charlesn

As an owner of the Airpods Max since they debuted, I found this to be a "glass half-full" summary--not wrong, per se, but it glosses over some significant faults:

1) No "off" button. This is just inexcusable. The main reason I continue to use my Sony XM4 MUCH more often than my APM--even though I think the APM sounds better and has better ANC--is that my APM are usually dead when I pick them up. I don't care what Apple says about powering off automatically--they don't, at least not completely. I can go long periods of time without using my XM4 and they still maintain a charge--no such luck with the APM unless I keep them charging all the time. 

2) No ability to listen to lossless audio. Yes, Apple Music is now filled with lossless audio files, Apple Digital Masters, etc -- you just can't listen to any of them through Apple's $549 headphones. I could excuse this massive shortcoming in one of the most expensive bluetooth headphones if it just applied to wireless listening, but it doesn't--the APM doesn't support lossless listening even through a wired connection. The quality of audio in a playback system is always defined by its weakest link, and in this case, the weak link is the lossy, compressed, AAC codec, which is the best you'll do through a wireless or wired connection to the APM. 

3) Oh, you plan to use APM on an airplane? That will cost you $35 more! This is a case of Apple at its greediest, most consumer-abusing worst. It's just despicable that a $549 headphone doesn't come with the cable you need to connect to an airline's entertainment system. And no, you can't just pick up some cheap third-party cable with Lightning on one end and the airline adapter on the other. You need Apple's special $35 cable that converts the analog audio from the airline system into digital audio that the APM can process. (That's right, the APM has no ability to play analog audio even through a wired connection--it has to be converted to a digital signal first.) And hey, I'm not complaining about the need for the special cable, even though my Sony XM4 have no such requirement--but for $549, include the cable in the box! 

4) It's not really great as a "travel" headphone. The APM are fairly bulky since they don't fold at all. The "bra" case, as has been covered ad nauseum, is a joke that offers almost no protection. A better case, while available through third parties, makes them bulkier still for travel. These aren't 'phones that you readily toss into a backpack or your carry-on bag--they take up quite a bit of room, much more than their premium competitors. But forget about carrying them "naked" -- the aluminum ear cups will scratch up easily and the headband mesh fabric is delicate. 

If none of the above bothers you, then I can recommend the APM, especially at some of the current discounted prices. Just know what you're buying before you take the plunge. Personally, I'd wait for APM 2.0, assuming Apple decides it's worth it to bring to market. 

h4y3s said:

Remember folks, this is just an early prototype of the eventual "Apple iGlasses". This one built for programmers and developers to get their hands on something that works before they roll out the final product, which will look more like a pair of Ray-Ban's and you will wear all day!  Maybe in five or six years. 

5 or 6 years til iGlasses? HAH! Take a look at VR headsets from the early 90s--Apple's Vision Pro is somewhat smaller and certainly sleeker, but the form factor hasn't changed all that much in 30 years. All of the tech jammed into the Vision Pro isn't going to be miniaturized to fit into a glasses form factor withing 5, 6, 10 years or more. Also, glasses would give you the equivalent of a heads-up display, which isn't what the Vision Pro is about. VR or mixed VR only works if your field of vision is totally immersed by the VR screens. Too much "reality" and too much light leaks in through glasses to give you a VR experience. 

CONGRATS! I haven't read a single review, until this one, that clearly addresses what you LOSE with the new 5X telephoto lens on the Pro Max. It's a lot. At 3x and 4x... and really all the way up to 4.9x... you're going to get better results with the Pro. You don't see the benefits of the Pro Max 5x lens until you're at 5x, which is a 120mm lens equivalent. If you shoot a ton at that focal length and above, that's great. But 90%+ of all photos are shot under that range, where that lens does nothing for you. You end up with what is effectively digital zoom... a crop of your main camera sensor. The Pro Max has a different and more powerful telephoto lens than the Pro, but for most photos, it's just not the better camera system. 

melgross said:

anonymouse said:

Are we really certain that Apple didn't covertly engineer this coup? 

Yeah. He was under a lot of pressure. It had nothing to do g to do with Apple.

I've been following the Kiani story for a while and his ouster was a long time coming. First, he spent over $100 million of Masimo money fighting Apple in court, an absolute fortune for which he has little to show: for Watches sold in the US since approx January, Apple has had to put a software lockout on the pulse oximetry feature. Masimo got nothing else for its $100 million spend, while the loss of pulse oximetry has likely had little if any effect on Apple Watch sales. Plus, Masimo's remaining patents expire in 2028 if they don't get invalidated before hand. 

BUT.... this was nothing compared to Kiani biggest blunder, which was spendiing $1 billion to acquire several consumer audio companies under their corporate umbrella name, Sound United. THAT'S what really got him pushed out. Now if you're wondering why the hell a medical equipment company like Masimo would spend a billion to get into consumer audio, you have the same question that drove the Politan hedge fund, which owns 9% of Masimo, to launch a board fight to get Kiani pushed out. Apparently Kiani thought consumer audio was the way to open up retail channels like Best Buy to Masimo. Never made sense to me and I guess not to the Masimo board either. 

Given that the purchase of an iPad is often driven by considerations for minimizing size and weight, why pretend that weight doesn't matter by failing to mention it in a review like this, especially one where you award the product 4.5 stars? As it turns out, the Bryce 12" keyboard tips the scales at 1.5 POUNDS, which is more than the weight of the 2018 iPad 12.9" itself. In fact, the Bryce and iPad together are very close to the weight of the 2018 MacBook Pro 13" w/Touchbar. 

Hey, I've got an idea: I'm going to go to the main NYC Apple Store at around 2AM, buy a QUARTER-MILLION DOLLARS worth of iPhones, then walk to my car with them in three large Apple shopping bags! What could go wrong?

Sorry, but this story doesn't pass the smell test. I live in Manhattan, not very far from this store, and no one who regularly makes purchases this large from NYC Apple locations would handle purchases this way. It's just dumb. Heck, I wouldn't be walking to my car with AirPods in an Apple bag at 2AM.

As for "lawless" NYC: that gets repeated so often in right-leaning media, you might even think it's true. It's not. Crime is up, no doubt--but it's up from historic lows, pre-Covid. If you look at NYC crime data going back many decades, we're still at the lower end of the data, historically--not remotely close to how it's portrayed. That said, the upward trend in some crime categories should be addressed now, before it gets worse. 

AppleZulu said:

“the fact that the dates fall on a weekend suggests that the company may be preparing to open access to Apple TV+ for everyone for a limited time.”

Because… why? Does scheduling an announcement or event on a weekend usually suggest that the organization or person making the announcement is going to give away all their wares for free, you know, for a limited time? If a thing is scheduled for a Thursday, what does that suggest?

Seriously. I’m trying to understand where the leap came from. Why is it that the dates falling on a weekend means that one thing, specifically, as opposed to literally anything else you might think of?

Ummm... did Santa leave you a bag of coal or something? I mean, seriously: what's with the needlessly aggressive and snarky tone? I've been a TV executive for over 20 years and I can tell you that Sunday is the most heavily watched day of the week and weekends are best for binge-watching. So if Apple were going to open up Apple TV+ for non-subscribers to sample for free, the weekend would be the optimal time to do it. This free sampling strategy could make sense for Apple since it has a very strong roster of highly acclaimed shows that haven't been highly watched, for the most part, because Apple TV+ has a much smaller subscriber base than the major streamers like Netflix, Disney, etc. Of course, we don't know for sure what Apple is planning to do, we'll find out in about a week, but what AI is speculating is very plausible from the perspective of when and how people watch television. 

Another masterpiece from Daniel. Let the sheep go on bleating as they have since Apple's founding. It's unfortunate that for every Daniel article that sets the record straight, AppleInsider runs at least a dozen more filled with baseless nonsense and fictional "facts" or, at the very least, a misrepresentation of data. And then we need another Daniel article to sweep aside all the shite that's piled up since his last one. 

One thing to correct about the Macbook Air: the original's thinness and high price had nothing to do with using a solid state drive. The first Air shipped standard with an 80GB HDD of the 1.8 inch size used in the iPod. A 64GB SSD was an even more expensive option, but both models were pricey considering their specs and power. The Air didn't switch to SSD exclusively until 2010. 

sdw2001 said:

Oh, look, calling his tariffs “nonsensical” and using scare quotes.  Shocker.

Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs are nonsensical as defined by the silly and preposterous "formula" used to determine them. Honestly, the sooner the empty shelves can get here, the better, because maybe that will finally wake Americans up to the real consequences of an idiot running the country into the ground.  

flydog said:

charlesn said:

"From this chair, Apple's 5K Studio Display is a nice monitor. It just delivers a beyond terrible price to delivered value ratio."

You've said it all in two short sentences. And there's nothing up for debate in this assessment--it's a perfectly "fine" monitor that--even by Apple standards--delivers nothing but appearance to justify the lofty price point. And even if the webcam issue can be fixed via software update, it's just inexcusable to ship such a premium-priced monitor in the age of Zoom with crappy webcam performance. 

There is no other monitor below $5,000 that can even match the brightness, contrast levels, and color range of the Studio Display, and when there is no substitute, $1,600 is a bargain. A comparable monitor simply does not exist. 

Extreme pricing based on lack of competitive availability is also called price-gouging. Look: Apple's own 27" iMac has the same display (except slightly lower brightness) and it includes keyboard, mouse and a whole danged computer for just $100 more (list price) than the Apple Display.