I often stick my ipad under my monitor, plug it in, and then pop the headphones on. The ipad doesn't move. It doesn't need to move - for the next two hours, it's a dongle, a very flat appletv.
Spatial audio still works like this. If I pause, look away, and unpause - where I was looking when I unpaused is the new centre. It's not depending on the ipad's position at all, just origin plus delta.
I get that the iphone/ipad need more than this, in-case the device is moving too. But it's not a hard requirement. If the device doesn't move (eg, my appletv hasn't moved for 3 years), then it doesn't need a gyro/mems to tell you it hasn't moved. I think you can safely assume my TV hasn't moved, and if it has - pause and unpause still fixes it.
And agreed on your main point, if I'm home, and awake, I'm probably wearing my Max. I can only speak for my own head, as it's the only one I've tried, but I'm digging them. The foam pads seem to solve the "burning ears" problem I have with extended usage of leather headphones.
Which has made me seriously wonder if it's not actually about a gyro/accelerometer on the device, but did Apple just design the code to run specifically on certain A chips?
From the support page [1] for spatial audio, from the list of supported mobile devices you can basically deduce that it requires an A10 chip or later.
Which would explain why Intel Macs aren't supported. The only thing it doesn't explain is why the Apple TV 5th gen (4K) doesn't support it, which does have the A10. But I swear I'm holding out hope that a software update this year will bring spatial audio to the M1 Macs and the Apple TV 5th gen. I just for the life of me can't imagine why they wouldn't.
While they are at it, Apple finally should properly support homepods on macOS. They still aren't shown as pairs - at least on Catalina.
If you are not happy with how they feel I would send them back. Too much money for headphones you don't like to wear!
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airpods-max-too-tight-o...
They don't feel heavy at all, I love the physical design, music sounds great. I hope spatial sound comes to Apple TV, I find it kind of pointless to have spatial sound depending on the position of the iPad / iPhone, I'd rather have spatial sound encoded in the content I am listening to, for example when watching a movie.
In the beginning I thought that the case is bad, but I actually got used to it now. Compared to my Sony-XM3 case, this is a case I ACTUALLY USE. The only stupid thing is that the little hole/nudge in the case for charging doesn't align properly because I've adjusted the AirPods to my head. Oh well. That's really the only thing I can complain about, so that should tell you how f** great they are.