Towards a Cordless Future

The packaging is minimalist: white box, product photo, typography seemingly chosen for a city Apple demographic types are fleeing over quality of life issues. Looking just at the box you might think Apple designed the Max Stand, that is until you pick it up and hear rattling. Not an Appley experience at all, but then you open the box and find the rattling is actually a very Appley experience: dongles.

Besides two dongles (Lightning port plugs), you get a dongle-to-USB-C cable and a generic USB-C cable. The stand itself is space gray, other color choices being silver, sky blue, pink, and green. The shape is a gently sloping, rounded square, 3.54 inches (90mm) on a side, just under an inch (~25mm) tall at its peak. Material components are plastic (stand), steel (base), and rubber (pad). The plastic of the stand is the first point of contention for the Max Stand.

To be fair, the scratches in the photo are not something I notice in daily usage. Still, a more robust material like aluminum might arguably have been better, but floating pixels asserts the plastic “is considerably softer than the aluminum of the ear cups, making scratching of the ear cups unlikely.” Is that reasonable? I mean, sure, everybody wants superlubricity, but outside of theoretical physics journals or a tube of KY–not happening. The lightweight plastic of the stand is balanced by the stainless steel base, giving the Max Stand heft. Weighing in at around half a pound (~250g), it is definitely heavy enough to throw through a glass window or, if you have good aim, kill a squirrel at 10 paces, though neither of those are intended use cases. The use case is to easily and efficiently charge the AirPods Max and to look good doing it.

The included USB-C cable attaches to a port on the rear of the Max Stand, and then to a not included power adapter. A dongle (magnetic connector plug) is inserted into the AirPods Max Lightning port. That connecter then attaches magnetically to the matched receptacle on the Max Stand when the AirPods Max are placed on it. There is some real engineering precision here that deserves praise, as effortless and invisible as it is. Too weak an attraction and either the connector comes out of the headphones or the headphones don’t connect to the stand properly. Too strong an attraction and the headphones don’t detach cleanly from the base, resulting in the stand dragging or dropping off. After weeks of constantly placing and removing my AirPods Max I’ve never dragged or dropped them. Getting the headphones to connect properly did require a small learning curve, a couple of days usage for me.

Unfortunately, the compromise to that excellent functionality is arguably poor form, a visible and not easily removed dongle dangling from the AirPods Max. You can remove the connector with a pair of needle-nose pliers, or your fingernails, if you have really strong fingernails, like Nosferatu the vampire strong, but you are better off not bothering. The magnetic connector is small, like micro SIM card small, and you WILL lose them if you are constantly inserting and removing them when you get out of your crypt at sunset. Nonetheless, two connectors are included with the Max Stand with replacements available.

While no one wants a dongle sticking out of their AirPods Max, save some of that disdain for Apple on their design choices. Like the Magic Mouse with a charging port underneath, the AirPods Max charging port is hidden on the bottom of the ear cup. This requires insertion of a tiny rectangle of a connector into a slot on a curved surface It’s awkward, and more than once I have felt the unpleasant scraping of a Lightning connector across the surface of my pristine AirPods Max. That’s a solved problem with the Max Stand, as is charging while traveling. The included magnetic connector-to-USB-C cable is for use when the AirPods Max are stored in Apple’s just awful–like an AI construct might design if given examples of all Jony Ives' product designs and Donald Trump’s home interiors–Smart Case.

As for the charging process itself, “set it and forget it” is more appropriate than “it just works” because it’s not obvious that it is working. There is no indicator light on the Max Stand because “you can feel how the headphones make the connection when putting them on the stand.” True, but it is a very subtle feeling, much less reassuring than an indicator light, absent that check a widget or just forget it. Headphones going off and on the Max Stand multiple times daily are effectively always charging. Regarding overcharging, I leave it to Apple to regulate that, or participation in the inevitable class action lawsuit if they don’t. If you’re wondering how long the Max Stand takes to charge the AirPods Max, you’ve missed the point or are being obtuse. Nonetheless, my AirPods Max go from 20 to 90 percent in about two hours connected to a 7.5W port, under an hour with an 18.5W USB-C PD port. Good enough. The Max Stand effectively charges the AirPods Max while providing stylish and easy access to them. But the Max Stand does one more thing, at least for me.

This is my space. There are many like it–Rupert Murdoch set fire to $680 billion for his–but this one is mine. I do my household business here, and charging devices is part of household business. The Nomad Base Station inductively charges my iPhone mini, Apple Watch, and AirPods Pro, and also provides a USB-A and USB-C port. The USB-C port charges my iPad Pro because an inductive charging iPad does not exist. Yet. But now, instead of monitoring battery life and fumbling with a cable to charge my AirPods Max, I just set the headphones down on the Max Stand. It’s another step towards a cordless–or at least a less corded–future, and that alone is worth ~$80 USD, at least to me.