The ‘new’ AirPods Max are another lazy Apple update no one wants

Every fall, like clockwork, Apple announces a new generation of iPhones. But other products are refreshed on a more relaxed basis: the AirPods Max, for example, came out in December 2020 and didn’t get an update until earlier this month. Still, at least Apple made up for lost time and gave them a really thorough update, bringing them up to date with the latest audio developments, right?

Right?

Well. Look at it this way: a good hardware update fixes the problems with the previous model. (A revolutionary hardware update rethinks the entire product from the ground up, but we won’t set the bar that high for now.) My exemplar of a good hardware update is the mighty Apple Watch Series 2, which addressed the speed, battery life, and water resistance problems, as well as the lack of GPS, which reviewers had flagged with the original model. It didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it made the ride a whole lot smoother.

So do the 2024 AirPods Max, available today for $549, match the Apple Watch Series 2? Do they feature fixes for the issues we highlighted in our review at the start of 2021? After all, Apple has had more than three and a half years to find a better way. Let’s look at the evidence, starting with the problems that were apparent at launch.

Issue: The AirPods Max, while comfortable, are excessively heavy: 40-50 percent heavier than competing wireless noise-cancelling headphones.
Fix: None. It’s the same design.

Issue: Lack of sweat/waterproofing.
Fix: Again, none.

Issue: There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack.
Fix: We still don’t get 3.5mm. The USB-C port is more versatile than Lightning but based on Apple’s announcement it appears to be for charging only, not music input.

Issue: They still have a Lightning port.
Fix: The AirPods Max now have USB-C.

Issue: The Smart Case is very poorly designed and provides almost no protection.
Fix: None. It’s the same!

Issue: The AirPods Max are overpriced for what you get.
Fix: The price remains the same in the U.S. There was a price drop in the U.K. back in September 2023, however: from £549 to £499.

And what about the areas where Apple has moved on since 2020, leaving the AirPods Max left behind? For example:

Issue: The AirPods Max, despite being Apple’s flagship headphones, don’t support its own lossless audio format, launched in 2021.
Fix: If the new models support lossless, Apple is keeping quiet about it.

Issue: The latest AirPods Pro (and even the $129 AirPods 4) get a more advanced H2 chip, which improves battery life and ANC performance and is necessary for Apple’s adaptive transparency mode. But the AirPods Max are stuck on the older H1 without any of the new features.
Fix: None. It still has the H1, farcically.

Basically, nothing has been fixed. The AirPods Max are as outdated as ever, growing more so by the day.

Minimum effort

Perhaps I’m being unfair on the “new” AirPods Max. After all, Apple doesn’t label them with a 2nd-gen tag or separate the 2024 edition from the 2020 edition in the “Compare Models” section on its website. As far as Apple’s concerned, this is the same product, only with USB-C and some new colors.

But that’s the problem, right there. Of all the products on Apple’s books, this is the one that most urgently required a full refresh. It needed to do what it did with the Apple Watch Series 2: acknowledge the mistakes and problems, and find a way to resolve them, instead of fobbing us off with this disappointment. And the worst part is that, now Apple has done an “update,” there’s little chance of an actual 2nd-gen model in the near or medium term.

The thing is, this isn’t new behavior for Apple. It’s been phoning in “will this do?” non-updates for years. The 3rd-gen iPhone SE, for example, was a similar disappointment which, as our reviewer points out, updated the one part that didn’t need it, ignored all the problems, and didn’t touch the physical design.

The Mac Pro, meanwhile, is supposed to sit at the top of its line, like the AirPods Max, but actually has one of the Mac lineup’s more outdated specs lists because Apple doesn’t update ultra-premium products often enough. The Mac Pro had been languishing on four-year-old hardware (sound familiar?), and when Apple finally gave it an update it didn’t change the design and installed chips that would quickly fall behind the company’s other machines. As my colleague points out, it feels symbolic that the lab shown in Apple’s Scary Fast video last year was running on Mac Studios, not Mac Pros.

Ultimately this comes down to an age-old problem when dealing with Apple, which is that in many fields the company is so dominant that it isn’t really competing with other companies, but with its own legacy products. When Apple launches a new Mac, phone, or set of headphones, you just know that someone from marketing has been getting in the engineers’ ears: make sure you don’t advance things too much, because we’ll have to top this next time. Sure, you can release an incredible product and everyone will be happy at first. But you’re just storing up problems for yourself in the future.

I mean, it’s not like customers are going to ignore the new AirPods Max and buy over-ear headphones from someone else, right?

Right?