Today Apple announced a forthcoming firmware update for AirPods Max with USB-C that will enable lossless audio. As part of that news, the company has now started selling a new cable to enable wired playback on its newest AirPods Max with a standard headphone jack.

Last fall Apple announced new AirPods Max with very minimal changes.

• there were new colors
• a USB-C port instead of Lightning
• and support for Personalized Spatial Audio

That’s it.

For many of us who were expecting a proper AirPods Max 2-level update, it was a big disappointment.

That letdown was amplified by a key regression that the new USB-C model brought.

While the original AirPods Max could be used for wired playback with a special Lightning to 3.5 mm cable, there was no such cable and no such hardware support for wired playback over USB-C in the new model.

Fortunately, that’s changing with next month’s firmware update.

And now, in preparation for the update, Apple has today started selling a new USB-C to 3.5 mm audio cable.

The new cable .

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It can be used to connect AirPods Max to 3.5 mm audio sources, like the audio-out port on an airplane. Users can also connect their iOS or iPadOS device to 3.5 mm audio ports, like audio-in ports on car stereos or other speakers.

If you’d like to connect your AirPods Max to a device using its included USB-C cable, that will work too. But if you need to connect to a 3.5 mm headphone jack, this new cable will be a great way to do that.

Hopefully third-party cables, which are available at a , will work too once the new firmware ships, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.

Does wired playback on AirPods Max make a big difference to you, or not? Let us know in the comments.