Apple announced its long-rumored AirPods Max over-ear headphones on Tuesday, which feature a custom acoustic design, H1 chips, Adaptive EQ, Active Noise Cancellation, Transparency Mode, and spatial audio.
According to an ex-Apple engineer, who shared tweets about the product’s launch on Twitter, work began on the headphones around four years ago, roughly the same time Apple started to ship the first-generation AirPods in December 2016.
As spotted by iMore, former Apple engineer Dinesh Dave (@appleidinesh) tweeted “the last product NDA I signed is finally out!,” with a link to Apple’s official AirPods Max press release.
Dave went on to say the AirPods Max project was not something he worked on heavily, adding the a lot of his friends worked hard on it. “Not my project to be honest,” he says. “A lot of friends worked very hard on it. I just so happened to be assigned a while ago.”
Rumors of Apple working on new over-ear headphones had been circling since 2018. The Apple Post even shared exclusive concept images, which were based on leaked information at the time.
Read more about AirPods Max here.