What Apple wants...

As the Cupertino company’s latest plans hint at the development of a next-gen successor to Bluetooth, CliffJoseph finally has hope for its wireless future

I 've given Apple a fair amount of stick for its approach to digital audio over the years. It's a company that loves eye-candy and hi-res video, but seems to have a tin ear when it comes to audio technology. Apple Music was one of the last major streaming services to offer lossless and hi-res audio to its users, and then Apple was forced to admit that its AirPod headphones - including the top-of-the-range AirPods Max (HFC 488), which weigh in at more than £500 - weren't actually capable of playing lossless audio because of their reliance on Bluetooth and Apple's ancient AAC codec. Even if you're using wired headphones from a manufacturer other than Apple, it still advises you to use an external DAC, as most Apple devices can't handle hi-res audio beyond 24-bit/48kHz on their own (the exception being its latest MacBook Pro laptops, which support sampling rates up to 96Hz).