The new AirPods Max headphones from Apple were announced yesterday and to a very mixed audience, mainly due to the price. But since the launch we’ve discovered a few things about them, and notable is the time they took to develop. Dinesh Dave on Twitter revealed that the AirPods Pro took around four years to develop, the tweets have since been deleted but Ryan Jones managed to screenshot them before he did.

AirPods Max design started 4+ years ago! pic.twitter.com/W8rHTZIbVx

— Ryan Jones (@rjonesy) December 9, 2020

The timeline adds up, Apple launched the original AirPods back in 2016, alongside the iPhone 7, BeatsX, Beats Solo3 Wireless and it is not hard to see Apple saw the unprecedented demand for AirPods, which was so high at the time it left them with delayed shipping for about a year. Once the AirPods had that demand, Apple likely started exploring other areas to go into, such as AirPods Pro and now with AirPods Max.

AirPods Max went up for pre-order yesterday starting at £549 / $549 and will be available on 15th December.