I believe this. It would be incredibly unlikely for them to add Apple Lossless just to remain competitive despite 99% of users not being able to take advantage of it.
Leakers say a lot of things… Due to their hit rate I tend to believe it when I see it.
Nice find...unfortunately they don't say when this functionality will be available (I'm on the latest 14.6 beta and it doesn't seem to be there yet). I happen to have an audiogram made by a professional a few months ago, it has some differences to the one using the Mimi app. I don't know enough to say if it's significant though, also the one made by a professional has a 125Hz measurement, not found on the Mimi App (maybe because it's the free version, I didn't check).
These are multi-team many months in work projects, a lot of company politics and promos in the work, so sad to see them not keeping the unity as they usually do. A bit of a PR hell for them right now, but I am sure they are aware of this and have future plans to address it.
Apple kind of did dig towards Amazon and Spotify for adding hi-res though. But adding no additional charge for it (since the might have already had capacity to do so) they are forcing the competition to either offer it for free to match (cutting off any profits which would allow their comp to regain net costs of the service) Or be more expensive while possibly not offering the 3D features (which could cause people to swap from comp to Apple, resulting in probably more catastrophic loss).
The issue with getting it to work is more hardware than software. Apple would either need a novel and incredible compression algorithm that is lossless or something that supports faster transfer rates stably.
This makes no sense to me. Why wouldn’t we want Apple to “push the envelope” in Bluetooth performance. That’s what technology and innovation are supposed to do. Your points about performance and battery are fair but even if apple did improve on AAC, it would be a choice not a requirement. Look at android - you are free to choose from SBC, Aptx, AptxHD and LDAC. No reason why Apple couldn’t do the same.
Yes I understand and a lot of people would agree that the trade offs may not be worth it but that’s not Apples way. They wouldn’t do it unless there were no or very few drawbacks. I think it would be as simple as having a toggle to choose codecs just like the toggle to choose. If Apple won’t update BT at least give us a system wide EQ. I’d take that as a consolation prize.
AirPlay still requires WiFi though. I'm not sure if there is a WiFi chip in any of the AirPods. Unless they have a other wireless radio in the AirPods that is capable of higher bandwidth, it won't work. In any event, I feel like if there was an unused WiFi chip or other radio in the AirPods to support AirPlay, it would require the AirPods to be registered through the FCC for that. But if you look for those registrations, they don't exist.
