Everyone’s entitled to an opinion 
When stereo was new, people thought that “gimmick” wouldn’t catch on either.
I know, I know, Remember all those discussions…Let´s see. In the article above vom End of June 2022 are some statistics… Anyway calling headtracking a “gimmick”…lol…Sure, if this is your opinion…Sorry please not mine! Many many years of engineering work and development into this. I am really not sure, if all that great work from so many folks over years, is ok, to call “Gimmick!” I would say: no! Definitely no!
at least one gets pretty fast grounded in this group here, when flying from Begeisterung 
There is no universally correct answer for the question. I’m in the “marketing gimmick” camp as streaming companies rush around trying to distinguish themselves from the competition.
I’d rather enjoy more freedom of choice and avoid Apple’s monopolistic tendencies. It’d be boring if we all saw the world in the same way…
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True! But w/o the chip in the headphone, hard to manage with Apple Music… Tidal or Amazon are better choices for such requirments imo. Apple eco-System is great, but it works very best with Apple stuff 
Set up you system. Do this correctly. Let you ears decide.
Well, i love it 
Mine have, thanks
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There are three issues here. One is lossless, one is high resolution, and one is spatial audio. You can embrace one, two, or all three. Don’t try to force your own preferences on other people.
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Jim was just innocently saying he was pleasently surprised by the sound of his Bluetooth headphones. To him it sounds good.
You can’t tell other people what sounds good to them.
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OK, once again, I posted this because I was surprised that Apple Music sounded as good as it did using bluetooth to my Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. I did not suggest to anyone that they should abandon their wired solutions and I did not say anything about spatial audio.
I use Roon, Tidal, and Qobuz with wired Meridian Prime and wired Chord Mojo 2. My headphones are Focal Clear. I only use Apple Music when “out and about” and I normally use an AudioQuest Dragonfly Cobalt and Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones.
I have listened to some Apple Music spatial audio, but prefer lossless, high resolution stereo music. I have no plans to purchase any Apple headphones for spatial audio.
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Jim, let´s come to the facts please to calm this discussion down a bit. There is no headphone supporting Airplay today like you have stated. Airplay is capable of lossless CD quality, IF you do it right. But today there are not Airplay headphones. So, you use Bluetooth. And you use an iPhone, I remember hopefully correct here this time. iPhone supports for Bluetooth: SBC or AAC. Nothing more! Both of these codecs are very limited in their quality. Not comparable to CD quality at all. Your Sony are very capable Headphones IF you drive them with better Bluetooth Codes. Like Sony´s own LDAC (but there using the highest quality setting for LDAC) This is only possible with certain Android mobile devices. As iDevices only support SBC or AAC. A Mac can be changed to AptX via the bluetooth tool from Apple, if really wanted. AAC is very differently implemented qualitywise on the different devices and headphones. I post an overview article here too incl. the specs for compare. So, using Bluetooth today you can only achieve pretty close to CD quality by using the very very best codecs but not on iDevices. Spatial Audio does not require that bandwith. So you get the full quality of the provided Atmos stream via Bluetooth AAC. As Apple does not use Cinema Atmos (True-HD Atmos) today. Hope that helps a bit. Best Mike Bluetooth Audio Codecs Explained - Headphonesty
Sorry, I said Airplay and should have said bluetooth. Otherwise, I have no [Moderated] [comment on] anything you posted. I’m not suggesting anyone use bluetooth (or airplay for that matter). None of that is relevant to me saying bluetooth to Sony headphones sounded really good.
As you like it. Hopefully useful for others here…
Here’s my take on headphones and bluetooth etc:
Comfortable headphones will always be more enjoyable than uncomfortable ones (looking at you, grado), regardless of actual sound quality
Bluetooth is great for on the go and less critical listening. When I’m mowing the grass, I don’t care at all if I’m listening to compressed audio, my whole audio system is compressed because the noise floor is now like 40 dB higher. I use the same argument for audio in the car, even with a reasonably low distortion system which is non-trivial in a car, who cares because the background noise, poor acoustic environment, and distraction (you better be distracted from the music) mean it doesn’t really matter much.
I love apple music for the integration with my car and my apple based life. I also love the airpod pro’s. they sound good-enough, and they are a joy to use with all my devices. That integration and ease of use is every bit as important to me as the sound quality.
When I really care about sound quality, I sit in front of my quads. All other times, it’s convenience as much or more than sound quality.
Sheldon
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And, Apple Music works great with CarPlay. Tidal and Qobuz, not so much.
EDIT: No other implications intended.
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Tidal has improved on Carplay after their last update. Qobuz is a miserable experience.
I have an iphone and occasionally when playing radio stations it gets stuck and stops playing.
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I will say that apple music (the service) seems to have pretty deep buffers. The cell coverage up here where I live in New England is awful and I rarely have it stop (unless I’m skipping tracks).
I only use Qobuz at home through roon because apple music is so much nicer to use outside of roon, so I can’t speak to it, but I’ll try next time I’m out and give a non-scientific comparison.
Sheldon
About a week after I bought myself this new iPhone 13 Pro Max, I traded my wife’s iPhone X for a new iPhone 13 Pro and got the $800 discount on her’s also. Good thing. I see Verizon has lowered their discount to $440. Now, to get the $800 discount, you have to add a new line of service. I knew that $800 discount would not last long.
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I can’t see where this has been covered in here before, but apologies if it has. I have many old Apple AAC music album purchases. When I download them they are AAC files, but I noticed that there is now a convert to lossless option. When I do so, the new file is larger, but I think it’s just converting the AAC bits to ALAC format and I’ve still lost the bits from the AAC conversion. I haven’t listened to any of the music to assess what my ears tell me. Anyone know how to get the hi-res version for pre-hi-res purchases? Because of the inability to convert my old purchases to hi-res, so far I’ve resisted giving Apple any more money for music.