Unfortunately Bose makes the best ANC headphones, not really much of a choice besides them

The peak imo was the 800S and since then there has been absolutely nothing in the same pricec which sounds as good as this, even headphones with 2-3x the price don't sound any better, if you like their sound signature they are probably the best pair you can get

You guys listen to music? I though we buy good tuned headphones to wash everything equally when listening to white noise

Why would that be bad? I your headphones has minor problems in a few frequency ranges a 3-4db EQs are all you need to get it to the desired sound signature, i myself got a 3,4db bass boost and a 3,6db 2khz boost on my 800S, it doesn't make a huge difference but it makes them fit my preferences more closely without completely chanign the sound signature, if you do it in the right way and tastefully i don't see a problem with this

Yeah, I know, that's what you are supposed to do, but that's also not what I want to do, and if it means getting a terrible experience for 90% of users but getting an awesome experience for the other 10% of users who like being able to do whatever they want then that's a sacrifice I am willing to make

Really not, a lot of people seem to hate the unmodified Equalizer APO but I really like it, or when it comes to converting an image strip to a gif, people use god knows what software, I like to use Image Magick, sure, you have to work in a CMD window in a command line, but I couldn't care less, if you do it right the result is awesome. I would ABSOLUTELY NEVER sacrarice functionality for a UX optimised program, besides Marketing people, UX designers are my worst enemy, it's just that people got lazy and stupid and can't figure out how things work if it isn't directly handed to them on a silver plate, which often means sacraficing a lot of functionality, that's also why almost every company only give you a 3-band EQ, the average user would have absolutely no idea what they should do if they got a full blown Parametric EQ handed to them, if the documentation is good it doesn't take more than a bit of common sense and a few minutes if reading to figure out how things work, sure, it's annoying at the beginning but it'll make your life 10x easier in the long run, I have UX in university and I hate absolutely everything we are learning there, quite literally the opposite of what I would do

So the looks of a software is more important to you than the functionality? You should definitly change your mindset about this, looks is the least important thing in any product

I don't need to compare the drivers directly, I can just look at measurements from different headphones and compare those, it gives you a good understanding on how good a driver/headphone performs, realistically noone is going to EQ to a point where the distortion starts playing a role, and if you are one of those people who actually does, ok, it is a important to you but you should also recognise that you are in the minority, I also don know what you mean with "flat" tuning, if you are referring to the Airpods, they are considered to be U-shaped, what about other aspects I take I to account when buying a headphone like detail retrieval, imaging and sounds, are they suddenly not relevant anymore or is there something I am missing?

Your source doesn't compare the THD of the airpod max with other headphone, so i can't say how reliable or good it really is, the only real website i know of which has a whole database of THD measurements is rtings while their reviews are BS, their measurements are still valid, and according to them the THD of the airpods max is about average

THD isn't nearly as important as you think, it is incredibly difficult to hear, and even if it would outperform high end headphones (which it doesn't) it would make no real impact on sound quality, there are far, far more important aspects on a headphone that THD, and the airpods max fails to be competetive with high-end headphones on pretty much all of them, apple is (at its current stage) far from developing a "very good driver" and is on paar with the Sonys and Bose

"Found the following in some article "I think it’s a PET diaphragm with a PVD metal plating (likely Titanium)" But i really don't see why that matters, the looks of the diaphragm should be the very last of your priorities when buying a headphone