Apple’s AirPods Max update this year wasn’t a full-blown AirPods Max 2, but rather a switch to USB-C and color swap . Unfortunately, the also lost a key feature that was supported by the original.

The original are mostly identical to the new USB-C model, save the different charging port and colors.

However, there’s a key advantage Apple’s first AirPods Max had.

They supported wired playback.

If you bought Apple’s , you could connect your Lightning AirPods Max to any headphone jack and listen over a wired connection.

This feature was great for airplanes, podcast recording, and a variety of other use cases. It provide lossless audio playback, but having a wired option was nice nonetheless.

But as discussed on a recent 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast , Apple made a change with the newest AirPods Max.

There’s now no way to do wired playback with the AirPods Max with USB-C.

Plugging in via USB-C doesn’t work, and Apple doesn’t offer any adapters that enable the feature. Various Reddit threads have documented users’ attempts to get wired playback via different third-party adapters. None have proven successful.

All hope isn’t lost.

It’s always possible Apple could make wired playback available via a new adapter or an AirPods Max firmware update. Though I certainly wouldn’t make a purchase decision based on that possibility.

For the time being at least, the new are missing a key feature that was supported by .

Do you care about this change? Do you think Apple will enable wired playback in the future? Let us know in the comments.