Last September, Apple spent much of its “Glow Time” event talking about how comprehensively they’d updated their AirPods earbuds line-up. There was a new base version, a new Pro — with various health monitoring features — and a mid-tier model with limited noise-canceling. That model doesn’t seem to sell well, which makes sense, given that if you’re willing to pay the price bump for the mid-tier model, you may as well pay a bit more for the Pro.

The other strangeness was that its flagship product, their $549 AirPods Max headphones, barely got a mention. Apple mentioned them for less than 60 seconds, announcing that they now come in a gold colorway, and have a USB-C port — in compliance with EU mandates — but that was it.

This “new” version had identical hardware to the pair Apple first released in 2020, save for the updated port, and had no new software features. It seemed like Apple had given up on the headphones. But Apple seemed to remember that the AirPods Max existed last week and released a new update. And though it’s a minor upgrade, it’s a meaningful one.

The older “Lightning” AirPods Max supported wired audio, but Apple inexplicably removed this feature from the USB-C version. However, they have brought it back, and in upgraded form, capable of playing uncompressed 24-bit, 48 kHz lossless audio.

It’s surprising that Apple took this long to bring uncompressed playback to its AirPods line, given that Apple Music is one of few streaming services with lossless audio. This lossless quality can be enjoyed with the included USB-C to USB-C cable or a new $39 USB-C to 3.5mm cable, if you prefer to connect it to an analog jack — though it will work with third-party wires too. Despite being a wired connection, all the controls will remain the same between modes, including “Personalized Spatial Audio,” noise-canceling, and so forth.

The other new feature is an ultra-low latency audio feature, which could be useful for gaming, live streaming, and music production, according to Apple’s press releases, particularly for users who need minimal audio delay. Apple has been very unclear about whether this is a feature you can enable or goes on by default, as I can see no toggle for it in iPhone settings; but, as I said, the wired connection is the significant improvement, so this doesn’t particularly matter.

Compared to the “lossy” quality available over Bluetooth — lossless audio compressed by Bluetooth standards — listening to the AirPods Max in wired mode produces more detail generally and more dynamic treble specifically. It’s not a significant change, but if you care about audio quality, this is the best way to use these headphones — so long as it works. Though I’ve encountered no issues listening on my iPhone 16 Pro, the audio would sometimes corrupt down to electronic static when listening on PC, regardless of the cable, after about 5 minutes of listening to Apple Music. Expect this bug to be fixed with further updates though.

Ultimately, the AirPods Max are still a disappointingly undersupported product despite the premium price — particularly if you want to use them with Windows or Android. While Apple has expanded support for Apple TV+, they artificially limit most software features on the AirPods Max to Apple hardware; you can’t even update the headphones to support wired audio without an iPhone. And even for dedicated Apple customers, who only purchase electronics designed in Cupertino, the “bra” case for the AirPods Max is comically insufficient. There’s a large ecosystem of third-party protective cases for the AirPods Max, and it’s hardly a surprise.

Hopefully, Apple will fix these in some distant future when they eventually release an AirPods Max 2.