ports, and that Apple had something bigger in store for the next update.
However, Gurman dashed those hopes in his latest Power On newsletter, saying that Apple doesn’t have any “concrete plans” to do anything “meaningful” with the headphones. Gurman makes it clear the AirPods Max still have a market, so they aren’t going anywhere, adding that he expects them to stick around “for the foreseeable future in their current form.”
The headphones aren’t a hot enough seller to justify pouring money into development, but they’re also not a big enough flop to kill them outright. If you’ve ever been to an upscale gym in Los Angeles or New York, you can see these $550 headphones have a market — even with the high price and outdated technology.
This latest insight isn’t new. While sharing rumors of Apple’s work on this year’s second-generation AirPods Max, Gurman repeatedly said that while Apple wanted to “breathe new life” into the headphones, they’re not hot enough sellers to justify any real investment in new hardware and software features. The narrative from nearly a year ago was that Apple planned to refresh the colors and make the switch from Lightning to USB-C, but little else.
Sadly, that’s exactly what we got. Even our hopes that Apple would switch to the H2 chip from the AirPods Pro were dashed. This has left Apple’s most expensive on-ear cans entirely out of Apple’s latest iOS 17 and iOS 18 features. Meanwhile, the both versions of the AirPods 4 now use the H2 chip, while the USB-C AirPods Max remain left behind with the H1.
For all intents and purposes, the new AirPods Max are identical to the original 2020 version, save for the USB-C port and the new colors. There’s no Adaptive Audio support, no improvements to active noise cancellation (ANC), and no Siri gestures. Even the iFixit teardown showed no other internal changes other than some additional glue inside to hold them together.
However, there’s actually one way in which the new headphones are a step backward: there’s no support for wired audio at all.
Many hoped that, in switching to USB-C, the new AirPods Max would bring standard USB-C digital audio. Not only did that fail to materialize — a baffling omission considering Apple’s Beats-branded Studio Pro have it — but Apple “removed” the ability to bring over analog audio.
The original Lightning-equipped AirPods Max supported near-lossless wired audio through the use of a 3.5mm-to-Lightning cable. Customers had to buy it separately, but it was a nice option for those who wanted to get more value out of their premium cans by plugging them into wired audio sources. The new version with their USB-C port seemingly lack this capability. Standard USB-C audio cables don’t work. It’s unclear if this is simply impossible by design, or if it requires a special cable that Apple doesn’t yet offer, but either way, if you’re buying the USB-C AirPods Max you’d be be prepared to listen 100% wirelessly as there’s no other way to hook them into anything.
This is something that could come to a future version of the AirPods Max as a minor update, but considering Apple’s obvious priorities for its full-sized headphones — and its willingness to let its Beats division undercut them — we wouldn’t be surprised if another four years pass before we see the “AirPods Max 3.”
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
