Apple announced a new set of AirPods Max during its event 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 were impressive 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 Sony, Bose, and more recently, Sonos, all offer comparable features and sound — most notably, they each compete with the AirPods Max when it comes to noise cancellation (Bose does…