I understand what you are saying, but I think Apple's mechanism has some benefits over the Y yoke, regardless of if Apple intended it for that purpose or not. If I lie down with normal headphones, or rest my head against something (pillow on a plane) that tends to push against the headband, even on low profile yokes and puts some pressure on my head and normally results in a weaker seal on the cup on the opposite side. I really don't notice that with Apple's solution.
I think you are our resident "using headphones in bed ergonomics" specialist in this thread
.
I think discussing the actual weight of the joint is a red herring. Although it's not much, but the Y-yoke result in more material around the sides and overall this is probably a small part of the overall headphone. As many have said here, weight doesn't directly correspond to comfort, and unless lightweight is a specific goal I don't really think it matters in the case of Apple's hinge.
It's really not. iFixit shows that it's one of the densest parts in the APM. In contrast a simple, Y shaped yoke design made of plastic doesn't weight much and as it attaches on both sides it doesn't even need the rotating joints to be substantial to be solid and reliable, so they too can be made of plastic (XM4) :
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Max+Teardown/139369
It isn't the only part that's heavy mind you, the entire design of the APM shows that weight wasn't much of a consideration in the first place.
I agree that weight =/= comfort, at least to a point. The canopy makes the APM a lot more comfortable at the apex of my annoyingly shaped cranium than the P7W for example. But personally I find it harder to "get lost in the music" when I can't get past the illusion of having something on my head, and while weight isn't the only consideration here (for example I don't really like when headphones touch my ears, and the large cavity of the APM is great here), it's one of them.
I see a lot of other headphones gets mixed comments on comfort too. Just having the Y-yoke doesn't seem to automatically make the headphones more comfortable to more people. Of course I'm just going on what I've read, but I'd like to see some researched numbers before declaring this mechanism less likely to work on various head shapes. That also seems quite dependent on the specific setup of the springs and the headband itself.
No need for numbers, it's a basic physics thing.
If it weren't for the spring the headband would exert pressure at the top of the ears only, as it is were the headband's clamping force is applied.
The spring is here to counteract that force. The problem is that the angle that the cup needs to have to evenly apply pressure around someone's ear and properly seal will vary depending on people's anatomy (if like me the cups need to form a V when seen from the front, but someone with a more squarish face needs the cups to be parallel), meaning that the force exerted by the spring
needs to vary between different people to effectively counteract the force applied by the headband at the top of the ears.
But the spring rate is
set at the factory and can't vary between samples. You see the problem right there.
It's always going to be a compromise. The way the APM compensates that problem to a degree is by carefully designing the earpads shape and foam to deform into a surface with a large contact area to distribute pressure without excessive pain in one spot. So even if on my head there's clearly more pressure at the top and the seal often breaks at the bottom of my ears, it's not
that bad.
That's the beauty of the boring yoke design : it
naturally exerts force roughly in the middle of the height of the earcup, meaning that, provided it's designed well (it frequently isn't, in general when companies try to reinvent the way the yoke effectively looks / works), it can adapt to any head shape in an optimal way. There is no need to spring load it because the clamping force is applied in the right spot in the first place. It doesn't mean that the headphones will be more comfortable overall, as you wrote (too many other variables), but that it simply doesn't need to get around the aforementioned compromise. "It just works".
This is why I keep saying, in James May's parlance, that a lot of the engineering in the APM went to create "ingenious solutions to problems that shouldn't have existed in the first place".
Packability is a little complicated I think. I'm finding the AirPods max to be quite packable in my daily use case, which is throwing them in a backpack or computer bag most of the time. I tried to find some numbers for various headphones regarding the cup thickness. how far it sticks out from the head. I couldn't really find any numbers. My impression is that the AirPods Max are quite thin. This makes them fit in the spaces in my bags I need them to fit. The fact they don't fold improves their time of deployment. Folding down like the XM4 is great if I'm going to back them in my check in luggage, or in a box for moving, but on a daily basis I don't need compactness in that dimension, or in overall volume. My daily bags aren't packed like a Tetris game.
The APM and the Freebuds Studio have the thinnest cups of the BT over-ears I've tried so far. And both manage to have a roomier cavity for the ear love than most other headphones
. I don't really like them overall but I think that the FreeBuds Studio have the most optimal and efficient earcup layout I've seen so far (but it's made worse by Huawei's attempt at... reinventing the yoke mechanism - again).
One thing I like a lot about the APM's rotating hinges is that the cups are aligned with the headband when twisted flat. This improves a lot packability for me... if it weren't for other aspects.
Not folding IMO can't really count as improving deployment time : if you want you don't have to fold the XM4. And given that it's basically mandatory for me to collapse the extension arms given what my bags look like on a daily basis, it takes me more time to put the APMs on my head than the XM4, given the former's continuously adjustable extension arms. With the XM4 it's just a question of getting to the right "click" and it's done. And again you don't have to collapse the XM4's arms either if you don't want to (but they'll probably collapse on their own given the mechanism's resistance - a common problem with headbands that designs such as the A50, P7W or APM seem to address fairly well).
