It just works... finally
As a lifelong Apple user - yep my parents were designers and I've never owned a PC - I've always slightly tongue-in-cheekily said that Apple products just work. And, of course, they do work pretty well.
And they have, in my experience, always worked better than the alternatives. Windows I find less intuitive and more prone to errors, viruses, all of that. So "they just work" holds up as a rough descriptor. But after two decades of using Apple devices all day, every day, I can tell you there are plenty of ways in which they don't. They've got a lot better in the past few years, mind.
For the first time though recently, I bought a product which I find does just work all of the time. I'd been using AirPods for years, the cheapest ones I could buy rather than the second generation. Nice, convenient headphones. Small, compact, okay battery, okay quality, reasonable connectivity. Then I left them in my pocket, ran them through the wash, and they came out the other side dead.
Rather than buy a new pair, I decided to fork out for the AirPods Max. I've tried them in the store and have been quite impressed at the noise cancelling and the spatial audio.
What I hadn't expected was how completely the AirPods Max get out of the way. I bounce between a laptop, a phone, and an iPad all day, and they follow me without being asked. They switch to whatever I'm using, never get it wrong, never struggle to connect. The older AirPods, with their more primitive Bluetooth, I quite often couldn't get to connect at all. These I just put on. They know which device I'm using and prioritise it, and the volume never spikes as I switch. For someone living across a handful of Apple devices, that's the whole thing working as advertised, finally.
The second way they just work is battery. The old AirPods would too often greet me with that low-battery chime the moment I put them in. The Max has a 20-hour battery, and I've never once put them on to find them dead. Battery life turns out to be a bigger part of "just working" than I'd have guessed. A thing can't work if it's off.
Everything else you'd want is there too. Good sound, great noise cancelling, a microphone clear enough to take calls in public. The most comfortable over-ears I've worn, studio cans included, comfortable enough for hours without any strain.
And, as you'd expect from Apple, they're lovely to look at.
You could argue they're just headphones, how hard can it be. If Apple can get anything right it should be these. But it was genuinely the first time I had no complaints. They work, consistently, with none of the unexplained glitches I can never quite pin down. They're just a pleasure to use.