Apple couldn’t care less about the AirPods Max

Apple is apparently not interested in pouring resources into second-generation AirPods Max, so it just continues selling the woefully outdated $550 model.

Mark Gurman reported in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg that we shouldn’t be keeping our collective fingers crossed for a pair of new AirPods Max, although the current model is almost five years old. Gurman writes that the AirPods Max are “too popular for Apple to stop selling them, and not popular enough for the company to invest a ton of time and money into creating a new version.”

Instead, the company’s audio team is apparently focused on annual AirPods updates and sharing its technologies across other products, including speakers and microphones. But how does that even make sense? No one wants to say it out loud, so I’m gonna do it: the AirPods Max are way overpriced for what they offer and incapable of supporting Apple’s modern computational audio features that require its H2 headphone chip. The AirPods Max run the outdated H1 chip and still cost $550.

No new AirPods Max for you

“But the reality is that the headphones are in an odd spot commercially,” Gurman wrote. “They’re too popular for Apple to stop selling them, and they’re not popular enough for the company to invest a ton of time and money into creating a new version.”

The sad truth is this: One can easily get a pair of wireless cans with active noise cancellation and comparable sound from Sony, Bose and other makers at a much lower cost. The AirPods Max do have premium build quality, they certainly look nice and integrate seamlessly with the Apple ecosystem.

But their value quickly diminishes if you consider that the AirPods Max don’t support Apple’s modern computational audio features found on much cheaper AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2, such as intelligent noise cancellation and transparency blending (called adaptive audio), voice isolation, conversation awareness and more. And yet, they’re among the most expensive over-ear headphones.

If the AirPods Max are “not popular enough for the company to invest a ton of time and money into creating a new version,” then perhaps Apple should lower their price to make them more popular. Because at $550, they’re surprisingly terrible value and stuck in the past for anyone but die-hard Apple fans.

How hard is it to put an H2 chip in there?

The only hardware refresh we saw for the AirPods Max was last year, when Apple swapped the Lightning port for USB-C charging to comply with EU regulations. Oh, and we got some new color options. It seems unbelievable that Apple couldn’t justify assigning some engineers to at least put the H2 chip in the AirPods Max to get the same audio features as the AirPods Pro.

Clearly, the $550 AirPods Max underperformed commercially, and it’s Apple’s fault. And the fact that Tim Cook & Co. seem fine with milking buyers who are willing to pay through the nose for brand loyalty is disappointing, to say the least.

For the sake of completeness, I should mention that Gurman’s report contradicts an earlier report from reliable industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said that the AirPods Max 2 could enter mass production in 2027.

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/08/25/apple-couldnt-care-less-about-the-airpods-max/