New AirPods Max Includes ‘Useful New Feature’
In more AirPods Max news, Joe Rossignol reports today for MacRumors the newly-announced headphones has a clever new feature up its proverbial sleeve. The Digital Crown on the AirPods Max 2 supports “a new Camera Remote [which] allows you to press the Digital Crown to take a photo and start or stop video recording while using Apple’s Camera app or compatible third-party camera apps on an iPhone or iPad.”
The forthcoming functionality requires iOS and iPadOS 26.4, according to Apple, of which Rossignol’s colleague in Juli Clover says today ought to be out very soon.
According to Rossignol’s story, the Digital Crown also supports the following controls:
Turn for volume control
Press once to play or pause media
Press once to answer a call or mute or unmute
Press once for camera remote
Press twice to end a call
Press twice to skip forward
Press three times to skip back
Press and hold for Siri
As to the camera shutter function, it’s interesting from an accessibility perspective. It’s reminiscent of the similarly-scoped feature of Apple’s old Smart Battery Case for the iPhone 11 line, which I wrote about back in 2020 insofar as, because Apple builds both hardware and software, it can map buttons to do what it wants in software. In the Smart Battery Case’s case, not to mention the new AirPods Max, that someone can lean on a button to take a picture or record video can be far more accessible than relying on the virtual counterpart. Especially when trying to capture a fleeting moment like a photo, a misplaced tap and/or physical tic can sometimes cause the system not to register the action—thus, you’ve missed your opportunity for preserving what may be a golden moment. By contrast, what the Digital Crown does is give users an “anchor” in the form of a tactile button to deliberately press to snap a photo or begin recording. It’s more margin, which has the byproduct of lessening cognitive load and concentration by letting the person frame the moment, etc. Is this feature worth $549? In isolation, absolutely not. But if you are someone with a disability who does like AirPods Max, that its Digital Crown can now be a shutter button simply serves adds a nice bit of extra polish to an otherwise highly accessible user experience for lots of people like me.
The more cynical lot may roll their eyes at company officials like CEO Tim Cook claiming this type of vertical integration as “something only Apple can do,” but the thing is—he’s not wrong! Apple’s almost obsessive-compulsive insistence on controlling everything it possibly can actually reaps not-insignificant benefits for accessibility. Because the company does famously control both hardware and software, it can do things like turn the AirPods Max’s Digital Crown into a shutter button—which becomes an invaluable de-facto accessibility feature in the process.
