Apple’s own headphones, including the expensive AirPods Max, don’t support Apple Music Hi-Fi streaming

[Redaktion]

Apple Music has launched its vaunted lossless and spatial audio support to much fanfare. However, it isn't all good news with Apple confirming that none of its headphones, including the US$549 AirPods Max, support higher resolution streaming over Bluetooth.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-s-own-headphones-including-the-expensive-AirPods-Max-don-t-support-Apple-Music-Hi-Fi-streaming.539839.0.html

[ariliquin]

Another case of Apple telling consumers what they want instead of listening to their customers. Apple has been slow to adopt standards from other companies, to the detriment of their customers. At least provide a competing solution that is as good or better. This situation just makes Apple look stupid.

[t4n0n]

Another case of Apple telling consumers what they want instead of listening to their customers.

To be fair, I'm sure a large proportion of people who go with Apple products don't actually know what they want, hence why they go with Apple. That's the reason why Apple is so vertically integrated and has such a closed ecosystem; it's so they don't have anyone to compete with, hence they remain the simplest one-stop shop, so to speak.

I do agree that this does indeed make them look rather stupid, however.

[LWT]

Another case of Apple telling consumers what they want instead of listening to their customers. Apple has been slow to adopt standards from other companies, to the detriment of their customers. At least provide a competing solution that is as good or better. This situation just makes Apple look stupid.

Bit of a hot take.

At some point, while sauntering down the street with your Samsung phone, listening via your cabled HD600's' on Tidal HiFi... you'd have to wonder whether you're really that much smarter than the guy on his iPhone, listening to Apple Music with his Airpods.

[winston]

Another case of Apple telling consumers what they want instead of listening to their customers. Apple has been slow to adopt standards from other companies, to the detriment of their customers. At least provide a competing solution that is as good or better. This situation just makes Apple look stupid.

Please do enlighten us what lossless Bluetooth standard is there for Apple to adopt? It's not Apple's fault that customers have no clue about how audio works.

[mixedfish]

Nothing new here. It's just Apple laying out their roadmap to obsolete your gear.

As has been said many times. Your phone is a smartphone, a computer in your pocket, it's not a fashion device. It's in your favor to support as much I/O ports as possible.

Now that people have voted with their wallets to cut out the 3.5mm jack (which is proven many times to fit in contemporary phones despite the lies the marketing feeds us) you are now stuck on a Bluetooth only device that cannot scale to future formats, obsoleting both your accessories and hardware.

Enjoy your toys.

[_MT_]

Please do enlighten us what lossless Bluetooth standard is there for Apple to adopt? It's not Apple's fault that customers have no clue about how audio works.

Indeed, there is none. It is, however, possible to create a better codec. AAC is old. Now, the advantage of AAC is that you can use the same compression for storage and transmission. When you use one for storage (like MP3) and another for transmission (like aptX), you have two algorithms creating artefacts instead of just one. However, when your source is "lossless," you can choose whatever algorithm you want (preferably the one giving you the best performance). And LDAC is superior to AAC.