Apple's AirPods Max update was laughable, as is the price

(Image credit: Aplpe)

There's no fun in being right: we said yesterday that Apple wasn't going to unveil a radically different version of the AirPods Max, and then Apple managed not to meet even our low expectations by unveiling the tiniest of upgrades for its inaugural December 2020 over-ears.

The first update in the Max's four-year lifespan has a single hardware change, and even that is one Apple's been forced to make: USB-C. And that's your lot. There's no upgrade to the audio chip, no alternative to the spectacularly horrible AirPods Max case, no Apple Lossless transmission. Just a few new colors and a slightly different connector.

I'm no hater. I own a pair of Apple AirPods Max, bought with my own money, and I love them. So do my music-mad kids. But you've got to admire Apple's chutzpah: during an event where a lot of the features are still vaporware (most of Apple Intelligence, some of the health features coming to Apple Watch and AirPods Pro) Apple managed to outdo itself with the time it devoted to an upgrade that isn't an upgrade.

Max disappointment

It's fun to look at how the Apple sausage is made when they're trying to sell you the sizzle. Once you notice that all of those Apple presenters standing on lots of green, green grass use the same superlatives ("magical", "beautiful", "incredible") you can turn it into a potentially lethal drinking game. You can also skip straight to the forty-minute mark in any big Apple event, because that's when Apple starts talking about the most important product, in this case the iPhone 16.

But it was the 32-minute mark where the funny was, at the Cupertino giant's September 9 Glowtime event, because that's when Apple announced the AirPods Max as if they didn't already exist: their "exceptionally crafted over-the-ear design" which "people around the world absolutely love", most likely because they've had the best part of four years to get familiar with it.

"We're excited to introduce beautiful new colors", said hardware engineering VP Kate Bergeron, looking far from excited. But there was more! USB-C makes the AirPods Max "even more convenient to charge".

I'm ribbing Apple here, of course. But then, I think Apple is ribbing us a bit too, because this update should have been a press release. The final bit of the announcement was that the AirPods Max are "still $549" as if Apple was offering a great deal, rather than maintaining the same high price-tag for four-year-old headphones.

At $549 the AirPods Max are more expensive than the excellent new planar magnetic Edifier Stax Spirit S5, more expensive than the noise-nixing Bose QuietComfort Ultra, more expensive than the Matt Berry toting Cambridge Audio Melomania P100... more expensive than most of the headphones in our current chart of the best wireless headphones.

The AirPods Max were arguably overpriced at launch. They're definitely overpriced now.

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.