Hans Zimmer talks about mysterious gift from Apple’s former design chief Jony Ive

A true colossus of a composer, Hans Zimmer is one of the most famous musicians in modern times. He is responsible for scores in masterpiece movies like Interstellar, Blade Runner 2049, The Dark Knight Rises, and many more.

Recently—while talking about Spatial Audio—Zimmer shared a story about him and Jony Ive in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music. Apparently, the world-renowned composer and Apple’s former chief of design have some kind of communication with each other, despite never having met in person. (via 9to5Mac)

Apparently, Ive sends things to the musician every now and then. One time, during the pandemic, he sent a pair of headphones with a note saying “I made this.” Zimmer says that those headphones were the first time he experienced Spatial Audio and was quickly impressed with the technology.

In fact, he was so impressed that he reached out to his friends at Dolby and said he wanted to make use of the capabilities of this product. To his surprise, however, the folks at Dolby said that the headphones “don’t actually exist” and that he likely has the only pair.

Taking into account when this event took place and the description that Zimmer gave of the product, we can safely speculate that the headphones in question were the AirPods Max. Knowing that Apple released the AirPods Max in December 2020, that would mean a couple of things.

Jony Ive officially left Apple in 2019 with his last appearance being during WWDC 2019. When leaving, the former design chief stated that he will remain “very involved with Apple.” Judging by the note he left Zimmer, Ive could very well have had a big role to play in the making of the AirPods Max.

The other takeaway here is that Hans Zimmer was likely one of the earliest, if not the first person to get their hands on Apple’s new high-end audio device. Here’s what he had to say: