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Besides better ANC and sound improvements, all other options are more beneficial for the portable form factor.

Things they really need to fix is:
  1. Try to make it light as possible (possibly using titanium)
  2. Provide a REAL CASE
  3. Provide an actual power button
  4. Provide or include proper aways to connect to audio jack without spending more money.
  5. Wireless charging (mag safe would be nice).
 
It needs a headphone jack for proper lossless or a custom lightning cable to avoid the conversions happening twice (which has to be a design limitation).

[Analog] Headphone Jack audio source --> [Digital] Apple Lightning to 3.5mm audio cable converter --> [Digital] AirPods Max Processing --> [Analog] Headphone Speakers

It seems to be necessary conversion to me. Only way around it would be for the signal to bypass all the processing that the APMax do in the digital domain and have a straight amplified signal. One less converter stage no-one can hear and you lose noise cancellation, ear seal measurements, positional audio, etc.
 
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What about a better case! I hate this open one!
It's universally panned. Fortunately, however, that led to some pretty amazing aftermarket cases. Including this one, which has been a personal favorite of mine (or was, when I was using the AirPods Max). Sadly, I'm certain the new case will still be very "Apple" in form and function, and there'll be a healthy market for cases from aftermarket brands.
 
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The headband is already replaceable.
It’s removable, not replaceable. I actually showed the “genius” and his manager how easy it is to remove when they insisted it was non-removable in the store by doing this exact thing with the sim pin. Still Apple only offers a whole unit replacement to “fix” this.
 
It’s removable, not replaceable. I actually showed the “genius” and his manager how easy it is to remove when they insisted it was non-removable in the store by doing this exact thing with the sim pin. Still Apple only offers a whole unit replacement to “fix” this.
Point being, Apple doesn’t need to make a new model to make it replaceable.
Just a policy change.
 
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