What you need to know
- Jony Ive might have sent Hans Zimmer unreleased AirPods Max.
- The composer revealed the story in an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe.
Hans Zimmer might have been the first person in the world, outside of Apple, to get their hands on AirPods Max.
As reported by 9to5Mac, the iconic composer recently sat down for an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe. The wide-ranging interview touched on Zimmer's experience with Apple's Spatial Audio technology and, during the conversation, Zimmer revealed that Apple's Jony Ive sent him a pair of headphones to experience the technology.
According to Zimmer, Ive's note with the headphones said "I made this." When Zimmer reached out to Dolby about the technology and mentioned the headphones, Dolby told him that the headphones did not exist. Judging by the timeline, Zimmer might have been one of the first people to try AirPods Max and not even know it.
"These headphones arrive and I put them on and they're amazing and I suddenly realized, 'Oh, we can do immersive. We can do Dolby Atmos. We can do all this,' and I phone my friends at Dolby and I say, 'We have to do this. I want to go and do the whole soundtrack again and I certainly want to do the CDs again and I want to do all this immersive experience,' and I phoned Denis and I phoned all my guys and go, 'You got to listen to these headphones,' to which I of course get the reply, 'Well, they don't actually exist. I think you have the only pair.' So, there was a little bit of that going on."
The story also reveals that Ive, who left Apple back in 2019, was involved with the development of AirPods Max. Apple's AirPods Max were released back in April of 2021. The over-the-ear headphones are the peak of audio quality when it comes to Apple's AirPods lineup.
Bottom line: AirPods Max provide a luxurious and premium headphone experience that mostly works across all of your Apple devices. They sound amazing, the ANC is even better than AirPods Pro, Spatial Audio is out of this world, and the battery lasts through a whole workday. The Smart case is ridiculous though.
