I briefly considered the "new" AirPods Max after my Bose Quiet Comfort 35s died, but Apple's joke of an "upgrade" put me off and I ended up getting a pair of B&W Px7 S2e for 24% off. While they lack the smooth connectivity of APMs, they're comfortable and have excellent, clear, well-balanced sound.
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Apple Has 'No' Plans Yet for AirPods Max 2 With 'Meaningful' Changes
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what a self-fulfilling prophecy…”APM sales are stagnating because they’re overpriced and out-of-date…so to combat that we’ll keep them overpriced and out-of-date”
oooooooooookay
oooooooooookay
This is what Apple would do with all their products if they could.
Perhaps there's an internal battle at Apple where a critical VIP is threatening to leave if they have to spend any more time and energy on such an unnecessary and ugly product.
I'm wondering what Apple could do to make this scandalously overpriced product even more expensive 🤔.
A Kim Special Edition, maybe?
A titanium mesh headband?
In my experience, AirPods Max are mostly a wall decor in Apple Stores.
A Kim Special Edition, maybe?
A titanium mesh headband?
In my experience, AirPods Max are mostly a wall decor in Apple Stores.
It’s amazing how Apple, with such a terrible resource allocation based on what I read, is able to create such loved high-end products that customers buy.What baffle? Whenever we consumers are baffled, ask ourselves a simple question: "But who makes the most profitable..." Or just think about the money.
Modern Apple is relentlessly focused on "another record quarter..." above all else. They have all the money necessary to put teams on everything to keep everything as up to date as desired. But it's much more profitable to sell relatively ancient tech at the "same great price."
Modern Apple could also hire and assign whole teams to debug it all and get us back to a "just works" Apple too. But that's a cost-adding concept vs. a profit-maximizing one. So bugs linger- sometimes for many years- like the one that drives me batty...
...which has persisted through now FIVE generations of macOS. Enclosure through same cable linked to any PC or any Mac with macOS BEFORE "Big Sur" is just fine. Hook it to "latest & greatest" in the last approx. 5 years and mine can't stay connected for more than about 3 hours. Others report different amounts of time and it is a widespread problem- not just for me or "a small percentage of users."
If Apple buyers would stop "just buying" these headphones, it would "force" Apple to either update them or discontinue them. But buyers just keep paying and thus rewarding Apple for such choices in the most tangible way. While "we" do that, Apple is doing exactly what they should... even if it makes little sense through our consumer lenses. It makes lots of $en$e to AAPL shareholders. 💰💰💰
You make it seem like profitability is completely unliked to customers’ preferences, but Apple earns so much money because they create products that customers really like. Of course, not everybody, but a very large amount of us.
I thinking throwing money and people to solve everything is a terrible strategy, as we have seen in many companies — and it’s against what Apple has done for decades, so I’m surprised to read that in this site.
I will stick to my $100 Sony headphones from Best Buy. I have been an Apple user since 1998 but I will never spend that much on headphones especially when when less expensive ones will do an adequate job.
Do you have data on how well they’re doing? If you do, I’m really curious, but I would bet they’re doing better than similarly priced products (as opposed to i.e. the HomePod), and I wouldn’t call it a “extremely saturated market”, but actually a fairly niche one.
"Apple should build crap, because that's what makes the most money."
That's an idiotic short-sighted strategy, and not at all what Apple has done for decades. Sure, it's what they've done for the last decade, but before that there was at least some effort put into fixing problems. Apple has had major problems over the years, and they're a horrible company to work with for businesses, but until fairly recently the products were good.
And building crap WILL eventually bite them. The only thing keeping the iPhone going now is Google being even worse. These headphones are a perfect example of overpriced crap finally not selling just because it has an Apple logo on it.
Share the disappointment, but of course still no reason to discontinue this product.
Opinions vary of course and there's noting wrong with that.
However, there are an astonishing number of headphones on the market. They vary in class, options, and cost, depending on what one is looking for.
Here is an extensive list of headphone reviews by someone I know on a HiFi forum I frequent.
MON's **** List (The URL won't work because of our filters here) But go to https://www.sonusapparatus.com/ and look for the "Not a Tier List" page.
One thing you won't find are Apple's products in the list, however. These are all headphones, IEM's, DAC's and whatnot MON has used and experienced.
Apple has a lot of fierce competition in the headphone space and by no means do they have the market cornered.
You know Apple keeps the numbers secret because they don't want us to know how horribly a given product is selling. So asking "do you have data" is a disingenuous question.
But simple real-world encounters of the product is enough to know that these ridiculously overpriced headphones aren't selling well. You see AirPods and AirPod Pros all over the place, the AirPod Maxes are just not out there in the wild.
Apple created 2 great products: iPhone (48.7% of total revenue) and Services (26.3% of total revenue). Those 2 segments made up 75% of total revenue last quarter.
Every other category represents less than 10% of total revenue.
Apple Reports 4Q 2024 Results: $14.7B Profit on $94.9B Revenue
Apple today announced financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2024, which corresponds to the third calendar quarter of the year. For the...
www.macrumors.com
And Services is Apple's most proofitable segment where margins are over 70%
Apple’s services unit has become a critical part of Apple’s appeal to investors over the past decade. Its gross margin was 74% in the September quarter compared to Apple’s overall margin of 46.2%.
apple fixing bugs would lead to less sales of their newer and so call greatest devices lolWhat baffle? Whenever we consumers are baffled, ask ourselves a simple question: "But who makes the most profitable..." Or just think about the money.
Modern Apple is relentlessly focused on "another record quarter..." above all else. They have all the money necessary to put teams on everything to keep everything as up to date as desired. But it's much more profitable to sell relatively ancient tech at the "same great price."
Modern Apple could also hire and assign whole teams to debug it all and get us back to a "just works" Apple too. But that's a cost-adding concept vs. a profit-maximizing one. So bugs linger- sometimes for many years- like the one that drives me batty...
...which has persisted through now FIVE generations of macOS. Enclosure through same cable linked to any PC or any Mac with macOS BEFORE "Big Sur" is just fine. Hook it to "latest & greatest" in the last approx. 5 years and mine can't stay connected for more than about 3 hours. Others report different amounts of time and it is a widespread problem- not just for me or "a small percentage of users."
If Apple buyers would stop "just buying" these headphones, it would "force" Apple to either update them or discontinue them. But buyers just keep paying and thus rewarding Apple for such choices in the most tangible way. While "we" do that, Apple is doing exactly what they should... even if it makes little sense through our consumer lenses. It makes lots of $en$e to AAPL shareholders. 💰💰💰
This is completely unrelated to what I said in my comment. Basically I said “if Apple makes the most money by selling high-end products, they can’t be crap”.
I agree that some companies can survive for years because of i.e. brand recognition (users buy another product, but then switch afterwards). However:
- I’ve been hearing this for years. At some point, it’s probably the case that those advocating for that theory are wrong.
- Based on almost any metric, Apple products are at peak customer satisfaction. Look at customer satisfaction reports. Or (more mundane) check Amazon reviews. The APM are the best-valued high end headphones (tied with a few even cheaper ones).
How do these sound, aside from ANC. How do they compare to something like Edition XS, which is now sub $300
Which doesn’t mean that other Apple products aren’t successful in relation to their market size. They’re the company with the highest revenue in the tablet market (and, additionally, the iPad is the best-selling tablet). Highest revenue in the smartwatch market. Among the top (not sure if the highest) in the computer market. Probably the same when it comes to headphones. And, as I said in a previous comment, their products are always among the best rated in each category.Apple created 2 great products: iPhone (48.7% of total revenue) and Services (26.3% of total revenue). Those 2 segments made up 75% of total revenue last quarter.
Every other category represents less than 10% of total revenue.
Apple Reports 4Q 2024 Results: $14.7B Profit on $94.9B Revenue
Apple today announced financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2024, which corresponds to the third calendar quarter of the year. For the...
And Services is Apple's most proofitable segment where margins are over 70%
Apple’s services unit has become a critical part of Apple’s appeal to investors over the past decade. Its gross margin was 74% in the September quarter compared to Apple’s overall margin of 46.2%.
Sure, they could do better (and they could open new markets), but I’d say they’re so profitable because they create the products customers like the most.
The AirPods Max are definitely not the best option for professional music production (they don’t even have an open back); they’re premium customer-focused headphones. And it would be really great to have some numbers on how they’re doing — my intuition (or others’) could be wrong, but I’m surprised to see so many of them, given their high price tag.
I don't know what people expect. My AirPods Max sounds better than the Airpods Pro, which also didn't get an update recently by the way. Who cares if its running an older chip, this isn't a computer where you use the performance of a new chip.
I have three of these and do not regret buying any one of them. I immediately got the USB-C ones just so I could get rid of lightning.
I have three of these and do not regret buying any one of them. I immediately got the USB-C ones just so I could get rid of lightning.
Oh man Apple is nothing like the company from when Steve was alive… he’d probably have said no to headphones altogether
The iPhone is an ok product that could be a lot better, Apple "services" are crap.Apple created 2 great products: iPhone (48.7% of total revenue) and Services (26.3% of total revenue). Those 2 segments made up 75% of total revenue last quarter.
Every other category represents less than 10% of total revenue.
Apple Reports 4Q 2024 Results: $14.7B Profit on $94.9B Revenue
Apple today announced financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2024, which corresponds to the third calendar quarter of the year. For the...
And Services is Apple's most proofitable segment where margins are over 70%
Apple’s services unit has become a critical part of Apple’s appeal to investors over the past decade. Its gross margin was 74% in the September quarter compared to Apple’s overall margin of 46.2%.
Apple's GREAT products were the Apple II and the Macintosh.
But do we know things would really be better with Steve, or would we still be using tiny phones and holding them wrong?
