$550 for a bottom-of-the line headphone that doesn’t even meet the basics?
The whole internet is raving about the launch of Apple’s new headphones, which are terribly named as “Airpods Max” as to whether or not it’s worth what it claims to be worth.
TLDR; — It isn’t. I can tell you these are nothing but just over priced garbage.
Now, before you jump onto accuse me of an Apple hater, consider this — I’ve been a Mac user for the last 15 years, I own 2 Apple Mac Minis, 4 Apple TVs and 2 iPads and 2 iPhones. That has been my relationship with Apple.
So, what makes someone so loyal to Apple call them out like this? It’s simple. Apple got greedy. Unlike the usual disclaimers and reviews everywhere on YouTube and on the blogosphere by people who’ve never listened to a noise cancelling headphone all their life, I DO claim that I am an audiophile. I’m not the kind that blows off $10,000 on cables, obviously, but I DO care what goes into my ears. I care about my gear, their specifications, the quality of sound they produce, their construction and finally, the source.
I buy these expensive gears because, I believe in the people who create them. I believe in the vision of the company behind and the reasoning for the existence of their products. I cannot say the same for Apple.
Apple is not an audio company
Here’s the problem — Apple is not an audio company, for starters. If you look at almost all the famous audio companies (Sony, Pioneer, Aiwa, JVC, KBL, etc.), they all have a common theme — their founders either had small radio repair shops, they were passionate about audio or they dreamt of setting up their audio company from scratch not just because it would make money, but because they believed in Good sound.
Here’s the thing. Apple doesn’t believe in good sound. It was very obvious with their very first iPods, it was very obvious with their acquisition of Beats by Dr. Dre. Apple likes Klout and turning that into cash. That’s what the Beats acquisition was about. The same thing goes with Homepods — it was a new category of technology that had started to make money. Apple learned it from the existing players like Sonos, Amazon and then went full on with their Homepod.
The drivers inside the Homepod were nothing but cheap rebranded woofers from China with steel baskets. Cheap steel baskets for that price. Wow. And obviously, the sound quality suffered. A good audio company wouldn’t do that. The Siri integration wasn’t even that good, to begin with. It was just a “me too” product in the market that added no value to someone who is an audiophile.
Now, let’s talk about the Airpods Max. The obviously irritating point about it is the price. Nothing special inside — Same old crappy drivers from China, inside a “nice” Aluminium shell (that’s actually very poorly designed). Think about it — it’s an Aluminium shell. Apple touts this as a traveler’s headphone. But, you would be constantly dropping it because of the smooth Aluminium surface all the time. Unless…that’s their goal. That’s the evil part, we’ll hold that thought for later.
Apple’s pricing itself isn’t as offensive as the reason they’re trying to charge people for — They’re charging you 90% for that Aluminium shell design with some “smart” features inside and the remaining 10% for the actual sound itself. That’s not what a real audio company would do.
Let’s take the Sony’s for example. They excel the Airpods Max at half the price, easily. BUT, the important point to note here is Sony makes all its drivers in-house. It’s a well designed Aluminium framed driver with an Aluminium coated Liquid Crystal Polymer diaphragm. That’s a real audio company’s attention to detail:
Forget that, it’s very clear where Apple is heading with these “smart” headphones. At some point, they will drop support (maybe in 4–5 years) and your headphones will stop working. And, you will be forced to pay another $600 for the newer version 2 of these shiny tin cans then. A real audio company would never, ever do that. No single real audiophile company has ever done that. As a testimony to that sentence — you’ll still be able to find speakers from Sony, Aiwa, Pioneer, JBL from 40 years ago floating in the used market that work flawlessly even today. Can you say the same for your $550 Airpods Max?
What does Apple have?
Plastic molded drivers that aren’t serviceable nor replaceable without damaging the drivers.
Wow. For $550, you get plastic molded Chinese drivers? That’s insane.
The evil
Ok, let’s talk about the case. This is an evil design with only one thing in mind — profits. You see, in every normal premium headphone that is sold in the market, the case is decoupled from the actual headphone unit itself. Meaning — there is no need to have both in order to have full functionality of the headphone. But, with Apple, that isn’t the “case”. If you lose the case, you’re done. Your headphones’ batteries will take a huge hit because you will be charging and discharging faster than normal as the headphones doesn’t go into the low-power mode without the case.
And, by the time you’ve finished using your battery cycles, you’re now due for a new upgrade / replacement of the battery. With battery-gate for the previous iPhone users, this isn’t something that will be easily detected, if at all, they pull off another battery-gate. Isn’t that a brilliant strategy to rip people off?
That’s evil more so than The Nun.
That’s an insult to our intelligence because Apple knows they can get away with something like this because majority of their audience doesn’t know about good sound nor good gear. And they will still sell in huge numbers because, it’s by Apple. That is an insult to our intelligence — to us as humans, collectively as a species. The very fact that people buy audio gear from a non audio company that solely exists to rip people off of their ignorance. That’s exactly the insulting part of all this.
Verdict
If you are genuinely interested in good sound, there are plenty of real audio companies around. Sony and Bose are good starters. Bose even contributes 50% of its revenues back to MIT so we can progress forward technologically, as a species.
What does Apple do? Rip you off so their executives can buy a shiny new Yacht. Do you really want to be the person to support such a greedy company? The choice is clear and it’s yours.
Fuck Apple.
