The next AirPods hardware will have a different design and may not be far off. Oh, and new colors for AirPods Max are rumored.
This is quite a bold move to make, because it will make them look much more like AirPods Pro, and Apple does like to make its products look distinguishably different.
But Gurman says that an update to AirPods Pro, previously reported as coming later this year, has been put back to 2022. So, for quite a few months, possibly, there will be two products that look very similar.There are no current plans to update AirPods Max, it seems, although—and this is quite cool—there are murmurs of new colors which could be introduced to the Max range. Another bold design change, perhaps.
In the meantime, we have smaller AirPods 3 to look forward to. It doesn’t seem likely that the entry-level buds will have the standout feature of AirPods Pro, that is, active noise-cancelling, though an upgraded chip could mean that the splendid Spatial Audio from the Pro and Max headphones could trickle down to the more affordable AirPods.
There’s no date given beyond this year in this latest report, perhaps because there have been conflicting reports. Some have predicted that Spring would have seen the launch, others that we will need to be patient and wait until Fall. The next big event from Apple is WWDC but, personally, I think it’s unlikely to be the launch of AirPods 3. In any event, at least it’s looking likely that 2021 is the year AirPods design will change.