Apple Clarifies Power-Saving Modes of AirPods Max When Not in Use

[gnasher729]

I'd be going to Grado for ultimate audio quality but they're an altogether different prospect, and not wireless.

Interestingly, the cheapest ones (Grado SR60e) have the best audio quality _when connected to an iPhone_ because they are very power efficient, and get the highest possible sound quality from the limited power of a phone. The more expensive ones are better connected to a proper amplifier with unlimited power, but not when connected to a phone.

Build quality is still pretty funky, but they're light and comfortable enough and the sound is awesome. Huge bonus: you're not saddled with that insanely thick, hard wired, six foot cable they typically use. Any normal 3.5mm AUX cable works. But of course being open they're utterly useless unless you're in a quietish room.

Perfect if you work at home in your own home office, and you want to hear the doorbell ringing even if you use your headphones. Also good in an office that is usually quiet except when someone wants to talk to you. Their big advantage is that you hear everything around you. Their big disadvantage is also that you hear everything around you.

 

[Zdigital2015]

Apple gets to live rent-free in an awful lot of heads on this forum. Looking forward to the release of the 14” MacBook Pro for the next chapter of “The Great Bezel Wars of the 21st Century” and leave the “Skirmish of Standby Battery” in 2020. Good stuff!!!😑

 

[urbanslaughter1997]

a button would be a nice touch. Any excuse to avoid using that ridiculous case!

 

[ignatius345]

Because they want to sell you an after-market case for 150+ dollars.

Or wait for someone to figure out where the relevant magnets are and come up with a hack to fool the APM into thinking they're in that weird case...

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I agree they should be upfront with low power mode information but my god the way some are making it out to be a national scandal that these headphones don’t have a power button is ridiculous. I swear people wake up in the morning looking for things to be worried/outraged about. 🙄

Honestly I would argue a bigger issue than a power button is the lack of aux jack (or inclusion of aux cable) so people can easily use these wired.

You can use these wired. You just need to buy the new $35 lightning to 3.5mm headphone Jack cable from Apple.

 

[augustrushrox]

I think in the future, everything will be on all the time. Just like people, we don't die for a while when we have free time, right?

The human equivalent to this would be called “sleep”.

 

[Zanton68]

What's complicated? You have the headphones on your head, or you put them down somewhere, or you put them into a case. Your decision. If someone explained to you how the gearbox of your car works, would you call the unnecessarily complicated as well?

Perhaps complicated was the wrong word. It's not a feature that makes much sense to me or adds much value for me. It enables "Find My" which is helpful but I'd rather they just turned off or let me turn them off. Do you like the case? I often put my headphones in a bag and would be concerned that the case offers very little protection for the headphones

 

[ignatius345]

Perfect if you work at home in your own home office, and you want to hear the doorbell ringing even if you use your headphones. Also good in an office that is usually quiet except when someone wants to talk to you. Their big advantage is that you hear everything around you. Their big disadvantage is also that you hear everything around you.

Absolutely, and I love Grados for these scenarios -- and the GW100s are also excellent, if overkill, for phone calls as it turns out. (I'm one of those people who finds it almost impossible to do a phone call if I can't hear my own voice and open-backed headphones do really well with this.)

My big hope for the APM is that transparency mode will give me a good approximation of that open soundstage feel, but total isolation will be there as soon as I press the button.

 

[ignatius345]

You can use these wired. You just need to buy the new $35 lightning to 3.5mm headphone Jack cable from Apple.

But do they work at all, even wired, if the battery is dead? I'm assuming no because of all the sound circuitry and whatnot, but I'd love to be wrong here.

 

[citysnaps]

The MacRumors forum clown show is at full force again it seems. 🤡

And it never disappoints!

 

[I7guy]

For a company that claims to put the privacy of people front and center, it's disappointing that they made a device with microphones that can't be turned off.

I'm impressed with the great spin on this.

Which bluetooth headphone manufactures contain an off switch for the microphone or don't even include a microphone? Maybe there are, but my airpods, bose qc ii former Motorola s9 plus every other b/t headset I've ever had the mic cannot be turned off.

 

[iBug2]

So can we finally shut up about this now?

 

[stevefeinstein]

All this just to avoid an off button....make it make sense

I have a pair of Bose QC35IIs and am constantly putting it in the case with the power on. It drains the battery needlessly, and connects to my phone when I’m near it confusing me when the phone stops playing from its speaker like it’s broken.
if I do remember to turn them off I always forget to turn them on when I’m put them on, so I start playing music and it comes out of my phone until I remember to turn them on. It’s not as big deal. But the way Apple does it solves both of those problems.

 

[stevefeinstein]

Any proof that the microphone is turned on and actively listening all the time even when left stationary on the table?

Are there any headphones ever made that do this? They’re headphones assume they’re always listening. Even if they have power off. Phone taps have listened to sounds in a room as long as spies have been tapping phones.

 

[stevefeinstein]

A product with no power button, genius!

My toilet doesn’t have a power button. I’m happy with that. Neither does my smoke alarm.

 

[Unity451]

So if you put them in the case, you have half the amount of time to find them if they get misplaced or get stollen? Got it.

 

[FranApple]

Why is there any moaning/groaning at all about this? Not having to worry about power when you put on/off the device is fantastic. I can see why Apple set it at 72 hours. If these are out of the case and lying around, chances are you'll still be using them soon. They want the experience to be seamless. You should just be able to pick them up and start using them. And for those of you who have actually used a pair, that's what happens. You never even have to think about power. It's a much more intuitive way of using headphones.

 

[FranApple]

I have a pair of Bose QC35IIs and am constantly putting it in the case with the power on. It drains the battery needlessly, and connects to my phone when I’m near it confusing me when the phone stops playing from its speaker like it’s broken.
if I do remember to turn them off I always forget to turn them on when I’m put them on, so I start playing music and it comes out of my phone until I remember to turn them on. It’s not as big deal. But the way Apple does it solves both of those problems.

Yes! People just need something to whine about. I think Apple's implementation is fantastic.

 

[lazyrighteye]

The use case for over-ear headphones can be quite different from that of in-ear. The latter likely seeing more frequent, tho shorter usage. The former likely for longer, more intentional listening scenarios. That these massive cans don’t have on/off capability is a miss. Period. That they can’t be plugged into a console for, say, mixing, is so Apple. As an audiophile who had been awaiting Apple’s take on the over-ear, I’m surprised at how much they missed the mark. For me. Which brings me to: who was their mark? Lebron?

 

[Fmello]

Apple should just add an update that lets you put the headset in low power mode with a Siri command.

 

[CarlJ]

just adding a button as an additional way to turn things off surely would have been easier

Would have been easier for forum members who want to do things the old way that’s familiar and comfortable to them (and who love to armchair quarterback on every little detail they hear about). Not necessarily easier for normal users to deal with.

Apple’s way sounds like they shut down to as low power as they can, but they want to keep “Find My” alive/active for a while, and in the lowest power mode (none of these devices are ever totally off these days), Find My won’t work because the radios are offline - if you put it in the case, it’s more likely that you’ve intentionally put them away, and know where they are. If you’ve set them down without putting them in the case, there’s a higher chance that they may have been forgotten somewhere, so they keep Find My working for longer.

But, yesterday, about half the crowd here was ready to skewer Apple for “making such an obvious/amateur design mistake”, based on scant information. Apple has all the resources in the world to throw at designing things - there’s usually a reason behind their decisions, it may be counter to the reasoning a lot of other people would apply (witness their years-long obsession with making things crazily thin), but there’s almost always a reason. It’s almost funny to watch armchair quarterbacks, armed with 3 data points out of a hundred, loudly proclaim that Apple “forgot” something.

 

[Nrwrit3r]

An important caveat not mentioned in the MR article: This likely has a bigger impact if you're carrying the AirPods Max in your backpack or traveling. If you are moving with them, and don't have them in the case, it's unclear whether they'll still enter the low power mode after 5 minutes. It's likely that the accelerometers will keep the headphones fully awake, and you have to use the magnetic case to keep them asleep while traveling. @arn

 

[jarman92]

WOWWWWWWW so Apple actually put thought into designing these? Shocker!

 

[jarman92]

This is really good to know. I wish Apple would just be upfront about this stuff from the get go instead of waiting until people complain enough they feel they have to explain how their devices actually work. We are paying a premium for these headphones and it would be REALLY nice to know that we don't have to use your ridiculous case and not lose a ton of battery because of it.

Literally anyone with a brain could figure out that you don't NEED the case to preserve the battery, and that the headphones wouldn't just stay "on" indefinitely.

That being said, I'm sure this is more a case of taking time to update the support site than deliberately hiding anything.

 

[jarman92]

Again Apple's reluctance to include a simple feature means you need to go through a ridiculous storage procedure to maintain battery life. Why not allow a press of the crown for a few seconds to power down the device instead.

Did you actually read the article? Or did you just assume what you wanted to assume and come here to talk nonsense? The whole point is that you do not need the case to maintain battery life; the headphones handle it themselves.