Apple aptly calls its wireless over-the-ear headphones the AirPods Max – as in, maximum damage to your wallet Apple today embarked upon another skirmish into the world of over-ear headphones with the launch of the AirPods Max. The cans faithfully follow Apple's playbook. Like the bog-standard AirPod they are intrinsically linked to the iOS ecosystem, limiting their usefulness beyond Cupertino's kit. They look nice, although beauty is …
"This is exactly the opposite effect that the purchaser was aiming for."
To be honest Geoff, it isn't because you (and I) are not the target demographic for these. Those who haven't drunk the koolaid will think as you and I do, those that have will think jealous thoughts of the people that can afford these or will think about buying them.
This is after all a company that charges £560 just for a set of wheels. https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/16/apple_mac_pro_699_dollar_wheels/
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"because all the tech companies change dollar prices to pounds directly instead of applying exchange rates."
Primarily because UK prices include VAT while US prices don't usually include the many and varied sales taxes implemented in different states and cities. Likewise, they need to add in the cost of the warranty period, which is generally much longer in the UK and EU than in the USA. With the recent fall in the value of the £ against the $ over the last few years, I'm surprised the actual number isn't now higher in £ than in $ given the above.
That's to remind Americans how extravagant and inefficient their state government is.
The UK need MORE of that sort of thing, not less.
I like my bills itemised so I can tell who's ripping me off. It should be added at the very end along with credit card transaction fees.
According to the mighty Wikipedia "was introduced, roughly, because we joined the EEC" should really be more like "which replaced Purchase Tax because we joined the EEC". It is also apparently the Government's third largest source of revenue, which should give pause for thought before anyone begins to dream that it might disappear any time soon.
Semi-open and open cans don't tend to worn outside of the house as often as closed cans are, so aren't subject to tbe abuse of being bundled into rucksacks etc.
Other than cables, the main area of older headphones than often fails is the foam and vinyl of the earpads. Like failed cables, these are often replaceable by design, or at least easily repairable.
Loud speakers of a certain vintage also used a foam rubber that disintegrated over time. Again, it's not the hardest job to replace. Sometimes a capacitor or two will need replacing on a speaker's cross-check circuit - again, not too tricky.
No....
Whilst I'll admit the moving head to face the sound source is a neat trick, it's one I'll happily do without since my Sony Wh-h800's do wireless so very well (quick pairing, backup cord if needed, repairable if needed, works with windows, mac and android, has an app to tune the sound to your hearing, generally lasts about a week before I have to charge them on using them at least 4 - 5 hours a day) and with the change I can buy a set highend hifi cans for home listening (say to a record player using decidedly non-wireless tech).. Or buy a phono to usb sound card...
And still have change for a new record deck....
If they were the only headphones that worked with iPhones, then yeah, it'd be a piss take. Remember, you can buy far more expensive headphones from Sony or Sennheiser if you really wanted to.
As it is, their launch price is less than that of the first Walkman, the first iPod or the first iPhone - other non essential items aimed at people with disposable income. There is no reason for Apple to sell these for less at this time because, just before Christmas, demand would outstrip supply. In addition, it is important for Apple to sell these for more than their wireless rivals at launch, since they want to reinforce their claims that these headphones do more then rival's offerings.
The point is, these are the factors that determine the retail price, not the BOM (which itself is a function of tooling against sold units)
If you want to pay close to the BOM, there are some fantastic-sounding headphones avalaible - just search forums for 'Chi Fi'.
Personally, I did find myself looking at older Sony MX3s for around £150 earlier in the year, but I couldn't justify the cost (not like I was travelling by train or plane much!). Instead I bought a pack of 3.5mm trrrs jacks and dug out the soldering iron for my collection of damaged earbuds.
There are a lot of costs involved when developing time travel:
I ordered last Saturday (Dec.5) a system from Apple web site.
it was deemed to be delivered next Friday (Dec.11)
I got it on Monday (Dec.7).
I was advised on Tuesday (Dec.8) that it just left the warehouse...
(anon just in case I get a second copy of my order for free - not holding my breath though)
This uses oxygen-free wireless transmit technology - the Max's 0s and 1s are higher fidelity bits than what you get with other headphones. It is powered by Apple's new F-U chip.
That is why the pairing is proprietary - it is not easy to find an oxygen free wireless path. It also operates at in the GHz band - that *billions* of wireless transmits per second.
Can't wait to get mine - hope it works with the F-Me-2 chip in my Apple Hermes watch. Magical!
Oddly enough, that's the one feature that these Apple cans have over their rivals - internal microphone arrays and processing to adapt the sound on the fly to compensate for an incomplete seal. Obviously wait for reviews, but in theory these cans should be more tolerant of a lock of hair over an ear.
With no disrespect intended towards the young lady in the Apple-provided image used in the illustration... she looks like she has her ears in a really odd place.
Either that, or the cans have been placed incorrectly... but surely not that?
(Besides, every sound engineer knows the proper way to wear cans is with one ear fully exposed :)
iCoffee Bar at the Apple Store
staffed by Genius Baristas, "free" coffee on production of your iPhone/iWatch.
Later, you'll be able to buy an iCoffee making machine, and purchase "iCoffee Pods" from the Apple Store at not-compettitive cost. The pods will not be compatible with any of the other brands/market leader, and will feature a design with rounded corners. Expect short best before/expiry dates on the pods
Someone has posted this on twitter..
"sorry apple, but the airpods max case looks weirdly like a bra"
Oh yeah, better value:
Sennheiser Orpheus H1: £51,000
Sony MDR R10: $2,500 in 1991, sells for $6,000 today.
Sony and Sennheiser, and yes, Apple, have you well covered in the under £30, and under £100 ranges too.
The point is, the type of people who buy the 'better value' Sony MX4 headphones for $400 clearly have money to spare, so might be willing to spend $600 on the Apple cans. Those of us who never spend more than £50 on headphones will never consider the MX4s, the Bose or the Apples, so the price gap is irrelevant.
I've found the problem to be that a lot of the people who buy them do so because it's an obvious way to show-off rather than for the sound.
If you walk into the office with an expensive pair of Sennheiser\Sony\Bose headphones, most people don't care as they're not up on the product stack. They could be £90 or £9,000 but only like minded people will recognise them.
Slapping on a pair of these and people will instantly recognise them as an iProduct and, at the very least, know they're not a cheap product.
Had a look at the Sennheiser Orpheus H1
it's not just a pair of headphones, it's a valve amplifier built into a marble base and it looks like a product that was made and is for sale "Because we could and a few very rich people will buy it" rather than the apple ithing which is a mass market product that is just stupidly expensive for the masses.
The Sony ones, look like they cost more now because they're not made anymore and they are highly sort after.
Good point, some treat their finances like that, but personally I'd have a budget in mind and get the best performance I could for the money.
I wouldn't mind paying a few hundred for good headphones if I had that budget. I would mind looking like an iPrat at any price though, if I'm honest.
> better value offerings from proper audio equipment companies
I wonder how much of Sony's management thought Apple wasn't a 'proper audio equipment company' when the iPod was released. Oops.
And in turn at that time, Nikon''s management might have thought Sony wasn't a real photographic equipment company. Oh dear.
Funny thing this technology malarky, isn't it?
> I wonder how much of Sony's management thought Apple wasn't a 'proper audio equipment company' when the iPod was released
I don't think it was/is, to be honest: I've never been so disappointed as when I "upgraded" an iRiver portable music player to an iPod and played it for the first time, as the audio quality was significantly worse than the older device it replaced (a significant contributor being the crappy ear buds that came with it). And that was before fully realising the horror that was iTunes, which made it ten times harder than it needed to be to get music onto the thing in the first place
> And that was before fully realising the horror that was iTunes
To be fair, awful as iTunes might have been it had nothing on the horror that Sony's SonicStage was reputed to manifest. Sony's answer to the iPod was considered to be a fine piece of hardware but it required SonicStage and it couldn't play MP3 files - only ATRAC. The point remains though - the iPod took a big chunk of the market for HDD (and later solid state) audio players that Sony had complacently thought belonged to them, at the same relagating Minidisc recorders to a niche product almost overnight.
The early iRiver kit was excellent. And not only could music just be copied over to it as a mass storage device, but it could act as a USB host in its own right and copy music to other devices. I was once given an iPod with a broken screen and immediately took it apart to replace the broken HDD in my iRiver H320.
The H1xx and H3xx range did have great sound quality, but I can't remember the included earbuds as being anything special. I mostly used it with some Sennheiser HD 250s.
I still have my H320. Or H340... yeah, the one with a bigger (than HUGE), 40Gb hdd. I also remember taking it on a trip to India around... 2004(ish) as it had a great feature, usb host, so you could offload your digicam files to it. Which was great, given how expensive (and small) memory cards were there. The only pain was slow speed. They also added a few truly revolutionary (and useless) quirks, like ability to play video files and view txt files.
p.s. I actually still have it, and a few months ago, once it sat long enough on recharging cable it woke up and yes, it's alive. I guess I can still use it as a player of sorts, though I'm pretty sure it would refuse to play flacs. And to think I paid something around 300 quid for it is quite mind-boggling to me now :)
You might consider putting RockBox on your H320. RockBox is an open source replacement OS for a range of media devices of that vintage. Amongst other things, it includes a GameBoy emulator, so I played through SuperMario on my H320. I also installed Zelda Link's Awakening. However, the H320 can't register one of the buttons you might map to 'A' at the same time as a direction command from the D pad... Swap which button is 'A' in the emulator options and you're good to go.
I'm still kicking myself for taking my Sennheisers (low end of their mid range, RRP of £90 but bought on sale for £35 sort of thing) out of the house to make a short train journey less boring... then leaving them in a pub. Grr.
It was daft of me because they were excellent at-home headphones (I could fall asleep wearing them and wake up with no trace of ear discomfort) but poor portable headphones (overly long cable, didn't fold up).
I could just about, if I tried really hard, justify a pair of Sony XM3s for £150 to myself, if they were just used at home and at work... but for generally travelling around then a pair of £6 Sony earbuds is likely the best option for me.
History would appear to challenge your conclusion.
The first Walkman came to be because Sony's CEO wanted something to listen to on air journeys. He was a middle aged manager and figured other middle aged managers might want one too. The engineers took a portable cassette recorder designed for journalists and started work. The MK II Walkman became their 'iconic' design, which was then followed by variations which included cheaper models for the 'kids.'
The $800 price of the first iPod limited it to 'middle-aged project managers' - but iPods later became near ubiquitous amongst the kids.
You're not completely off the mark, though - Bose market themselves almost exclusively at 'middle aged manager' types (or at least those people whose work compels them to travel by air more than they might wish) and they haven't convincingly broken out if that market segment. Still, it's a lucrative segment.
As a middle aged Project Manager, I will avoid these like the plague! We understand the Cost / Quality trade off (joke!) - although quality is technically 'fitness for purpose' so, if the 'purpose' is to show everyone that you are a pretentious twat, these could be considered very high quality.
Beats were bloody awful headphones aimed at kids and, while these have a lot of tech, I assume the sound engineering was secondary to the styling. I am happy to be wrong here - wait for the reviews.
I will stick to my Sennheiser HD600's and Shure SE425's (with modded filters) - neither is cheap but they are both exceptional headphones and I could replace both for the price of a set of these.
Never mind the price (which does appear outrageous on the face of it), what about the styling?
One of the nice side-effects of paying premium prices for products is that as well as performance, you expect to get premium design. The sort of design that says the owner has taste, like the Bowers and Wilkins range. This latest Apple effort looks like headphones from Smyths Toys. The red/pink colour in particular is horrendous.
The other thing is performance. When the HomePod launched there was a bunch of people who thought the traditional hifi industry had just been made obsolete the way Palm and Nokia were in 2007. Which turned out not to be true of course. It's surely the same here - are these really going to sound massively better than B&W and the Sony WH-100XM4? It's possible I admit, but doubtful.
Given the oxygen free copper cable stuff self-declared "audiophiles" claim make a difference, I think there is a market where it makes sense to use very expensive components to bring in a fractional percentage of improvement.
This product will create a halo branding effect - this will be what DJs, rappers etc wear for their image, and this is what builds the brand. The look must be defining. The pricing *has* to be aspirational. This is not meant to be just high performing in audio functionality. That market is addressed by the Bose and Sony's.
This product is meant for the real prize - building the Apple brand.
1: Over-styling usually denotes that a pair of cans is aimed at kids and has Mega Bass as its chief feature. For that market Apple has its Beats range. I'm not a fan of the Airport Max's metalic pastel colours, but they do mark them out as being for a different market segment.
I guess that in terms of styling, you'd be comparing these to Bowers and Wilkins (some of whose personnel now work for Apple) or Bang and Olufsen, but Airpods do look like an Apple product (with a big dose of Marc Newson, an old mate of Jonny Ive's who has worked with Apple since the Watch).
2. Performance. If we assume that sound quality is on a par with rivals (and no reason why it shouldn't, given Apple's budget, audio test facilities and personnel) then the differentiator will be extra features. These features are a function of silicon chips and code: Ease of pairing. Signal reliability. Noise cancelling performance. Audio signal that adapts to headphone / ear seal through the use of internal microphone arrays. The spatial surround sound stuff. Silicon and coding are things Apple can do.
To point out how dear these are, for the same amount of money, you can buy two pairs of Bose’s QC35 IIs, and still have enough money left over for a pair of bog-standard second-generation AirPods.
You could buy three pairs of these Apple Airpods Max headphones for the price of one pair of Sennheiser HD820 and still have change for Airpods Pro.
You know that Apple's gone to far with their pricing when even the fanboys on MacRumors are doing this.
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/screen-shot-2020-12-08-at-6-14-47-pm-png.1689736/
They're also suggesting that these should come pre-engraved with the word 'Sucker'.
If I buy a TV I expect to be able to connect it to a source that shows moving pictures....
If I buy head phones I expect to connect them to things that play music.
Ok so the wire might have gone, but for the cost of these things they should connect to anything Bluetooth that produces sound.
This is a lock in too far!!!!!!
(And I thought lock ins were band during lockdown....sorry)
"To point out how dear these are, for the same amount of money, you can buy two pairs of Bose’s QC35 IIs, and still have enough money left over for a pair of bog-standard second-generation AirPods."
QC35IIs cost $329,95. Not sure which school of math(s) you studied at to figure you can buy 2 sets plus AirPods and still get change out of $549...
List prices and actual retail prices often vary, especially after a few months or years of being released.
It's probably fairer to compare the price of two products after have both been on sale for 6bmoths than it is to compare a newly launched product against one that has been around for a while.
"This, however, means it won’t work with Android or Windows devices. It also won’t play nice with older iDevices and Macs, as it requires MacOS Big Sur and iOS/iPad OS 14.3 or later as a bare minimum."
They should work fine with Android, Windows and older iDevices - they'll just default back to normal Bluetooth pairing instead of Smart Pairing.
The AirPods Max aren’t available yet, and 14.3 is the RC version that is out there for testing and people have spotted the support for the AirPods Max in it. So as it stands they probably only work fully with the 14.3 RC but if they were to be available to buy before 14.3 rtm then a patch could be rolled out to 14.2.
Well don't look at any headphones from Sony, Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, Grado or HiFiMan - all have much more expensive devices than this and when you consider the technology in the Apple devices, they look reasonable. If you want to really hear something lovely, try the Focal Utopia . . . but you won't obviously because you want everything on the cheap and these are £3k . . . which makes the Apple headphones look cheap.
While no doubt they sound good (they better), and maybe the surround sound gimmicks are cool if you're listening to media that is coded to take advantage of this, I doubt they are any better in practical use than my ancient Sennheiser phones, or even justifiably better than my cheapo BlueTooth set that I use when working outdoors. And if I ever have to replace my current set, I can buy a very nice replacement set (or two) for the cost of these from someone else. But as others have pointed out, audiophiles are not the demographic Apple is targeting. Not that I'm some kind of elite audiophile with the tin ears I have. These are a niche product, and having personally embraced the Android ecosystem, and not being the person that gets the latest and greatest just because it's there and shiny, I am certainly not the niche they're marketing to.
Without knowing which Sennheisers you have, I couldn't comment on that - but I can say with absolute certainty these will be several orders of magnitude better than your cheapo Bluetooth set.
I'm sure they will have excellent sound and will probably score 4.5 stars in most reviews including on audio sites - quality will not be the issue. The issue will be that they cost $100-200 dollars more than other high quality headphones that also have excellent sound and also score 4.5 stars; on the same sites.
Noise cancelling, "Theatre experience", self-sealing memory foam ear pads? I wonder how many of these rich kids will self-Darwin crossing busy streets? It's been an issue since portable music players were invented of course, but at least with most earbuds you can still hear some of the outside world.
Apple stood out from their competitors for years by including with their phones ear buds that didn't sit in the ear canal and so didn't block out ambient noise. This ability to hear traffic (and other noise) could be considered a feature (as you are right to suggest), but many considered it a bug (as did many people who sat near them on public transport, as they were 'leaky'.
Apple did make In Ear Monitors, but they were never included with iPods or iPhones.
Anyway, these Airpods Max headphones are being compared to other headphones that have noise cancelling, such as those from Bose and Sony. A common feature is 'pass through' mode which passes ambient noise through to the users ears.
I found some off-brand bluetooth headphones on eBay for around $30, free shipping. That will clue you in to what the BOM cost is.
The Chinese knock-offs can be hit/miss on sound quality where the Apple product will be spot on. I've found an ear bud seller with product I'm pretty happy with and I've bought about 6 pair to have spares. The price was in the cup of Starbucks range for all of them. I figure I can try out some larger headphones until I find a pair with good sound quality and either flog off the ones I don't like for a bit of a loss or box them back up nicely and make them a gift for somebody that isn't as picky as I am. For a very small fraction of Apple price, I'm sure I'll find something suitable. I'm also guessing that it will be built with common off the shelf batteries so it will be easy to swap them later. I might even be able to find some higher capacity cells to swap out right away for more listening time between charges.
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