No one was surprised by the announcement of the AirPods Max back in December 2020. Apple’s first on-ear headphones were one of the tech world’s worst-kept secrets for most of that year.
What was surprising was their price: £549 / $549 / AU$899 made them vastly more expensive than the great majority of premium (if we can even still call them that) wireless noise-cancelling headphones from Sony, Bose and Sennheiser around at that time.
