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The 2021 MacBook Pro Is The Perfect Companion For The AirPods Max
You’d think it to be the other way around, wouldn’t you? The AirPods Max being the perfect companion to the 2021 MacBook Pros, but I feel, that would be a bit backwards. It’s a bit like Cruella. Once you watch the movie you realise it’s not so much her needing the Dalmatians, but the Dalmatians needing her. Or at least that’s what I got from it. Or maybe it’s a complete symbiosis. Anyway…
When in 2020 I forked out nearly 700 euro for a pair of headphones, I felt a little bit silly. I was raised to be financially responsible, and this purchase felt anything but. However, insatiable tech curiosity got the best of me, and there I was sporting a space-grey pair of objectively overpriced cans. Because no matter how stylish they look, which they do; no matter how good they sound, which they do; and no matter how good that noise cancellation is, which it undeniably is, I will contend that these headphones are overpriced and hard to sell at face value, on their own.
Often as I wore the AirPods Max, listening to The Midnight, Glen Hansard, Helene Fischer or Leonard Cohen, I felt like somehow in an abstract existence kind of way, my headphones were almost an orphan. Sure, they connected just fine to all my Apple devices, but the moment I took them off and moved on to either the MacBook Pro 13" M1, the iPad Air or the iPhone’s speakers, there was a sensation of a jarring disconnect in sound experience. It almost felt like none of my devices were complimenting well the AirPods Max.
That however all changed when I didn’t even expect it to. Apple’s new MacBook Pros of 2021 are marketed as bringing superior sound in a six speaker setup. Apple goes as far as calling it a sound-system. I will only technically agree with that, as yes, a set of speakers working in tandem, are called a system, however traditionally it means something with visible separation of sound channels, geometrically positioned in space. I had my doubts about how much sound-stage really can the new MacBook Pros deliver. I was — to some extent — surprised, and to a lesser extent, not so much. Something felt familiar about the sound. Very familiar in fact.
