AppleZulu

chasm said:

AppleZulu said:

At most the article’s content is a speculation that there are no known near-term upgrades planned for the headphone. That doesn’t support the headline’s suggestion that they won’t get any upgrades, ever. 

The most significant upgrade they need is wireless lossless audio. That’s probably a fairly heavy lift that would significantly affect data transmission protocols and hardware as well as battery life. Other than that, what upgrades are really needed?

The third paragraph of the article names the source of the report and links to it. It's from Mark Gurman's article, and while nobody is ever 100 percent correct, he's the most accurate source of future news around. Not sure how you missed that.

The report also says sales are too low of the Max for Apple to bother doing anything further with it, implying that it is zombieware (not killed off but no further changes coming) at this point. As a reminder, Apple owns Beats, and they have their own line of headphone products. The AirPods Max a) don't need to exist and b) are overpriced for what they offer.

Sure. Gurman is about as "accurate" as Ming Chi Kuo. 

The headline on this site is "AirPods Max headphones unlikely to get any further upgrades," which is a pretty bold, definitive statement not even supported by the summary below it. The linked info from Gurman on AirPods pro is behind a paywall, so all I can go by is the summary here, but it says, "the company has "no concrete plans" to update the headphones' hardware again, at least for now. While the product does not appear to be in danger of being cancelled, there are no current plans for future revisions to the product either." That's just the sort of ambiguity that you'd get if you have no information at all on the subject, because Apple doesn't actually share its future plans, and Gurman isn't willing to just say he has no information and doesn't know. That ambiguity doesn't match the comparative certainty suggested in the headline here.

The only thing we actually know here is that Apple retooled AirPods Max to change the connector in order to meet EU requirements, and also made that change in all other markets as well. That suggests that they're not cancelling the product, because why bother to make any changes at all if they are? If they were going to let it die, they'd quit selling it in EU now, and follow suit in the rest of the world as the supply runs out. So in reality there's at least a placeholder commitment there. Not upgrading the chip at the same time suggests other, more significant plans may be in the pipeline that make doing that at this point a poor investment.  

I'll repeat my suggestion that lossless audio may be the thing. That requires more processing power, more bandwidth, and as a result, more demand on batteries. That may make lossless audio a non-starter for AirPods Pro, so those get a new chip now as they proceed apace with new features while delivering compressed audio formats. AirPods Max, meanwhile, may be getting a different, more powerful chip, and because they're physically big, will get the batteries required to drive that chip. That's just conjecture, but would better explain the current status of the headphones than would Gurman's apparent speculation that they're just going to let the more expensive premium headphones inexplicably limp along indefinitely while the little buds race ahead. 

MikeTaku111 said:

Hi there, I hope you all are doing well,
Can you please tell me why is Apple being sued over the AirPods Pro, and what are the main issues with the product?

Hi there, I hope you are doing well, Can you please tell me if you are a bot that either asks a question that is answered in the article or simply summarizes the information already stated in the article?

I went through a couple rounds of replacements-of-replacements for the first generation AirPods Pro because of the 'crackling' issues. Would it be better if they didn't have that problem? Absolutely. Given how painless the warranty replacement process was, however, I fail to see how a class action suit is appropriate. Since Apple already implemented a replacement program for affected AirPods, what is the point of a suit seeking to make Apple implement a repair and replace program for affected AirPods, other than to provide for a vehicle to collect attorneys' fees that hadn't previously been needed, since Apple willingly addressed the problem without a lawsuit?

P.S. This is precisely why Apple put the charging port on the bottom of the Magic Mouse. By making it impossible to use the mouse while it's charging, they avoid the lawsuits from the inevitable cases of damaged charging ports that would result from some people leaving their wireless mice plugged in all the time while using them. Apple could've put the port on the front and plastered warnings everywhere, telling users not to leave the mouse plugged in once it's charged. They could've even written code that would pop up a dialog box that says, "Your Magic Mouse is fully charged. Please disconnect it from the charging cable. Do not leave your Magic Mouse plugged in after it is charged, as you may eventually damage your Magic Mouse by leaving it plugged in while using it. [OK]."  Some percentage of users would click "ok" and leave it plugged in anyway.

Some percentage of them would then eventually damage the charging port on their Magic Mouse by torquing and twisting a connection not designed for constant, repetitive motion. They would then find some lawyers who would file a class action suit arguing that by putting the charging port on the front of the mouse, Apple knew that some users would leave them plugged in and damage their devices. In fact, the lawyers would argue, those warnings serve as an admission that Apple knew about this "defect," and therefore they must repair or replace any mouse damaged by such misuse, and then pay a hefty damages fee to customers and their lawyers in penance for this grievous mistake.

DAalseth said:

NEO_STEPHENS said:

The Apple Apologist in full effect. If that was ANY other company that did that, you'd be talking about how bad of a design it was and who in the world would put the charging port on the bottom of a mouse so that you can't use it while it's charging.

Doesn't matter how often or not it needs charging, still an awful way to do that!!

Exactly, it’s a stupid design. form over function. Yet in this article we have assertions that the workarounds are trivial, when the point is that there should not HAVE to be any workarounds. Suggestions that there’s something wrong with the people who complain, when the complaints are absolutely legitimate is simply victim blaming. 

It’s a stupid design, period, full stop. Want proof? Every other mouse out there that needs to be recharged allows you to use the mouse while it’s charging. Only Apple, and Jony I’ve’s design team would have the mouse inoperable while doing a basic function. It also shows that there was no reason for this, this was a design CHOICE at the expense of usability. 

I've maintained for a long time that all the negative angst about this is dumb because the "issue" people have with it is functionally irrelevant. The two minutes that it takes to get a day's charge when you've let it run out is never going to break anyone who hasn't already made a stream of time management errors. No, Apple designers put the port on the bottom as an aesthetic design choice. They don't want you turning their wireless mouse into a wired mouse.

Then it dawned on me. Apple's design decision here isn't just aesthetic. It's functional. If Apple put a charging port on the front edge of the mouse so it could be used while charging, some people would leave it plugged in all the time. The result would be frayed charging cables and damaged charging ports due to constant repetitive motion flexing and bending charging cables and applying leverage and torque to the port. Then, because it's Apple, what would we have? A class-action lawsuit.

You know it's true.

Damage to the port would be slow and cumulative, and no doubt most failures would happen outside of the device's warranty. So the class action lawsuit would claim that Apple knew this would be the result, and that they intentionally designed it to fail in order to sell more replacement mice. 

So yeah. This is a functional choice. Apple is not going to spend money on over-engineering the charger port, and they're not going to spend money on lawsuits or settlements with people who insist on using it as a wired mouse, because it's a wireless mouse. It says so right on the box.

entropys said:

Requiring the mouse to be unusable while charging is a productivity unfriendly design. And you can bet it needs recharging just when that urgent bit of work needs to be done yesterday.
At least the internal battery lasts a long time, but so do those of other mice from other brands.  And this is the really important bit: you can keep using them while charging.

Basically, I’ve switched to Logitech MX backlit keyboards and mice.  And keep shaking my head at one of the world’s greatest mysteries: why Apple, the design king, can’t do a decent peripheral. 

If they put the port so you could use it while charging, people would just leave it plugged in all the time. Then they’d get complaints about frayed charging cables and worse, complaints about damaged charging ports, all from repetitive torque and twisting of the port and wire, while using your wireless mouse plugged into a wire. Then there’d be a class-action lawsuit, claiming Apple knew all along that people would leave it plugged in and damage the port.