Why is Apple sleeping on the AirPods Max?

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. Apple announced a during its last week, updating them with USB-C and in a new set of colors. The switch to USB-C is a welcome one, to be sure, but Apple changed nothing else about them.

And that feels weird, right? What gives? Apple’s high-end luxury headphones when they launched in 2020. They had all the features of the AirPods Pro and made clever use of the Apple Watch’s digital crown for volume control. They also sounded fantastic — still do, in fact! But the rest of the market didn’t sit still; alternatives from , , and more recently, , all offer comparable features and sound — most notably, they each compete with the AirPods Max when it comes to noise cancellation (Bose does this the best) and transparency modes (AirPods Max still reign, but the Sonos Ace are close).

Despite being among the most expensive headphones you can buy without going into ultra-high-end audiophile territory, the AirPods Max seem to have caught on in recent years. Apple doesn’t break the headphones’ numbers out when it reports its earnings, but they’re all over the place in New York City, and I even see them on a lot of heads in my home city of Milwaukee too. You’ll see them in airports and planes, city transit, or just walking around the block.

There was a whole trend at one point of people sharing AirPods Max accessories on TikTok. I’m fond of the : There’s also a very visible market for “dupes,” o.