[HN Gopher] AirPods don't "just work"
___________________________________________________________________
AirPods don't "just work"
Author : knowingathing
Score : 733 points
Date : 2022-01-26 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (philip.design)
(TXT) w3m dump (philip.design)
| activitypea wrote:
| I recenty got the AirPods Pro and they're really underwhelming.
| Apart from their durability, everything they do can be found on
| headphones half the price e.g. Anker
| cromka wrote:
| I have many of those issues mentioned in the article _daily_ with
| iPhone 13 Pro and MacBook Air M1.
|
| Whatever Apple advertised as AirPods Pro features, it's all false
| advertising. I can't get anything to work reliably. Anything. I
| don't trust them at all with any sort of serious meeting at this
| point, either, since they recently started to randomly switch
| from being actively used with my MacBook to an _idling_ iPhone in
| another room. Seriously, Apple?
|
| The experience is getting worse and worse. And I seriously wonder
| why isn't it yet another class action - they well deserve it.
| Causality1 wrote:
| _if you instantly play the music you were listening to right
| before the call by clicking the play button on your keyboard,
| your music will play at a lower audio quality_
|
| I don't recall the names of the specific bluetooth profiles, but
| I wish Airpods and bluetooth headphones in general gave you more
| control over this. Sure, the older headset profile is noticeably
| lower quality but it's also virtually lag-free. I have a shitty
| old headset I use when gaming on my phone specifically because
| there's no noticeable latency.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's AD2P vs HSP profiles. One gives you good (well, compressed
| but decent enough) stereo audio one way, one provides shitty
| audio but both ways.
|
| I'm surprised as to why Apple couldn't come up with a better
| protocol that would manage to do both or switch number of
| channels & quality seamlessly.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Nobody seems to care, is the thing. Qualcomm is now
| deprecating APTX-LL in favor of APTX-Adaptive even though
| it's 50% laggier even under ideal circumstances.
| INTPenis wrote:
| It's nice for someone like me who left the Apple ecosystem many
| years ago to see that an image for producing fancy gadgets does
| not mean you can eliminate common software issues.
|
| Because this sounds just like any pair of BT headphones I've used
| in the last 2 years. Since I finally gave in and started using BT
| headphones
|
| All in all I love them, I love being able to clean with
| headphones on and not snag on anything. I love being able to bike
| with them and not be tied to my phone.
|
| But the BT issues are horrendous. After a year of just accepting
| that BT sucked someone finally said "install the app" so I did
| and the firmware update that resulted in solved most of the
| common issues actually.
|
| So what's left now is weird stuff and quirks of Android. Like
| Android has a default setting to reconnect to connected speakers
| as soon as it sees them. Just like in OPs post this is supposed
| to be convenient but 99% of the time it's just annoying to me.
| Because I haven't even put my bike away coming home and already
| the speaker is blaring my audiobook in the kitchen, where I can't
| hear it.
|
| The other issues are the slow connection when you get a call but
| that's a bit over demanding imho. Since it wasn't connected and
| you connect as you get the call so it's a bit short notice.
|
| And then there are the rare unexplained issues like once a month
| I just disconnect and reboot everything because apps are playing,
| but no sound is coming out on BT.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Yeah, there's something comforting about a physical connection
| I can inspect for defects or just unplug, then plug back in if
| audio isn't working right. Even when I used AirPods/Pro for a
| while, I never really _trusted_ the headphones. Sometimes I
| would take them out of the case and they just didn 't connect
| to my phone. Sometimes they didn't seat quite right in the case
| and didn't charge overnight, and would be totally dead.
| Sometimes they would connect, play the sound, show up as the
| audio output on my phone... then refuse to actually play any
| audio.
|
| I understand that wireless is a nice convenience for a lot of
| people. But BT makes wireless such a nightmare I just don't
| think it's worth it. Incredible that nobody has come up with a
| competing standard.
| falcolas wrote:
| Logitech has had a competing standard for years (I have
| decade-old wireless G series headphones which work
| flawlessly).
|
| I'm not sure why their low-latency/high quality system hasn't
| been more broadly adopted. Probably requires too much power.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Is it the same tech their wireless mice use, or some
| variation? I've had really great experiences with that on
| my MX Master 2.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. The same thing happens with my car. I'm listening to
| something and the audio cut out? Looks like my wife is at home
| and Children of Dune is blasting in our driveway now.
|
| I guess I like the fact that when I'm in the car I don't have
| to do anything for it to pair and work but... It seems like
| there has to be a better way.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| Within less than a year of use my AirPod Plus now makes very
| annoying buzzing sounds when the microphone is used or any other
| vibration happens. Its like having a wasp inside your ear. This
| only happens in transparent and noise reduction mode.
|
| Assuming its broken not sure if I trust the product enough to buy
| another.
| dsizzle wrote:
| This happened to me on two separate pairs (!), and Apple
| replaced them both for free.
|
| https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...
|
| BTW, you mean AirPod Pro (not Plus).
| theginger wrote:
| Why is this article is dated 28th of January 2022? It is the 26th
| of January 2022, (maybe the 27th in a very eastern timezone)
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I'm curious if any of these annoyances are better when using with
| an M1 mac.
|
| For example, plugging in my dock (with two 4K monitors attached)
| is always super slow and janky and takes several seconds for the
| monitors to display anything. Supposedly on the M1 this is
| instant.
| jasonnchann wrote:
| My Bluetooth connection has become less and less reliable on my
| Airpod Pros, which tell me a new one is probably coming soon.
| Funny how that works :)
| easton wrote:
| The "low audio quality after/during conference" problem as I
| understand it is because of the SCO codec used for Bluetooth
| microphone stuff (which is lower bandwidth but allows you to
| speak and listen at the same time). It takes a few seconds for
| the AirPods to switch back to their usual codec.
|
| Is there a way to fix this without ditching Bluetooth?
| tomrod wrote:
| I have the same issue with Samsung earbuds on Linux. My
| solution was to get a nice webcam with a solid camera, or to
| use an external mic. Win-win -- good quality sound, video, and
| mic.
| archepyx wrote:
| bitwize wrote:
| You know what Just Work? The $10 Skullcandy headphones I plugged
| into my phone's headphone jack.
|
| Forces greater than us have decided that something so simple yet
| so functional is obsolete so we can't have it on our phones
| without a dongle.
| recursive wrote:
| "Forces" didn't do it. The headphone jack on my phone is doing
| great. You can have one too if you choose to.
| sovietmudkipz wrote:
| Mine play a high pitched prolongated shrill ping at the highest
| volume it can. It happened 3 times before I threw them away and
| went back to hard wired headphones. It hurt. The first time I
| reacted quickly to get them out of my ears.
|
| I figure it has something to do with the noise cancelling
| feature. I also figure it has something to do with me using my
| AirPods to run, thereby being exposed to moist conditions for
| prolongated times. I no longer trust headphones like I did.
| stefanwlb wrote:
| suresk wrote:
| I had frustrating issues where they would halfway connect, then
| disconnect, and only a reboot of the Mac would fix it. Finally
| trawled through system logs to realize that Spotify was
| preventing it from fully connecting. Apparently, an app can
| register callbacks of some sort that get called during the
| connect/handshake/sync process, and those can cause it to fail?
|
| Also, hate how sometimes only one side will charge.
| dt2m wrote:
| All valid annoyances, but I really think OP should try using
| another brand of Bluetooth headphones for a week just to get some
| perspective of how well AirPods "just work" compared to the
| competition.
|
| Manually having to re-pair once in every blue moon, one earbud
| playing while the other isn't, no automatic device switching
| without having to go through the Settings app everytime, A/V
| desync, dodgy mic quality, earbuds not waking up correctly when
| removing them from the case, etc are all part of the non-AirPods
| Bluetooth experience.
|
| I recently switched to a pair of Sony Bluetooth headphones as I
| don't like the too-neutral AirPods Pro EQ curve, and while they
| sound excellent, the UX really leaves a bit to be desired.
| rsfayez wrote:
| Sony bluetooth is wonderful! The pair is lasting me the longest
| any earphone every have
| jensensbutton wrote:
| Get some jabra 75Ts. Problems solved.
| carb wrote:
| Also agreed. I have been using Jabra earbuds daily for about
| four years and they would perfectly.
| VadimPR wrote:
| Agreed, Jabras work great without the issues listed here.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I had to return mine because the kept popping out, regardless
| of tip size or material. Now I have the Galaxy Buds Pro,
| which not only sound better to me (Jabras have IEM sound that
| I dislike), but also have none of the problems described. And
| while the do back out, they don't pop out, so it's
| manageable,
| 015a wrote:
| Owning Sony XM4s, Galaxy Buds Pros, Bose QC, and Airpods Pros:
| that's an extreme take. All of these devices "just work" and
| "don't just work" in nearly the same ways.
|
| The microphone quality is a tin can on all of them. Among my
| friends in Discord, anytime someone logs on with a shit mic the
| meme is "dude are you using airpods?!" They usually are. Or any
| earbeans. Because they're all bad.
|
| The AV desync is an equal issue on both of them. BT headphones
| are basically useless for any realtime application (think:
| playing a digital piano).
|
| This may just be me, but: I have no idea what the "automatic
| device switching" airpods feature is. I have a Mac. I have an
| iPhone. If I want to switch my Airpods from iPhone to the Mac,
| I have to go to the bluetooth menu in the toolbar, and click
| the Airpods on the Mac... just like the XM4s. To go back, I go
| into the bluetooth quick settings menu and click Airpods Pros.
| Its exactly the same. Like, ever since they announced this
| feature, I feel like either the world entered a collective
| psychosis on what this feature does, or I'm getting old and I'm
| missing something, but its _exactly the same_ (and, not that
| bad; exactly how many steps I 'd expect to switch an audio
| output device). The Airpods are certainly very nice during the
| _initial_ pair process, but that 's a one-time thing on both
| devices.
|
| The scary part to me is: the APPs do have slightly better UX on
| Apple devices. And it isn't just the value-add features like
| "automatic" switching and spatial audio; I do experience
| slightly more AV desync on the XM4s on iPhone. The XM4s
| sometimes won't connect to my Mac. But these issues are
| entirely and totally Apple device specific; I also regularly
| use the XM4s with a Galaxy S21 Ultra and Windows 11 PC, and
| they're just where I'd expect BT headphones to land there. I
| really think this is an "Intel Mac situation", where Apple is
| intentionally ruining (or ignoring, and thus leaving to
| languish) the experience of integrating non-Apple devices so
| they can sell their accessories. Then, even educated customers
| start saying "the APPs just work better" even though what's
| really happening is, the iPhone is just working worse with non-
| APPs, and Apple is pushing their monopoly once again.
|
| And I say all that coming to the conclusion: If friends ask me
| what earbeans to buy, if they have an iPhone, just buy APPs.
| They have better UX, in very small but nonetheless extant ways,
| even if I'm convinced it's because of Apple's monopoly control
| over consumer devices. Maybe more-so: they have a very neutral,
| unoffensive sound profile. Its boring. But the quality is
| competitive with any other bean out there, which is to say:
| great. It works for nearly any type of music, and no one will
| complain about it.
|
| None of the other "tech company beans" can compete with the
| APPs. Some are cheaper. All of them suck. This meaning:
| Samsung, Microsoft, Google beans.
|
| But if you're on Android; the APPs are still a top 3 choice.
| However, I'd add: if you want a neutral sound profile, the Bose
| QC beans (non-sport) have better noise cancellation and
| comparable audio quality. If you'd welcome or accept a more
| bass-heavy sound signature and larger (yet still comfortable)
| in-ear profile: the Sony XM4s are the best beans money can buy.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I had these $20 pair of Anker bluetooth earbuds and they just
| worked. I paired them once and they were effortless to use for
| years on my iPhone. Just hold a button down for 3 seconds and
| they're on and ready in seconds.
|
| They even went through the wash, twice. But then I lost them.
| cush wrote:
| Bluetooth is such a fussy, unreliable protocol.
|
| I'd love to have a new, modern protocol that simply requires
| some kind of basic, physical connection to pair two devices.
| That way, I'd always know exactly which two devices are
| connected and a third couldn't break it so easily.
| projektfu wrote:
| Of course I expect that it would lead to something with the
| unreliability of Bluetooth and the requirement that you
| physically touch the devices together every time it loses its
| connection.
| cush wrote:
| Right, for sure. I was thinking more like a wire or cable
| that physically connected the two devices. If the wire is
| connected, then they can share audio, else they can't.
| finder83 wrote:
| That's all part of the Airpods experience for me. Randomly have
| to reinsert into the case to get both earbuds working, devices
| I've connected to won't work if I've connected more devices, if
| I reboot from Linux to windows I have to drop them and re-pair
| them (I assume they pair based on a device id?), sometimes they
| don't charge but it's impossible to tell because when I open
| them it just shows yellow. Maybe it's because I have the first
| gen and no apple devices, but I really don't care for them.
|
| My wife's soundcores work great.
|
| My Bose over-ear are a much better experience.
| elif wrote:
| i dont have any of these issues with galaxy buds pro...
| hatware wrote:
| My airpods have constant issues. Maybe you should take notice
| that Apple's products don't have the simplicity of setup they
| were once known for...
| sokoloff wrote:
| I have a couple pairs of other "quite cheap" BT earbuds from
| Amazon and they're all quite good ergonomically. They paired
| easily, stay paired, charge automatically, etc.
|
| I don't use them as a microphone very often (as I have an arm-
| mounted Blue Yeti), but when I've had to use them, they also
| worked without me getting complaints from the other side.
|
| Maybe Airpods are wildly better somehow, but I can't see how
| much better they could be versus the totally acceptable
| experience I've had with the cheap ones.
| cochne wrote:
| Almost all of the issues you described I have also experienced
| with AirPods.
|
| Sometimes going into the Bluetooth menu and selecting them is
| not even enough to convince them to play audio from my phone. I
| had to get out of bed and turn off the Bluetooth on my laptop.
| slingnow wrote:
| So your argument for why Airpods suck is that "hey, everything
| else sucks too"? I thought Apple was supposed to be a shining
| beacon of simplicity, hence they should absolutely "just work".
| Graffur wrote:
| I use Android and bought the cheapest wireless/bluetooth
| earphones I could find. They "just work". When I open the
| charging case, they connect to my phone. The bad points are the
| sound quality and the lack of noise cancellation
| Causality1 wrote:
| No noise cancellation is better than bad noise cancellation.
| The ANC on every set of earbuds and headphones under $200
| I've tried is just a blast of white noise that makes it feel
| like someone is ramming cotton balls into my ears with a
| jackhammer.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I guess it depends on the use case. ANC on my FreeBuds
| (which are open type) is certainly limited, but it's a make
| or break difference in e.g. public transportation.
| toastal wrote:
| Additional anecdote, I have Sony XM3s and they are constantly
| having issues on both Android and Linux while being expensive
| and having excellent noise cancelation. They just worked for
| like the first 2-3 months but after a year, they've seemed to
| have gotten worse in basically all aspects (although
| interestingly switching from Sony's app to GadgetBridge for
| pairing and config, I seem to get better battery life). The
| connectivity has gotten so bad and I've caused so many
| interruptions in telemeetings that I bought a new pair of
| wired IEMs because I know analog actually just works (though
| my laptop lacks a headphone jack because of OEMs follow
| Apple's trends regardless of if the idea was good or bad).
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Oof. I'm sorry. My XM3s have been going strong connecting
| to Android and Windows devices for 2 years. I have the Sony
| app on my phone, but it doesn't launch when I connect. I
| never use it. I just use the system Bluetooth with LDAC.
| SXX wrote:
| I used XM3 for 2 years on Linux, Windows, macOS and
| Android. I guess I used them for 4-12 hours a day most for
| most of these two years. I guess I spent at least 1/4 of
| this period with them on my head. And I dropped them many
| times, weared them during my runs on seaside in hot weather
| as well as walked in them inrain / snow.
|
| They still work as good as new except for battery life, but
| this expected for device that had 500-1000 recharge cycles.
| I guess battery lost like 30-50% of original capacity.
|
| PS: I only used Sony app a few times to update firmware and
| change settings though.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| A laptop not having a headphone jack is irritating.
|
| The 2021 MacBook Pro has a headphone jack. I can understand
| taking the jack out of a phone because it makes it more
| water resistant and frees up space, but in a laptop there's
| a much larger footprint to work with. And users are more
| concerned with plugging in peripherals vs waterproofing in
| a laptop.
| thebean11 wrote:
| All Apple laptops have a 3.5mm headphone jack though..not
| sure you can blame Apple.
| mojzu wrote:
| If you're connecting to one device most bluetooth headphones
| will work just fine, the biggest pain point is when you have
| multiple devices to switch between. I've got some nice noise
| cancelling headphones I like to switch between my TV and
| ipad, where you've got to dig into the settings of both,
| disconnect it from one before connecting it to the other
| (which takes an unlock and 4 clicks on the ipad and about 10
| clicks on the TV).
|
| The biggest pro of the airpods for me though is the non-pro
| version, for whatever reason I just cannot stand in-ear
| headphones. The gripes in the article are all valid though,
| personally I'd really like to be able to pair bluetooth
| headphones to as many devices as I like then have a button in
| the system tray (or anywhere where it'd be a couple of
| swipes/clicks maximum) that is the equivalent of "I want
| sound from this device now"
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Some of the complaints OP lists are related to using the
| Airpods with multiple devices. While the complaints are
| correct, the Airpods are miles better than any bluetooth
| earphones I've ever used when it comes to switching sources.
| The dance to get my old earphones to move from my phone to my
| tablet was annoying and brittle by comparison.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| > the Airpods are miles better than any bluetooth earphones
| I've ever used when it comes to switching sources
|
| I think this just depends on Bluetooth version. My current
| FreeBuds 4 switch between devices seamlessly, no manual
| switching needed.
|
| With my old headphones I head to switch manually, but it
| wasn't that much of a bother with a switching widget on the
| main screen (instead going deep into the settings).
| computerex wrote:
| I don't know, my experience with Samsung's buds plus and buds
| live has been flawless.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I bought my first pair of Airpod Pros recently. The previous
| two years I was using Bluedio T Elf 2 that I paid $17 for on
| Amazon. The sound quality and feature set is obviously much
| better with the Airpods, but not 10X better despite costing 10X
| the price.
|
| The Bluedios were better for podcasts than music due to their
| middling sound quality, but they paired properly most of the
| time and worked without issue.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I have 2 sets from Monoprice, both pretty inexpensive. The
| cheapest ones don't have a very good microphone and they are
| tinny, but fine for podcasts. They also switch ears and pair
| easily like a champ. I can Pair either one, pull out the other
| one and let it pair, then put the first away, or leave them
| both in. I've been really impressed. The slightly more
| expensive pair will only pair the right one unless I create a
| specific profile for the left one. Switching from one to two is
| hit or miss and forget about switching from right to left (or
| vice-versa) without pausing everything for a minute or so.
| wdb wrote:
| Yes, I am daily struggling to connect my Sony MX4 headphones in
| a way the microphone also works so I can use it with Google
| Meetings. I have re-paired them already more often than my
| AirPods.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I actually don't have any of those problems with galaxy buds
| live but absolutely hate the touch controls. They are so
| inconsistent. Sometimes it registers a touch. Sometimes it
| doesn't. Sometimes it does but doesn't actually perform the
| action to I have so do it again.
| rodelrod wrote:
| Maybe that audio jack wasn't such a bad idea after all.
| falcolas wrote:
| It must not be - even Apple has kept it on their laptops and
| desktops.
|
| Admitting past decisions were bad is hard.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Or maybe some people just need to fix their shit. Connecting
| audio devices to any OS, except maybe Android (dunno about
| iOS), is chaos. There is no inherently good reason to this.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| As much as people hate wires, I have to say that I much
| appreciate the "just works" aspect of it. Even wifi, while it
| has improved an awful lot over the years, is not nearly as
| reliable as the (albeit annoying) ethernet cable.
|
| I have the same issue with wireless keyboards and mice. The
| idea that I have to charge or put batteries into my mouse is
| infuriating.
| [deleted]
| mojuba wrote:
| I usually keep my Magic Trackpad connected to USB because I
| know it switches to wired operation with no latency and 100%
| reliability. Also an option.
| falcolas wrote:
| > not nearly as reliable as the (albeit annoying) ethernet
| cable.
|
| I keep one plugged into an inexpensive USB-C "dock" at my
| desk, and it's wonderful. That and wired headphones mean I
| always sound decent, don't break up when the microwave's in
| use, and never have to play the "can you hear me now" game.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Opposite for me. The wifi in my office beats out my USB C
| adapter by a factor of 4.
|
| Wifi is great, consumer grade routers are not though.
| falcolas wrote:
| Beats... how? Bandwidth? Packet loss? Latency?
|
| One, that wifi bandwidth is being shared by everyone
| around you. Ideally, you'll only have about 4 peers for
| your given hotspot, but most companies are a bit more...
| frugal... than that. Two, that WiFi is going through
| those same routers. Just sayin'.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Bandwidth is typically what I've measured. Never had a
| noticeable issue with packet loss. Or latency.
|
| Edit: the difference between my work laptop (wireless)
| and my gaming machine (wired) in my office is a mere 5ms
| to the same external server. That's in the "meh"
| territory for me.
|
| Currently I have five APs inside and outside my house,
| and they're averaging about 5-6 clients per AP. The
| really network intensive stuff is connected via Ethernet
| to avoid crowding out the airwaves. In my case that means
| the Apple TV and my gaming rig, both of which are
| conveniently non mobile and close to wall plates.
|
| The issue for my work laptop is that the cheaper USB C
| hubs only pull 100mbps. So I can get 100mbps wired,
| 450mbps wireless, or the full 950 by replacing my hub. On
| the balance the wireless is more convenient, especially
| with a sit/stand desk like mine making more wires more
| annoying. If I replace the hub I'll reconsider, but 450
| is plenty for my needs.
| [deleted]
| falcolas wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| With as important as live calls have been for work, it
| was worth it to get a wired adapter to avoid the
| occasional latency spikes and to limit the packet round
| trip time. It is legitimately noticeable to me when I'm
| on wifi and not wired (I keep both active for
| simplicity's sake).
|
| Anker offers a nice one that was only about $40, and
| provides both gigabit ethernet (1000baseT (or an
| incredible fake thereof)) and some USB-A connections as
| well.
| okl wrote:
| Also (generally) better sound quality (mic) and no
| latency/artifacting issues. Much cheaper as well.
| toxik wrote:
| Don't mind me over here with a Ethernet dongle that randomly
| disconnects intermittently.
| dont__panic wrote:
| > dongle
|
| There's your problem. Dongles = cheap hardware to patch
| missing pieces of your expensive hardware. It's hard to
| find good ones even if you want to. One of the big reasons
| so many of us hated the TouchBar era of Macbooks was the
| reliance on dongles, which inevitably flake out at the
| worst times possible and cause weird bugs when you're
| trying to concentrate.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Heh, yeah, I had a Thinkpad with one of those PCMCIA cards
| that had the pop-out RJ-45 jack. It was great, but it was
| persnickety and would go "pfffbbblt" on the regular.
|
| The best Ethernet dongle ever was the AAUI ones you used to
| have to use on old Macs.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Got some Samsung Galaxy Buds Live for my birthday and they're
| honestly one of the best tech products I've ever used. The case
| recharges them, the setup with a phone was very easy and worked
| well, they pair perfectly with my Ubuntu laptop as well. Taking
| them out of the case they automatically activate, put them in
| the case automatically shut off. And so on. They do just work.
| gregd wrote:
| I have the Galaxy Buds as well as the 2nd Gen AirPods. I
| cannot get the Buds to stay in my ears with any regularity
| because all of the weight of the Buds, is out at the end that
| is not in your ear. The AirPods have all of their mass inside
| of your ear and stay put.
| humantorso wrote:
| Second this, Samsung Galaxy Buds just work. They fit
| comfortably and imo look good.
| jcranberry wrote:
| Feel the same with the Galaxy Buds Plus.
|
| My SO has airpods pro and I find to be the main thing they
| have over the GB+ is their talk through is vastly superior
| and the noise canceling is also very good.
|
| The thing it doesnt have is a decent battery life.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Y'know what headphones really did "just work" though? Wired
| headphones, circa 2017. Their battery life was infinite. You
| could "pair" them in seconds to any device with a headphone
| jack, aka any device, because we're in 2017. Oh, and they were
| cheaper and better for the environment.
|
| Courage, indeed.
|
| And this is why I'm currently typing my comment on an iPhone
| 6S...
| jhaile wrote:
| Wired headphones also switch between devices almost
| instantaneously. Or at least, when you unplug from one device
| and plug into another, you're guaranteed to have it switched
| to the right device.
|
| That being said, I use my Airpod Pros almost all the time,
| because I'm hooked on wireless and being able to stand up and
| walk around, etc.
| duxup wrote:
| I think it goes to show how much "just works enough "
| consumers are happy to tolerate for wireless over other
| advantages of wired.
|
| I remember early consumer wi- fi was just garbage compared to
| wired and... we still used it happily.
|
| Granted sometimes we go back... my cars Bluetooth is so
| maddening I use a cable instead.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I agree, but I'm going to defend the wifi case a little.
| Ethernet _doesn 't_ work if you're using a laptop, because
| it defeats the purpose of having a portable computer in the
| first place. You either have to be able to work offline, or
| you have to stay next to an ethernet plug.
|
| I said above that wired headphones have infinite battery
| life. I suppose I could say the same about a desktop
| computer versus a laptop, but I don't think that would be
| fair.
| falcolas wrote:
| FWIW, the proliferation of video calls over my laptop has
| pushed me back to wired internet at my desk. Combined with
| wired headphones - I have so much less latency than any of
| my co-workers. It's nice to not have to play the "can you
| hear me" song and dance.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I did that until I updated the wifi in my house. There's
| a combination wired/wireless wire plate under my desk,
| but I don't bother wiring it into my work computer,
| because the wifi is faster than what the cheap USB C
| adapter can offer.
| falcolas wrote:
| Faster and lower latency are not the same things.
|
| > the cheap USB C adapter
|
| I have to ask, what kind of internet speeds do you have
| where even a cheap wired adapter can't beat it? That's
| pretty incredible.
| duxup wrote:
| You getting a lot of latency over wifi?
|
| I find wifi almost entirely dies around the time I get
| wonky latency... but having said that everyone's wifi
| situation is different depending on network, building /
| home structure and etc.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| 950 down, 50 up. Wifi will pull 450 easy, but my hub will
| only do 100, despite claims to the contrary.
|
| 450 is good enough for my use case, so it's easier to
| just not worry about it and avoid running another wire up
| the sit stand desk. If I upgrade my hub to something
| that'll pull the claimed 1G, I might change. Or maybe
| not. I dunno. Literally nothing I do on the internet can
| get close to saturating it.
|
| Edit: wifi adds a mere 5ms of latency in my office. I
| consider this beneath my notice for basically everything
| but gaming. And even there it probably is meaningless
| given my relatively low skill level.
| vel0city wrote:
| If your dock is only able to negotiate a 100Mbit
| connection despite theoretically being 1000Mbit, and
| you're experiencing dropped packets, it might not be your
| dock. That sounds like an issue with ethernet cabling.
| Bad cabling will usually result in ports not being able
| to negotiate their max potential throughput, and
| sometimes they'll negotiate higher than what they can
| realistically do.
| falcolas wrote:
| > my hub will only do 100
|
| Oof, that sucks.
|
| 5ms per round trip adds up, especially when you add in
| every other source of latency in your chain. I've also
| found that, thanks to general RF noise from _everything_
| being wireless these days, latency spikes occur much more
| often over wi-fi than wired.
|
| YMMV, of course. Always worth measuring your own
| experience.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I went back to wireless specifically because I was
| noticing issues on that hub. I went to the trouble to
| setup control plane to disable wifi when Ethernet was
| plugged in, and zoom performance _tanked_. Going back to
| wifi solved it. I think that the adapter was dropping
| packets, but I never bothered to triage since wifi works
| great in this house.
|
| It's worth mentioning that my setup has very, very low
| latency. Lag between me and the speed test server in city
| is 5ms wired, 10ms wireless. My router is way overpowered
| for what I ask of it, so throughput and latency tends to
| be very good.
|
| To be fair, my wifi setup is a bit ... extra. I'm running
| 5 APs, two switches, a controller, and a dedicated
| router, with a dedicated AP for my office that's a combo
| wired/wireless outlet. I've turned it down so that it's
| basically only serving my office, and it has a dedicated
| cat6 backhaul to the network cabinet, no sharing airspace
| with other APs. If I hadn't gone to all this trouble, I'd
| probably upgrade my hub and go wired.
| baxtr wrote:
| That's just not true. They never just worked for me at least.
|
| - Cables would get cluttered in my clothes
|
| - Cables would eventually all break at one point
|
| - The cables were a mess in a any jacket / bag
|
| - The microphone was making weird sounds when they hit my
| face and and people would complain
|
| - etc.
| csomar wrote:
| > Wired headphones, circa 2017.
|
| I hope we never go back to those days. That constant struggle
| with the wires, having to take the phone with you, too short
| wire for desktop usage, the wire getting in the way when
| moving/jogging, etc...
| antihero wrote:
| I found I was just getting sick of the faff and bulk with my
| wired ATH-M50x + FiiO A3 amp. I have tried most of the big
| bluetooth buds (Airpods 3, Buds Pro, XM4, Audio Technicas), I
| absolutely hated them.
|
| I've ended up using the FiiO UTWS5 (over ear bluetooth hooks
| that connect via standard IEM connectors) + Moondrop Katos,
| the setup is sublime. Fantastic sound quality, very reliable
| and great battery life with no faf and can fit it in my
| pocket.
|
| If you still want wired, the Apple dongle actually has a
| DAC/amp that is regarded surprisingly highly in the
| audiophile headphone community. Just remember to charge your
| phone.
|
| I think most of the mainstream options for wireless stuff
| will make hi-fi enjoyers miserable, you just have to look at
| something a bit more interesting.
|
| The only disadvantage is you don't get so much of the
| supporting features. Ambient mode isn't great, there's no ANC
| (I don't really care about these things), and it doesn't have
| the fancy pair-switching integrated stuff, so wouldn't be
| great if you switch between laptop and phone.
|
| But for audio, we've reached a point where it is absolutely
| excellent.
| ineedasername wrote:
| What's a headphone jack?
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Caveat: This reply got a longer than intended and broadens a
| bit, but please indulge me because I think you are also onto
| something I have been scratching my head about for decades
| now, amidst outrage for questioning tech dogma.
|
| I agree with you to an overwhelming degree. I also had an
| iPhone 6S until about a year ago and I have to say the
| upgrade to the iNext Pro was pretty underwhelming in many, if
| not most ways when objectively evaluated.
|
| I have also had AirPods for however long they have been out
| and even though I would agree with the rebuttal to your point
| that many other BT headphones are notably even more glitchy,
| I also paid about 5 times less for some of them that work
| almost just as well in most ways and aspects.
|
| There seems to be an odd kind of self-delusion going on where
| somehow whatever is new, is assumed to not only also be
| better, but significantly better, when if one just takes a
| first principles approach to evaluating that proposition, at
| best you find marginal or incremental improvement of
| diminishing returns.
|
| The 6S was released over 6 years ago, is it even doubly as
| good, let alone exponentially more capable? There is a huge
| hurdle in overcoming the reality that the answer is no.
|
| There is all this lamenting about sustainability and
| environment this and climate change that, but for some
| reason, e.g., an old Apple device (picking on them because I
| believe they are the highest standard bar) cannot perform as
| well due to simple UI and UX changes?
|
| There is seriously something wrong with the whole matrix and
| I have not been able to get any kind of satisfactory answer
| as to why, e.g., an old 1st (or 2nd) gen iPad Air all the
| sudden cannot perform +h same simple, core tasks it performed
| exceedingly well when it was new, that being loading safari
| and less than demanding website like HN.
|
| What has changed in the 9 years since the 1st gen iPad Air
| came out that all the sudden browsing is now an extremely
| demanding task on the device? It seems like intentional and
| fraudulent designed obsolescence. Where are the
| environmentally concerned drawing attention to this like I
| am?
|
| Just imagine if your car got updates every year, and then you
| find that 9 years later all the sudden the same engine has
| 100 less horsepower and can't get up a moderately sized hill
| anymore. That's not suspect to anyone else?
|
| Again, I would love for someone to explain how I am wrong,
| that I cannot expect a product I buy to retain the same
| performance for the same actions/tasks when nothing else has
| changed. Does the CPU age and die off?
|
| We should all be demanding that a device must retain its
| performance in all aspects of the original function.
| Everything else is fraud. Please for anyone compelled to,
| refrain from your "you don't know how it works" comments,
| that is not the case, nor helpful, and rather blind to
| reality.
| saberience wrote:
| I've broken at least three or four pairs of wired headphones
| in the gym/while working out getting them caught in something
| and then the cable being jerked and broken, not the mention
| the intense annoyance of the cable always ending up in a
| horrible knot in my pocket.
|
| With my Airpods Pro, my original pair are working great, no
| breakages, amazing for working out with, no cable to get
| tangled. I love them.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Not to mention zero latency. Trying to have multiple people
| in a car play music/podcasts is a nightmare over bluetooth
| when you used to be able to just pass an aux cable around.
| prox wrote:
| I bought a Sony that does BT _and_ wired, I love the
| whynotboth movement personally. Why do we have to choose?
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| WH-1000xm3 sound much worse when wired. They are made to
| use internal DAC.
| striking wrote:
| You can turn them on, and they will use the wired input
| but pass it through the nice internal DAC.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Wouldn't wired use the DAC on the device rather than the
| headphones? I thought the 3.5mm jack carried an analog
| signal.
| writeslowly wrote:
| Those Sony headphones do processing to the signal
| regardless of whether you're using wireless or a 3.5mm.
| They can still make sound with no power but it feels more
| like a backup in case the battery is dead. It seems like
| a sensible design decision given that most users will
| want them turned on for noise canceling even if they're
| wired.
| ziml77 wrote:
| That's his point. They're using the device's DAC when
| wired which is why it doesn't sound as good as when using
| Bluetooth through the headphones' DAC.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Sure but that's an issue with wired headphones in
| general, not specific to these.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I use my xm3 daily and don't notice a difference. I use
| both methods of connection because sometimes it's quicker
| to just plug in on some devices, and others it pairs
| right away. Love these headphones.
| piaste wrote:
| That just means your phone's or PC's DAC is crappy
| compared to the internal one, and any other headphones
| would sound just as bad.
|
| I have an older pair of JBL E55, which are about 50%
| cheaper than yours, and on a modern phone they sound
| slightly better on wire than on wireless, presumably
| because their internal DAC is mediocre.
| iso1210 wrote:
| In theory they could use an ADC to convert the analog
| input to digital then run through the same DAC as
| bluetooth goes
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Don't forget the super fun untangling puzzle that you get to
| solve before each use! Or the eardrum damaging fun of having
| the buds ripped out of your ears every time the cord catches
| on something. "Just works" indeed!
| tptacek wrote:
| I love wired headphones, but I have never had a pair whose
| cable didn't short out within a year; I got to the point
| where I'd buy replacement cables with the headphones. I've
| got B&O's, NAD's, and Sennheisers, both open and closed, and:
| I might as well keep them in a lighted display case, because
| I never use them anymore. Once Apple came out with the Max
| AirPods, I was done with wired headphones. I don't want to
| be! But they're too much better a product.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I think this is a fascinating aspect to the overall wired-
| vs-wireless debate. Some people simply have a problem with
| wires and some don't. I have three pairs of over-the-ear
| wired headphones that have been with me for 7, ~10, and >20
| years, respectively, and none of them have ever had any
| cable damage. I've never ended up with flaky wiring on a
| cheap pair of apple earbuds, either. The very cheap earbuds
| that came with my HTC G-2 did end up with flaky cables but
| they're an aberration in my experience. Coincidentally, or
| perhaps not, I really don't have any grudge against wires,
| but I do loathe the fidgety connectivity of bluetooth.
|
| Of course, I'm also baffled about how everyone I know and
| hear about seems to be unable to keep their macbook power
| cable from self-destructing, and I just keep accumulating
| them because they never die. My favorite one is still a
| MagSafe 1 from, I think, 2012.
|
| [edit: in retrospect, perhaps the fact that I have a
| "favorite" power cable is some kind of red flag. Re-
| evaluating my life...]
| sriku wrote:
| Not to mention how the wired apple earphones are way better
| in terms of audio quality during calls than airpods (own
| both, and airpod "pro" to boot). Heck, during most calls, my
| colleagues tell me that the sound is way better when I use my
| macbook air builtin microphone than when I use my airpods ..
| on zoom, ms teams, whatever. Not to mention how my airpods
| pro started discharging in a skewed manner - with one ear
| piece discharging faster than the other. None of these are
| problems with the wired earphones.
| powersurge360 wrote:
| You can do both tbh. Wireless headphones are great because if
| you charge them relatively frequently, they're a light,
| painless pack. I'm pretty into high fidelity audio, but I'm
| not going to be walking around w/ my DT 990 pros. But if I'm
| out running errands, being able to break out the AirPods is
| amazing.
|
| And realistically, it's not that significant to just buy an
| adapter and keep it permanently affixed to your headphones.
| Will be better if/when apple fully moves off of lightning to
| usb-c but I have found that when I want a high fidelity
| experience w/ music I'm more likely to be sitting and plugged
| in anyways.
| eddieh wrote:
| Some people hate to be physically tethered to their desk from
| their head. Maybe wireless headphones have to be paired and
| charged, but that beats standing up an pulling your laptop to
| the floor while your headphones are jerked off your head. And
| nothing is better than being able to pace around while on a
| call.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I own a pair of Airpods for work, and they're fine for a
| couple hours of Zoom calls every day. For non-work, I have a
| pair of headphones with a lightning input. It's still
| annoying, because I can't charge my phone or transfer data
| while listening to music, and I still disagree with Apple's
| courageous decision to remove the 3.5mm jack, but it's an
| okay solution.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Wired headphones have an amazingly simple, reliable, and
| consistent pairing method with devices. Little kids and
| senior citizens can operate wired headphones with ease.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My wired headphones had a frustrating tendency to pair with
| unwanted devices like elbows, chairs, desks, and other
| protrusions. This tended to unpair them from either my
| device or my ears.
|
| edit: Oh, and to themselves. Knotted up cords leading to
| wires failing caused more than one set of mine to only work
| in one ear.
| chii wrote:
| I used to be like you. Then i tried, for real, a pair of
| bluetooth headphones.
|
| The disadvantages of the bluetooth is by far outweighed by
| the wireless advantage. The mobility, flexibility and
| convenience of no tangles and accidental wire pulling and
| causing phone to drop - all worth it.
|
| And wireless UX is only going to get better. Wired is dead.
| eertami wrote:
| >Wired is dead
|
| For as long as we both live, manufacturers will make wired
| headphones, and people will buy them. Latency and quality
| might not be important to the casual user, but for some
| wired headphones and speakers will be, and will always be,
| essential.
| xg15 wrote:
| The mobility, flexibility snd convenience of me still
| sitting on front of the same PC for eight hours?
| ziml77 wrote:
| I have a wireless headset for my PC and it's hard to go
| back to wired. I have much nicer wired headphones, but I
| rarely switch to them. Being able to get up and walk
| around while not interrupting what I'm listening to is
| great (yes desktop speakers would let me do the same but
| they also let everyone hear what I'm hearing). Also with
| wired headphones I had a constant issue where no matter
| how I routed them, they would end up tangled in my chair.
| It was super easy to think they were resting safely on my
| desk, only to turn my chair and fling them to the floor.
| nisegami wrote:
| Use the right tool for the job. Sometimes that's wired
| headphones. Sometimes that's bluetooth headphones.
| [deleted]
| dspillett wrote:
| Though being able to use the right tool, in circumstances
| where that is a wired set, can be a problem on some
| platforms.
| openknot wrote:
| This is true (iPhones, iPads, and plenty of Android
| phones these days), but can be mitigated by carrying a
| USB-C to 3.5 mm audio adapter in the pouch that contains
| the IEMs. I wish people didn't have to, but it's a
| straightforward solution that widely improves wired
| compatibility.
| pritambaral wrote:
| > ... that widely improves wired compatibility.
|
| "Wired compatibility" was ubiquitous before. It didn't
| have room to "improve". Removing the jack is what broke
| "wired compatibility".
|
| Needing a dongle for sth is not an "improved" form of
| using it, when you could have just used it without a
| dongle.
| openknot wrote:
| Adding a small adapter to where you carry your wired
| headphones fixes the problem of the current reality where
| many devices do not have audio jacks. My assertion is to
| provide a practical solution to the current state of
| affairs, instead of claiming that the present is better
| than the past state of affairs (where there were
| ubiquitous audio jacks) due to audio adapters.
|
| Due to forces beyond the individual's control, it's
| highly unlikely that audio jacks will once more become
| ubiquitous, so the second-best outcome is for wired
| headphone users to start carrying an adapter.
| [deleted]
| criddell wrote:
| The "right tool" might be an adapter or hub.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've got some Sony bluetooth / noise cancelling
| headphones, I don't like the lag but that's only an issue
| for videos and it switches to low latency (low quality)
| for voice calls. But I really appreciate not managing a
| cable, it's always in the way, or touching my arm or
| something (some sensory things really annoy me while
| sitting at a computer). Plus, great battery life.
|
| And it Just Works. Although my Mac has a tendency to
| switch back to my speakers (also bluetooth) after ~15
| minutes without my input, that's really annoying. Might
| have to do with the speakers turning themselves off?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > And it Just Works. Although my Mac has a tendency to
| switch back to my speakers (also bluetooth) after ~15
| minutes without my input, that's really annoying.
|
| So, what you're saying is, it doesn't just work!
|
| I promise I'm not trying to be sassy! This is _exactly_
| the type of issue I _always_ run into with wireless
| audio, and basically never experience with wired
| headphones. I hate these types of little, persistent
| annoyances.
|
| I don't like wires either, to be clear, but I think
| they're a small price to pay for their reliability.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I agree completely. Little gnomes never sneak up on me
| and switch the wire from one device to another, then
| demand I go through weird unplug/plug rituals involving
| four levels of deep-presses to get the thing connected
| back to the device I want, all while 20 people are
| waiting for me to start a presentation. The signal
| doesn't randomly drop out or connect to the car that just
| pulled in the driveway. The batteries don't go dead.
|
| The point is _predictability_. Wires have it, bluetooth
| doesn 't. Yes, they predictably snag on things sometimes.
| In my experience, this annoyance happens far less
| frequently than any of the many annoyances that bluetooth
| brings.
| thow-58d4e8b wrote:
| There's one major annoyance with Sony headphones and
| earbuds - no way to mute/unmute yourself - you must walk
| back to your laptop to do it. Why, oh why, Sony?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Do you never get up to make a drink or something?
| delecti wrote:
| I will stick with wired headphones for the overwhelming
| majority of usecases. There are just not enough downsides
| to cables compared to never needing to switch audio devices
| in a conferencing app, awkwardly change OS settings before
| jumping on a call, or ever charging my headphones.
| openknot wrote:
| >The mobility, flexibility and convenience of no tangles
| and accidental wire pulling and causing phone to drop - all
| worth it.
|
| You can thread the wired headphone/IEM cord under your
| shirt, or even over your ear and down your back [0] to
| prevent tangles and wire pulling that causes a phone to
| drop.
|
| It's less convenient than wireless earphones, but it solves
| the problem, and comes with advantages (better noise
| isolation and sound quality with certain models, plus you
| don't need to worry about the batteries degrading and
| having to buy a new pair after possibly 2-3 years, so you
| save money). I'm considering switching back to wired after
| my current AirPods pair dies for these advantages.
|
| >Wired is dead
|
| Not at all. You can get high-quality, professional
| earphones (in-ear monitors or IEMs) that fit in a pouch in
| your pocket, which are great for people in loud
| environments (better than noise cancelling due to their
| noise isolation); who appreciate music (sound quality is
| noticeably better for any genre); or who do professional
| audio work.
|
| [0] https://imgur.com/QOSNA9T
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Sure, you can work around the limitations of wired head
| phones. But at the end it's just not worth the trouble
| for many of us. I ditched my wired head phones years ago
| and haven't regretted it.
| munk-a wrote:
| Or you can work around the limitations of wireless
| headphones. At the end of the day both choices have
| advantages and consumers can freely chose one or the
| other (or both for different situations!) just so long as
| no manufacturer is stupid enough to remove headphone
| jacks from their mobile music devices we'll all be good.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| It's a dying breed, but there are still many phones with
| audio jack. I don't think it will disappear completely.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Having cycled through WH1000XM3, XM4, AirPods Pro, I am
| back to my trusty Shure SE215 that I use wired.
|
| -- They never deafen me with connected/disconnected
| sounds (which can never be configured quiet enough) or
| music briefly playing at insane volume after switching or
| connecting.
|
| -- I know I get the source quality.
|
| -- I would never lose one randomly (always a chance with
| "true wireless" models).
|
| -- I don't get weird phased low-frequency rumble from
| active noise compensation gone wonky.
|
| -- Most of all, their passive noise suppression with
| Shure's black sleeves, depending on exact noise profile
| either beats or is on par with top-of-the-line active
| isolation (both according to rtings' test benches and my
| subjective experience), and does not end when battery
| runs out inevitably at the most inconvenient time.
|
| Addendum: 1) I connect them via a tiny Ikko Zerda DAC,
| which I started using way back when I still had a phone
| with a headphone jack (this is subjective, but with
| lossless sources I hear more detail--as in literally
| small instrument parts I didn't hear before in complex
| arrangements--compared to built-in DAC). 2) I generally
| pass the wire under the top layer of clothing, and
| personally taking an earbud out and letting it dangle is
| about as difficult as switching on the transparent mode
| on AirPods (and without audio degradation inherent to
| such modes).
| grp000 wrote:
| As far as their SE215 model goes, the sound, isolation,
| and ergonomics are great, but I've always had issues with
| the cable breaking at the ear curve next to the
| connection point to the earbuds.
| greedo wrote:
| It's been awhile since I used Shure's in ear monitors,
| but they once sent me a kit with one of everything in
| that part of their product line. Nice stuff, and if you
| can tolerate in-ear stuff, incredible sound. But all the
| cables failed over time. Not heavily used either. They
| were great about sending replacements, but they were very
| aware of the reliability issues. And these were monitors
| that had MSRPs over $800.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Cables (as well as sleeves) are certainly the disposable
| part of IEMs like these. Earbuds themselves proved
| incredibly reliable to me (compared to AirPods Pro at
| least, which I had to exchange once and which still had
| problems after that).
|
| Also, SE215 cost much, much less than US$800. More like
| $100.
| grp000 wrote:
| Yeah, I have two pairs of SE215s for convenience. But,
| replacement OEM cables cost 20-30$, and maybe it's the
| geometry of my ears, but I've had to replace 3-4 cables
| by now, since the cables, OEM or not, kept failing at the
| same section, at that metal wire you bend over your ear.
| strogonoff wrote:
| I see. Well, YMMV but you could try a different type of
| cable. There are cables not using metal wires that you
| bend around the ears, but the same thin flexible cable
| throughout the entire length. I have not had problems
| with one in more than a couple of years of use.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Now that you say it, I'm not using the original cable,
| and I don't recall what happened to it because it's been
| so long ago (could've been a similar issue to the one you
| described).
|
| I couldn't find a Shure original cable to replace mine
| with right away, so I got a compatible one and been
| rolling with it ever since. It's slightly thinner, more
| flexible and without the thicker malleable parts near
| earbud connections. I was cautious about those
| differences at first, but in the end grown to prefer it
| more than the original, these thin wires wrap around my
| ears just fine.
|
| As a side note, one of the things I treasure about the
| design of these IEMs is the replaceability of the cable.
| The IEMs themselves can probably survive for ages, which
| gives a nice feeling among the increasingly disposable
| electronics--I just hope the model would still exist on
| the market when something eventually happens to my unit.
| dimmke wrote:
| It's also pretty much confirmed at this point that the next
| pair of AirPods won't be using bluetooth - which they will
| get a lot of shit for but is probably necessary to address
| a lot of these issues.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| That also further increases the interoperability problem
| though, if I can't use my headphones with non-Apple
| devices even after going through the pairing dance.
| (Unless Apple uses some other open protocol, which I
| doubt!)
| elondaits wrote:
| I understand it'd be an issue to many people, but I had
| Airpods for 5? years now and not even once paired them to
| anything other than an Apple device. I have non-apple BT
| speakers but don't have any BT transmitting devices that
| aren't Apple... my LG TV maybe (which I use with an Apple
| TV) but I assume pairing them would be a pain.
| openknot wrote:
| Yes, AirPods are currently surprisingly easy to switch
| from an iPhone to a Windows laptop (click open the
| Bluetooth menu and connect to AirPods), which is quite
| similar to the behavior I use to switch between AirPods
| and a Mac (I rarely use the "Switch to AirPods"
| notification on Macs that pops up seemingly-
| inconsistently).
| thebean11 wrote:
| I hope it's an open protocol that operates on WiFi
| spectrum. Every implementation of Bluetooth is horrible,
| and you start to wonder if the Bluetooth spec itself is
| the issue..
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Fwiw, Bluetooth _does_ operate on the same spectrum as
| WiFi. But I agree about the Bluetooth spec.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I hope you mean the 5 or 6GHz range. Bluetooth already
| runs at 2.4GHz, but that frequency band is cluttered as
| all heck.
|
| An open protocol would be excellent though.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Yeah sure, I really don't know much about wireless
| spectrum. It just needs to be something that existing
| hardware supports.
| criddell wrote:
| If Apple does go proprietary you won't be any worse off,
| assuming they still support Bluetooth (and I'd be very
| surprised if they stopped supporting Bluetooth).
| acomjean wrote:
| They'll keep Bluetooth. The "find my" airtag eco system
| depends on it. Plus car audio and external speakers.
|
| I always wonder if the removal of the headphone jack was
| a ploy to get iPhone users to use Bluetooth so the find
| my network worked better..
| vel0city wrote:
| I don't think pushing users to Bluetooth is a ploy to get
| more users to use Bluetooth. Toggling Bluetooth off only
| means the user-land applications can't use Bluetooth, the
| system might still use it for location-based services, if
| those are enabled. The "Find My" network would probably
| do a similar thing of piggybacking on such a feature.
| freeflight wrote:
| Is Apple working on their own proprietary Bluetooth or
| what are future AirPods gonna use to connect?
| mattnewton wrote:
| I am still like OP. I have tried three pairs of airpods and
| currently use a Bose Bluetooth headphones with an optional
| attachable wire. Airpods are very painful for more than two
| devices, get lost, go through the wash, forget the charging
| cable, etc etc. The problem for me is that apple removed
| the headphone jack even as an option, and many other phone
| manufacturers copied that on all but their budget models.
| rgreasons wrote:
| If one of your concerns is that you end up washing your
| headphones, you're right - I don't think you're ready for
| wireless earbuds.
| mattnewton wrote:
| It's possible it wasn't your intent but this reads as
| condescending to me. It implies a progression where
| people can become "ready" to use a more advanced product
| rather than the product not being a good fit for the
| person which I think is a good way to blind yourself to
| real product problems. Instead of just saying "people
| drop their phones, maybe they aren't ready for expensive
| things" you can realize the incredible market that phone
| cases represent. Or in this case, maybe there is a market
| for waterproof wireless earbuds that survive the wash,
| that counteracts the additional manufacturing cost
| (probably not, but maybe).
|
| Obviously the airpods are great for a great number of
| people, and I bought them too. I think it's safe to say
| Apple made good tradeoffs for their business. I ended up
| switching back to heaphones with a wired option and then
| switching phones to get a headphone jack because the
| dongle annoyed me enough. I am very much in a minority -
| don't get me wrong, apple will not miss my business. But
| that they lost it should be a conscious decision as "this
| won't work for everyone, but it will work for most people
| really well by default" - not, "when people are ready for
| it they will see the light". The former forces you to
| acknowledge and quantify who it won't work for when
| finding product market fit, and the later assumes you
| don't need to do that.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Did you try putting the wire under your clothes or
| something?
| greedo wrote:
| That's incredibly inconvenient and often uncomfortable.
| rkangel wrote:
| I agree. I only got a pair of earbuds because they cam free
| with my phone but I was surprised by how lifechanging they
| were. Not in an important way, but in a low key and
| pervasive way.
|
| There are two situations where earbuds are far more
| convenient:
|
| Getting ready in the morning - I can put the earbuds in
| once I'm out of the shower and dried off and listen to a
| podcast. They don't get in the way of getting dressed,
| moving around etc.. This is just not workable with wired
| headphones and my partner has already started work so I
| can't use a speaker, and even if I could I'm moving between
| different rooms and floors of the house.
|
| Driving - getting headphones out of your pocket, untangling
| them and putting them in is basically impossible to do
| (safely) while driving. But earbuds are never tangled I can
| just open the case and put them in all while my eyes never
| leave the road. Means I can make phonecalls or listen to
| stuff easily and safely. This is a particular case of them
| just being quicker and easier to put in than wired earbuds
| - no having to thread it down your jumper just because you
| want to watch a 5 minute YouTube video.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Agreed, but I wonder why all the complaints about wired
| headphones using a lightning\USBC 3.5 mm adapter. I don't
| find it obtrusive, and the iPhone (and many phones now) can
| be charged wirelessly when the adapter is in place.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| It's a problem when I need to plug my headphones into
| anything that isn't an iPhone. Based on past experience, I
| expect I would loose the adapter.
| pmelendez wrote:
| > Y'know what headphones really did "just work" though? Wired
| headphones, circa 2017.
|
| And you know what's a major annoyance right? Untangling wired
| headphones.
| mcot2 wrote:
| I'm surprised you are not using a typewriter.
| treesrule wrote:
| I still just my ath M50xs for everything, its lovely, but its
| very annoying to use with my newer phone
| acomjean wrote:
| I upgraded my 6s finally.. and the lack of headphone jack is
| frankly painful. I can't just plug into my car, home office,
| and office headphones.. I lost the little dongle..
|
| I think I'm going to buy 3 of those adapters and leave them
| where I use my headphones. What a waste.
|
| Wireless changing helps the charge while listening though, so
| that's a plus.
| foogazi wrote:
| > And this is why I'm currently typing my comment on an
| iPhone 6S...
|
| You can get aux adapters for newer iphones for around $10 -
| great for when you can't find your airpods
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I thought this was a pretty reasonable compromise, except
| that whenever I need mine I can't find it. Today, I know
| exactly where it is, but that's 15 miles away. The funny
| thing about this problem is that the experience only
| suffers on Apple devices when I can't find the dongle. I
| can use my nice fancy favorite headphones everywhere else
| with no problem. Apple is not about to convince me to toss
| my favorite headphones just because they are stubborn about
| headphone jacks; sorry.
|
| Note that it also causes a problem that bugs me daily,
| which is that I can't use my headset when my power is low
| and I need to plug my phone in. They make those little
| "splitter" dongles that allegedly allow you to do both, but
| in my experience, they only work about 50% of the time, and
| while you're on your call, your phone secretly stops
| charging and goes dead, or sometimes the moment you plug it
| in, it puts up an alert that says "unsupported device" and
| neither the power nor the headset work at all. I've tried
| three or four different brands on three different iPhones
| and they're all so flaky I've stopped even trying. I wish
| Apple would just make one and stand behind the quality and
| make me pay $10 for it. I'd be grumpy about it, but at
| least it would work.
| foogazi wrote:
| You can use a wireless charger for this exact scenario
| heleninboodler wrote:
| My phone doesn't support wireless charging.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| You may be interested in the Senheisser Momentum 3's which
| have excellent connectivity and a fallback audio cable.
| [deleted]
| jrm4 wrote:
| And also, you could pair them with your handheld device in
| _1980._
| criddell wrote:
| > Their battery life was infinite.
|
| That's true, but only because they used your device's
| battery.
|
| It takes more power for your phone to drive headphones than
| it does to transmit a bluetooth signal. This is not such a
| big issue any more since recent phones have crazy long
| battery life as do recent bluetooth headphones. In 2017 it
| was a bigger issue.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > It takes more power for your phone to drive headphones
| than it does to transmit a bluetooth signal.
|
| ...are you sure? And, is that still true even once you
| consider the extra encoding the phone's CPU has to do?
|
| I was under the impression that conventional 3.55mm jacks
| output exceedingly little power...
| criddell wrote:
| It's true but there are a bunch of little caveats. How
| big are the drivers, at what volume are you listening,
| headphone impedance, etc...
|
| These days it really don't matter. Phone have ample
| battery capacity.
| falcolas wrote:
| As someone who falls more in the "wired4life" category, the
| power draw of headphones has never been an issue, Even back
| in the naughts. That place of honor is reserved for
| websites, apps, and cell radios.
|
| Ironically, with the loss of the 2.5mm jack power has a
| greater chance to be an issue, since your headphones and
| power have to occupy the same jack.
| jon889 wrote:
| Wired headphones took forever to put on though. You'd have to
| untangle them when taking them out your pocket. And when
| commuting I'd tuck the wire down my shirt so it didn't flap
| everywhere and get caught on things, but that meant taking
| your phone out your pocket pulled on it.
|
| I misplaced my AirPods for a bit a while ago and switched to
| wired headphones and couldn't believe I had put up with it
| for years before I got AirPods.
| pohl wrote:
| I prefer not being at the end of a leash. To each, their own.
| pessimizer wrote:
| A hook is so much better than a leash?
| culopatin wrote:
| You know what just works? Natural sounds from your
| environment. No need for equipment, no wires to snag, no
| pairing or plugging, you could even do it in your sleep. Oh,
| and it is zero emissions.
|
| Courage, indeed.
|
| And this is why I am not even typing this. I'm just imagining
| things, because it's free and good for the environment.
| p1mrx wrote:
| https://www.theonion.com/i-have-an-ipod-in-my-
| mind-181958401...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Hahaha perfection. I love you.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Sound quality via wired audio is also much better, unless
| your particular phone doesn't have decent DAC/analogue
| circuitry. I can't bring myself to listen to music on
| wireless. I don't even know that Apple takes advantage of
| their walled garden to do better than the usual Bluetooth
| protocols.
|
| > From https://9to5mac.com/2021/12/30/apple-airpods-
| bluetooth-limit...
|
| > One of the most notable comments in the interview came from
| Geaves when asked whether Bluetooth could be "holding back"
| the AirPods hardware and "stifling sound quality. In his
| response, Geaves danced around criticizing Bluetooth
| directly, but acknowledged that Apple would really like a
| wireless standard that allows for more bandwidth.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Honestly, the fact that I no longer snag my earphones on
| random protrusions, like doorknobs and bus ticket validating
| machines is a bliss. Cables inside at a desk: sure, why not.
| Cables outside: hard pass.
| [deleted]
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Haha yes. I remember rocking my HD580's with their awkward
| 12' cable plus an adaptor for the 1/4" plug outdoors. Kids
| these days have it a bit more easy.
| [deleted]
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| I found that I could solve the snagging problem by just
| running by headphone cable through my shirt.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| This is my approach. At my desk? Sure, wired is fine. Even
| have a full DAC/amp setup (JDS Labs Element II) that I plug
| my trusty old Sennheiser HD6XX's into.
|
| While I'm up and moving around, or relaxing on my bed
| watching something on my iPad with a cat that has an
| inclination to chew on cables? AirPods/Bluetooth.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I know this comes off as sounding like an old man, but you
| could also just walk around without your ears plugged up
| and pay attention to your surroundings.
| wtetzner wrote:
| I used to just put the cable under my shirt.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Just pass the cord through your shirt or under your jacket.
| #innovation #thinkdifferent #buymystock
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'd pass the wires through my shirt, keep them from
| snagging or pulling my ears too much.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Seems so obvious, how could anyone not realise this after
| one time of snagging the cord when it's outside of
| clothing?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| This works but then all my music has a muffled rubbing
| sound from the cable that reaches my ears while I walk
| around. This is what I used to do, but wireless is still
| better IMO for headphones on the go.
| dpark wrote:
| I used to wear my wired earbuds like this at times. They
| would still snag (though less frequently). The cord has
| to exit my shirt to get into my pants pocket and that's
| where they would snag. That plus snagging on jacket
| zippers at the neck.
|
| Plus the annoying telephonics that the wires cause was
| enough for me to finally buy wireless earbuds. Yes, I can
| try to route the wire under my shirt. Yes, I can try to
| wrap the wires around my ears to cut down on the
| telephonics. But all that is more hassle than dealing
| with Bluetooth.
| munk-a wrote:
| Back in the day I made good use of those oversized jacket
| pockets to pop my CD player in - then you just run the
| cable up under your shirt and you're good to go.
|
| It's surprising how little of a hassle headphone cables
| can be - I understand that the market is going elsewhere
| but I've stuck with wired and couldn't be more content.
| This does have the side effect that I've been soft locked
| out of Apple phones though, so I switched over to Android
| devices.
| rejor121 wrote:
| Back in my day I used my tape player the same way. Plus
| it was smaller and more compact than those new fangled cd
| players!
| AdamN wrote:
| The lightning to 1/8" adapter is <$10 and very small.
| Works 100% of the time.
| toyg wrote:
| I agree, but the awkward "omg an airpod fell off after
| bumping into something/someone" is also a real thing. They
| should have an optional cord between the pair.
| FunnyLookinHat wrote:
| This is exactly why I have the old-school style with a
| wire connecting them that sits on the back of your neck.
| I had my toddler rip an earbud out just once for me to
| realize that was a design feature I had to have. As an
| added bonus, I find they're way easier to throw on and
| off (just loop them around your neck and tuck them in
| your shirt) in between tasks.
|
| Something like this: https://en-
| us.sennheiser.com/headphones-bluetooth-momentum-f...
| chasd00 wrote:
| > I had my toddler rip an earbud out
|
| and then put it directly into their mouth right (airpods
| are the perfect choking size)? Yeah, i can totally see
| the need to have them attached together in that
| situation. heh what is it about toddlers that makes them
| constantly try to kill themselves.
| jyounker wrote:
| Curiosity.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I had the opposite experience - I had the ones with a
| wire between them when my kid was a baby and had to stop
| using them as soon as he was able to grab things. That
| wire was so tantalizing and the buds got forcibly ripped
| out of my ears every time! I switched to some very cheap
| (and relatively large = easier to grab out of a small
| mouth if necessary) AirPod knockoffs and only put in the
| ear on the other shoulder from where I was holding the
| baby.
|
| Now he's older and when he gets hold of them he tries to
| put them in his ear rather than his mouth. I've been
| cutting down on wearing them when I'm around him anyway,
| since he's copying everything now.
| sdze wrote:
| in-ear will never work for me. I feel raped when I have
| to put them into the ear canal.
| Tronno wrote:
| The problem with this design is that anything that rubs
| or bounces against the cable transmits sound into your
| ear (like a children's cup telephone). This makes them
| annoying to use while exercising. I find that the style
| connected by a solid hoop mostly avoids this.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I have a pair which have a cord between them _and_ hooks
| over the outside of the ears, because regular headphones
| don 't retain in my ears. I don't think I could last even
| a day with airpods without losing one of them.
| mavhc wrote:
| Do you have the model number?
| jdpedrie wrote:
| From a sibling comment:
|
| > Aftershokz Aeropex, silly name aside, is a decent
| product that gets you a Bluetooth device you can wear all
| day without losing
|
| Make sure if you get bone induction headphones that you
| test them out in louder environments before running or
| getting them dirty. For me, I had to turn them up so high
| when outside with normal street noise that they gave me a
| pretty terrible headache.
| ktc1 wrote:
| >I had to turn them up so high when outside with normal
| street noise that they gave me a pretty terrible
| headache.
|
| You have to be really careful doing that. It's very easy
| to screw up your ears with bone conduction headphones if
| you try to drown out background noise by increasing the
| volume.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| This cord works (although I found that they helped to
| pull the airpods out of my ear):
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089B5T9L7?psc=1
|
| These hooks are a much better solution:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089B5T9L7?psc=1
| Despite their flimsiness, they have not failed on me once
| while running, etc.
|
| Both of these "solutions" have the obnoxious problem of
| needing to be removed to charge the airpod. The
| Powerbeats Pro has built in hooks that are nice and
| sturdy, but the case is obnoxiously massive compared to
| the airpods case.
|
| My problem is that I must have freakishly small ear
| canals, because neither of these earbuds actually fit
| into my ears - despite trying nearly every aftermarket
| replacement eartip.
|
| The Shokz openrun pro doesn't need to go into my ear and
| kinda works, but the sound quality sucks for music and
| the head loop protrudes from the back of my head and
| isn't adjustable.
|
| Over ear headphones don't work with hats or bike helmets,
| so those are only good sometimes.
|
| My next step is to pay $150(!!) for a custom piece of
| silicon to attach to the airpods (which will still have
| to come on and off for charging): https://www.adv-
| sound.com/products/eartune-fidelity-custom-f...
|
| I guess I could pay $500 for these: https://www.adv-
| sound.com/products/m5-tws-custom
|
| Or maybe I could get surgery to enlarge my ear canal
| (haha)
|
| If anyone reading this has any better advice, I'm all
| ears (hahaha) Sigh -
| Brave-Steak wrote:
| curioussavage wrote:
| Just got AirPods 3 and pro to try out and I have not had
| it just fall out that way with either.
|
| I have fumbled with the 3s while trying to remove them
| while walking. I think it's the stem and how light they
| are.
| Zircom wrote:
| Don't know if Apple sells them but they do make third
| party neck things that slip around the stems and are
| basically what you're asking for.
| 33084901 wrote:
| I use the "PowerBeats Pro" for this. I don't know if
| they've been updated with some of the newer features, I
| bought mine a couple years back when they came out.
| sjm-lbm wrote:
| The current version of the Powerbeats Pro has separate
| buds for each ear, but I have the newest revision of the
| regular Powerbeats for this exact reason.
|
| They even have the H1 chip and all of the quick
| pairing/built-in Apple magic that Airpods do.
| elondaits wrote:
| Beats Flex have the same BT chip as the AirPods and a
| different design that holds both ear pieces to the back
| of your neck.
| gumby wrote:
| An eyeglass strap works great for this. Put the loops
| around the airpod stems instead of the eyeglass arms.
| brirec wrote:
| I've thought about this, but y'know they won't fit into
| the charging pod anymore with something (anything,
| really) on them.
| gumby wrote:
| I only endorse this approach for when exercising
| outdoors, riding the train etc.
|
| And actually most of the time when I'm outside the house
| I prefer to be able to hear my environment, for safety
| reasons.
| rattray wrote:
| Aftershokz Aeropex, silly name aside, is a decent product
| that gets you a Bluetooth device you can wear all day
| without losing
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Agreed. They're pretty great.
| seized wrote:
| Shure as well, one you use the over the ear loop style
| it's hard to downgrade to anything else.
| rattray wrote:
| Which ones are you referring to?
| LeonenTheDK wrote:
| I've got these, bluetooth on them works great, and the
| bone conduction is really interesting. It's really nice
| being able to hear your surroundings while having some
| kind of audio playing. Or if you don't want the
| surrounding sound, they come ear plugs. Really
| comfortable to have on too, I barely even notice them (if
| at all) when I'm wearing them.
|
| Should be mentioned though, for the price the music
| quality is worse than what you'd get with other devices.
| It reminds me of a higher quality phone speaker.
| Definitely not bad compared to some headphones I've used,
| but it's not amazing. Hasn't been an issue for me though,
| I happily use them when working. Voice audio sounds
| perfectly fine. IMO you get them for the other benefits,
| not because they're the best sounding thing on the
| market.
| rattray wrote:
| Agreed. They're great for walking around outside while on
| a phone call, listening to a podcast, or listening to
| music while exercising outdoors - not for "getting into
| the music". Airpods are better at doing both, based on
| what I've heard.
| connerpeirce wrote:
| I love my aeropex, but i'd be half inspired to write a
| similarly styled article about the annoying uniform beep
| notification UX- especially if you've paired with
| multiple devices and one is not quite in range.
| chris37879 wrote:
| That's exactly what I use. I have a set of airpod pros I
| use most of the time, but I can't stand having my ears
| sealed all day, and having waterproof ones I an wear in
| the shower is awesome.
|
| My only gripe with them is that the quality is way lower
| than even fairly cheap normal ear buds, so I mostly use
| them for podcasts and books.
| jfoster wrote:
| https://twitter.com/search?q=airpods%20toilet&f=live
| neutronicus wrote:
| Yeah, and Bluetooth phones / buds are much better for
| running.
|
| I used to jerk my wired earbuds out of the jack all the
| time.
| jeffwass wrote:
| Do you wear a headband or something else to secure them?
|
| I haven't tried running with my AirPods yet, as I feared
| they would eventually fall out.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I can shake my head around like crazy and my airpod pros
| don't fall out. Never had them fall out running which I
| try to do 3 times a week either.
| newsclues wrote:
| Nope, if AirPods fit your ears they stay in. I have first
| gen set that I still use for biking and big drops or
| bumps have zero effect.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I used to run with AirPods multiple times a week, and
| used them while walking around and on public transit.
| I've done the same with AirPods pro borrowed from my S.O.
|
| Did they ever fall out? Only a small portion of the time.
| Half the time I noticed it and caught them.
|
| Was the _idea_ of them falling out stressful? Hell yeah.
| Nothing like a $50+ bud to stress the hell out of you
| when you 're trying to get a run in and it just will.
| not. sit. in. your. ear. correctly. Add sweat to the
| equation and things get messy quick. And the fact that in
| some places, like public transit, you have a good chance
| of losing the bud forever if it falls out.
|
| I am much happier with the IEMs I've been using for a
| half a year or so now. They hook over my ears optionally,
| so they're never really in danger of falling out and I
| never have to mess with them. And they're wired to me
| anyway even if they do fall.
| neutronicus wrote:
| I have Pixel Buds and I haven't tried running with them
| yet (it's been cold since I got them for Christmas).
|
| I used to run with Bluetooth over-ear headphones, which
| was great in winter, and, uh, less great in summer (the
| foam would get completely soaked and foul-smelling).
|
| The ear supports on the Pixel Buds are pretty secure,
| though, I expect it to be OK, especially at my pace.
| rdedev wrote:
| My go to solution for such annoyances is to pass the cable
| through the inside of my shirt. Not the most elegant
| solution but saved me a lot oh headache :D
| mattnewton wrote:
| There are pros to wireless headphones and the right choice
| for many people, but the choice has been made for all
| people who do not experience that. I personally use Bose
| over ear heaphones that have an optional cable you can
| attach and connect and it has come up an incredible number
| of times. There is so much pain if you switch for more than
| two devices, forget to charge, at unsure something is
| paired, etc that all goes away with having a cable option
| for when it is more convenient.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Exactly. Removing the headphone jack is incredibly
| hostile to those of us who want to use wired headphones,
| and clearly motivated by the insane profits of wireless
| earbuds. And the worst part? It's working. Just look at
| the AirPods business and you'll see exactly why Apple
| does it.
|
| For myself, I'm sticking with an older phone and IEMs
| with replaceable cables. Super happy with it because I'm
| OK with the tradeoff of dealing with the wire instead of
| dealing with batteries and replacements every 2-3 years.
| So sure, Apple has made some profit off of wireless buds.
| But they could make even more profit by adding a
| headphone jack and allowing folks who want wireless buds
| to use them. (no, dongles and lightning headphones do not
| solve this issue -- I want to be able to use the same
| connector for all my devices, and I want to be able to
| use it while charging) At least add it to the SE, for
| Pete's sake.
| flavmartins wrote:
| You could always get the dongle to support the wired
| headphones. My teen daughter is using it now that she has
| lost her airpods.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Tried it, Apple-made dongles fail with incredible
| frequency, and non-Apple made ones just don't work.
| dpark wrote:
| > _But they could make even more profit by adding a
| headphone jack and allowing folks who want wireless buds
| to use them._
|
| How would this generate more profit for Apple?
| jamestanderson wrote:
| For one thing, I'd buy an iPhone again.
| dpark wrote:
| I wonder how many people have actually stopped buying
| iPhones due to the removal of the minijack. I bet it's
| noise to Apple's revenue. I also expect that they save
| more in the hardware simplification than they lose on
| sales.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Probably not a lot. But it's one of those "death by a
| thousand cuts" things I can't ignore in an iphone
| purchase. Between that and the fingerprint reader, I'm
| out. If they brought either back I could justify it.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The iPhone SE2 has a fingerprint reader. It's a lower
| quality device though.
| wruza wrote:
| Looking at my SE2 right now. What you mean lower quality?
| (Btw it has no minijack)
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Not flagship. Non-OLED screen, single rear camera, no
| face recognition, smaller battery, etc.
|
| GP's requirements were _either_ a fingerprint sensor or
| headphone jack before switching.
| throwaway_Aef8 wrote:
| Heequaet4geongeel1bag0xie9inaB4u
| Ntrails wrote:
| I really do miss my headphone jack. Not being able to
| charge and listen to music at the same time is dumb as
| hell.
|
| However, my 6 was proper dying, so once they bought out
| the SE or whatever with a sensible form factor and
| fingerprint scanner I was convinced it was better than
| trying to switch
| jamestanderson wrote:
| I'm sure it's 100% worth it for them financially. Me not
| buying an iPhone because it doesn't have a headphone jack
| means nothing to them.
|
| I think what will hurt them in the long run is their
| pattern of user-hostility will start to affect their
| image. For instance:
|
| * Right to repair gaining steam (Apple now introducing
| some basic form of parts availability)
|
| * Apple eroding their image as a Privacy company (Apple
| had to delay their "child safety" tools after public
| outcry)
|
| * iMessage lock-in (Apple users "bullying" Android users
| due to Apple's hostile UI choices).
|
| Those are just the recent examples that come to mind.
|
| It'll all add up until Apple has a PR problem that
| actually does start affecting their bottom line, and then
| they'll have to make concessions that'll make people
| happy again.
| dpark wrote:
| > _but the choice has been made for all people who do not
| experience that_
|
| What are you talking about? Is someone stopping you from
| using wired earbuds?
| wtetzner wrote:
| You're not technically stopped, you just have to pay
| extra money to get an adapter, with the additional
| downside that you can no longer charge the phone while
| using those headphones.
| twothumbsup wrote:
| Or, if you get a wired->BT adapter like the FiiO uBTR,
| it's another device you have to remember to keep charged.
|
| (Btw there are 3.5mm to lightning adapters that let you
| charge while listening, just not made by Apple)
| dpark wrote:
| Did they stop including the dongle in the box? I haven't
| bought phone in a couple of years so I honestly don't
| know.
|
| I can understand the complaint about charging. Although
| the fanboy answer is of course wireless charging.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| They've stopped including it, but they sell it for $9
| with free shipping.
|
| The next thing to go will be the physical SIM card tray -
| takes up a similar amount of space which is better
| utilized for battery capacity or other features, and also
| makes for easier waterproofing if removed.
| twothumbsup wrote:
| They stopped including it a while ago, I think they
| stopped with the XS.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| For me, it's not the cost or the ability to charge my
| phone, but the fact that the adapter can get lost. I
| can't leave it plugged in because I use my headphones
| with non-iPhone devices too.
|
| I perpetually loose my headphones anyway. If I had an
| adapter too, I'd find myself unable to listen to anything
| twice as often.
| tarboreus wrote:
| The old jack was also more solidly connected than the
| current inclement weather port (sorry, can't remember
| ifit's lightning, thunderbolt, or wizard strike).
| ljm wrote:
| I always feed the cable down the back of my neck and
| underneath my shirt or jumper. The bonus is that I can take
| them out of my ears and they'll dangle like a necklace, so
| I can tuck those under my shirt as well.
| robohoe wrote:
| This was such a big issue with my wired Sony headphones.
| Can't tell you how many I've gone through.
|
| On another hand, I've a pair of Bose wireless headphones
| for close to 6 years now. Battery is still good enough for
| 2+ hours of workout.
| CalChris wrote:
| Yes. _Mobility_ is why I got the Air Pods Pro to begin
| with. I don 't use them with my Air and I don't even want
| them to pair with my Air; wired ear buds are fine (and
| cheap!) for that. But they're great for walking and working
| out. The Air Pods Pro even stay in my ears while erging.
|
| Still, the OP's complaints are valid. But when they work,
| which is most of the time, they're great. Surprisingly (but
| not insanely) great.
| saimiam wrote:
| Tangent but what's "erging"? Never heard this before and
| the spellcheck has a red squiggly below it, so it has not
| heard of it either.
| greeneggs wrote:
| Indoor rowing
| treetoppin wrote:
| It refers to rowing on a stationary rowing machine, the
| kind you would see at a gym
| pkage wrote:
| Erging is rowing on an indoor rowing machine. They were
| originally called an "ergometer," which was then
| shortened down to just an "erg" over time.
|
| It's a really great exercise, and pretty good training
| for rowing crew (though it's not quite like the real
| thing).
| [deleted]
| justinpowers wrote:
| Shorthand for "using an indoor rowing machine"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_rower?wprov=sfti1
| silent_cal wrote:
| You can just run the wire under your shirt/jacket
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| For a while, most of the hoodies I bought for workouts
| actually had a cutout in the kangaroo pocket for routing
| headphones inside of them. The newer ones don't though,
| you'd have to cut it yourself.
| swah wrote:
| Ditto. And since we now wear masks at the office, one
| notices how wireless earbuds are "mask compatible" when you
| try using cabled ones.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Wired earbuds are amazing with masks. If you put them on
| before you put on the mask, when you need to take one off
| to hear something, the mask straps hold it conveniently
| hanging near your ear. A fumbled airpod rolling across
| the floor is not an improvement.
| falcolas wrote:
| Really? I always see them go flying when taking off a
| mask to eat or drink. The random protrusions to escape
| the faraday cage that is your head don't seem to interact
| well with elastic loops.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| I get that no cables can be nice and convenient, but
| routing the wire through a shirt/jacket helps avoid getting
| caught
|
| edit: lol, an instant downvote - didn't realize I was on
| Reddit. It was at best a suggestion for when you _have_ to
| get by with cabled headphones. I 'm not on some holy war.
| [deleted]
| toxik wrote:
| Cars these days are the same -- you know what didn't need
| fancy pants computer tools to diagnose? Horses. Let's bring
| back horses.
| 6510 wrote:
| You might love your car, the horse will love you back.
| taneq wrote:
| I, too, have a 6S and my travel headphones are wired. Partly
| because they work with any device with a headphone jack,
| partly because of the battery life issue, but mostly because
| of my phone slips down the side of the aeroplane seat I can
| fish the bugger back up again with the headphone cord!
| rockostrich wrote:
| Yea, but can you just get up and use the bathroom while still
| listening in a meeting with wired headphones?
| Anderkent wrote:
| if they're plugged into my phone, sure
|
| if i'm on the laptop, by the time i take five paces away
| the sound quality on bluetooth is so bad it's basically
| unusable anyway
| whateveracct wrote:
| My laptop headphone jack is 1-2ft away from me during every
| video call and I still prefer AirPods (on Linux no less!)
| megapolitics wrote:
| >Their battery life was infinite.
|
| However, the life of the cable was a few months at best in my
| experience.
| guggle wrote:
| I'm smiling at this while enjoying music on my 20 years
| unmodified Senheiser HD25.
| mcronce wrote:
| What were you doing with your headphone cables? I've been
| using the same one with my current pair since I bought them
| three years ago. Prior to switching to cans, I used the
| same set of cheap wired earbuds for five years - and
| they're still working
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I've had cables go bad in multiple sets of headphones
| that I barely even used, let alone subjected to the
| expected rigors of travel or heavy use. As far as I can
| tell, a lot of cheap 3.5mm plugs have strain relief
| that's basically just ornamental, and even a modest
| amount of flexing or vibration will quickly break one of
| the wires.
| megapolitics wrote:
| >What were you doing with your headphone cables?
|
| Getting them caught on door handles, mostly.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Well, you had to pay more for better headphones with better
| cables. But wireless headphones are expensive anyway. (And
| have non-replaceable batteries which will also permanently
| die after a couple years.)
| ziml77 wrote:
| The best cables still break when they're moving a lot.
| The important thing is for the headphones to have
| replaceable cables. But only the high-end headphones and
| earbuds have that feature.
| soylentcola wrote:
| I can only speak from my own experience, but I've been
| using the same set of wired KZ ZSN in-ear-monitors for
| the past few years. They're nothing ground-breaking, but
| they cost under $25.
|
| The wires loop back behind my ears so they don't get
| pulled out easily, the wires have yet to short out, and
| they are replaceable in case I ever want or need to
| replace them. I almost always use them with my phone, so
| the USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle that came with my phone is
| typically attached to the end.
|
| I don't mean to shill for this or any other brand in
| particular, but I'm pretty sure there are several
| affordable, decent quality earbuds/IEMs out there with
| replaceable cables.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Replaceable cables are a game changer in this space. The
| buds will last for years and years, and make up the bulk
| of the cost of a set. The cable could get ruined by one
| unlucky event... but if you have a couple of backup
| cables like me, it doesn't really matter. You can buy
| replacement cables off of Aliexpress for <$10.
| ericmay wrote:
| I wouldn't let the lack of a headphone jack deter you from
| upgrading a phone if you wanted. You can get one of those
| adapter things and just leave it attached to your headphones
| if you wanted. I know people think it's annoying that you
| even have to do this but it's an option. I bet you can get
| one for free from a friend even.
|
| I do have a nostalgic feelings for the iPhone 4s and
| headphones. I wish there were products out there that excited
| me in the same way my first iPhone did.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > You can get one of those adapter things and just leave it
| attached to your headphones if you wanted.
|
| The problem is that I'd have to unplug that adapter to use
| my headphones with a device other than my phone, including
| other Apple devices like my Macbook. I would subsequently
| loose the adapter, guaranteed.
|
| If the world could agree to use USB-C for everything, that
| might work, but Apple--who started this mess--is a prime
| holdout there.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea I agree, just offering a solution. I am excited for
| Apple to switch to USB-C for the iPhone as well. It's
| quite irritating that it's not... one cable to rule them
| all! But then they went and added HDMI and SD back to the
| Mac, so now they have a better argument since they aren't
| actually doing the one-cable approach.
| enaaem wrote:
| For out of the house, I would never go back to wired in-ears
| anymore. Untangling cables and the occasional yank out of
| your ear is not user friendly.
|
| For outside, I actually find wireless headphones to sound
| better for three main reasons:
|
| - Better fit. Proper fit is essential for good sound and I
| rarely get a good fit on wired in-ears due to the constant
| pull on the cord.
|
| - Microphonics (cable rubbing noise). Microphonics is very
| obvious and annoying. It is far more obvious than for example
| the difference between AAC and lossless. Audiophile reviewers
| hardly ever evaluate microphonics, because they test under
| ideal conditions behind their desk. Cable noise is not
| considered part of the driver's sound signature, but in real
| life it has a huge impact of what comes in your ear.
|
| - Noise cancelling. Music sounds better without bus engine
| sounds.
| OJFord wrote:
| > Noise cancelling. Music sounds better without bus engine
| sounds.
|
| That's nothing to do with wireless though?
|
| I'm a bit of a convert to (Anker .. 'SoundCore P2' I think)
| wireless earphones (AirPod style, not sports-style-round-
| back-of-neck), but for ages I used noise cancelling wired
| earphones, with a little Bluetooth receiver when I wanted
| them wireless that I thought was the best of both worlds. I
| now think no wire at all is nicer though. (But probably not
| if I had to pay Apple prices! These Anker ones were PS30.)
| iqanq wrote:
| After using airpods I am never ever going back to wired
| headphones.
| Razengan wrote:
| I am sorry but you must be downvoted to prevent your
| counter opinion from being seen.
| astura wrote:
| Yeah, I thought wireless headphones were a gimmick I didn't
| need, I didn't want to worry about having to charge
| headphones, etc.
|
| I ended up with a pair and turns out wireless headphones were
| a giant QOL improvement. I can run around do chores while my
| computer/phone charges upstairs and listen to music at the
| same time. I'd never use earbuds though, I absolutely can't
| stand anything inside my ear canal.
|
| I still want my phone/computer to have a headphone jack in
| it, and mine does.
| [deleted]
| asdfsd234234444 wrote:
| lol
| bart_spoon wrote:
| They also snagged on everything, got tied up in knots in your
| pocket, the wires would give out all the time requiring you
| to buy new ones, were obnoxious to use when exercising, and
| limited the physical distance you could move from the device
| you were using to about 2 feet.
|
| There are issues with wireless headphones, but they also
| solve a _lot_ of genuine problems with wired ones.
| whizzter wrote:
| A combination is the best, got some cheap noise cancelling
| JBL BT phones and if you plug a cable it'll always use that
| (they even work as dumb headphones when turned off), pull the
| cable and they'll happily go for BT.
| huntermeyer wrote:
| MPOW M30 just work for me.
| awestroke wrote:
| Funny, I've had all those problems and more with my Airpods
| Pro.
|
| The most annoying one is that if I pair my Airpods to my mac,
| they stop auto connecting to my android phone even when they
| are not in range of my mac. Probably by design
| blinkingled wrote:
| > OP should try using another brand of Bluetooth headphones for
| a week
|
| Extensive user of various BT headphones on Android for few
| years now - went through everything from cheap Corwin E7 to
| Galaxy Buds to Bose QC to latest one Sony WH-1000XM4 - had
| minor issues with the Galaxy Buds - had to wiggle them in the
| case to get the charging going but other than that all of the
| other ones work really well - Sony being the king of the hill -
| even two devices work as expected and the sound quality is
| good.
| klmr wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of the Sony high-end line, and am currently
| using the WH-1000XM4 myself. They're excellent, but they do
| share quite a few of the annoyances listed in the OP article
| (in particular the delay when going from call to audio and
| vice versa, and the audio quality degradation; though, truth
| be told, I believe that's a macOS issue), and they have their
| own annoyances. Most prominently, the utterly useless "second
| device pairing" audio message that plays for a full _four
| seconds_ and drowns out whatever else you were listening to.
| I routinely need to ask people on a call to repeat what they
| said because of this. Yet Sony arrogantly states that this
| message is somehow "important" and therefore can't be
| disabled.
| blinkingled wrote:
| Oh yeah I forgot about the second device pairing message -
| definite annoyance! I actually have used it with work macOS
| laptop (Big Sur) a few times but did not notice anything
| odd.
| TurningCanadian wrote:
| I believe the audio quality degradation when using the mic
| is a limitation of Bluetooth bandwidth. It switches to a
| different profile capable of sending and receiving audio
| instead of only receiving.
| klmr wrote:
| Yes, it switches to a different audio codec, that's
| unavoidable due to bandwidth limitations. However, macOS
| insists on using a worse codec than necessary (SCO
| instead of SBC) and, at least with my MX4 headphones,
| this badly scrambles audio, at least intermittently. I've
| stopped using the headphone microphone because it was
| unbearable. I've tried playing with the bluetooth
| settings but nothing seems to fix this.
| eptcyka wrote:
| It's definitely not an issue with bandwidth, instead it's
| an issue of standardization. There just doesn't exist a
| bluetooth profile that supports high quality duplex audio
| communications between two devices. It's pathetic.
| RealityWinner wrote:
| It doesn't exist because of bandwidth...
| eptcyka wrote:
| I struggle to believe that Bluetooth 5, which supposedly
| allows for a total of 2mbit/s transfer can't allow for a
| better codec to be used when a stereo stream of SBC is
| about 300kb/s. However, I'll be the first to admit that
| bluetooth is not my area of expertise, and my statement
| here is mostly driven by disbelief about the fact that we
| can't get better audio quality out of a bluetooth headset
| these days.
|
| EDIT: Oh wait, the reason HSP uses low bandwidth codecs
| is because the standard makes a trade-off in favor of
| latency and non-blocking comms. Clearly, there are good
| reasons.
| archepyx wrote:
| FredFS456 wrote:
| I have a pair of XM4s, I could never get two devices (Ubuntu
| laptop and Android phone) to work right without getting
| atrocious sound quality ("headset/handsfree profile") on one.
| windexh8er wrote:
| > I recently switched to a pair of Sony Bluetooth headphones as
| I don't like the too-neutral AirPods Pro EQ curve, and while
| they sound excellent, the UX really leaves a bit to be desired.
|
| I, personally, don't understand this. I'm a bit of a stickler
| for making sure my audio quality is good. I validate the
| products I'm using sound good using local device recording as
| well as HD echo test numbers before I use them during real life
| meetings. I'm on the phone at least a couple hours a day and
| it's baffling how many people assume that their AirPods sound
| good. The TL;DR of it is - they don't.
|
| But with respect to the "UX" side of the house, I'm curious
| what you really need? I own a number of Jabra and Sony products
| that I can - pull out of their cases on any day at any point in
| time and they will work with no input from me. Do people fiddle
| with EQ and other settings often? The only thing I really do
| once I get the audio setup is make sure the firmware is up to
| date from time to time.
| easton wrote:
| How many devices do you use your wireless headphones with? If
| it's >1 (or maybe 2), the experience is horrid in my
| experience even with the AirPods unless (in the AirPods case)
| they are all Apple devices with logic in the OS for handing
| off the connection.
|
| I could not use my AirPods with my old Windows laptop because
| everytime it got in range it would steal them away from any
| device, even sometimes when in sleep (the Surface Pro's
| crappy sleep mode may have had something to do with it).
| IshKebab wrote:
| I have Google's Pixel Bud A series and they have none of these
| issues to be honest. By far the biggest issue is that they
| don't let you connect to more than one device simultaneously.
| Fine if you only use them with your phone, but a pain if you
| want to use them with a computer too.
| anderber wrote:
| Same here. I love my Pixel Buds. However, they are setup on
| all my devices, I just have to go and pick to connect
| depending on which device I want to use it with. Not sure if
| there's a way around that, for any Bluetooth device.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Adding another voice in the choir of "just use wired
| headphones" -- I have never had a pair of wireless Bluetooth
| earphones that make sense from a usability standpoint and at
| this point I am pretty soured on the whole asset class. My
| wired headphones just work and give me none of these issues!
| bart_spoon wrote:
| > Manually having to re-pair once in every blue moon, one
| earbud playing while the other isn't, no automatic device
| switching without having to go through the Settings app
| everytime, A/V desync, dodgy mic quality, earbuds not waking up
| correctly when removing them from the case, etc are all part of
| the non-AirPods Bluetooth experience.
|
| Many of these have been part of my experience with both my
| Airpods and Airpod Pros.
| tomcam wrote:
| My AirPods Max pair horribly with my iPhone 13 mini, much worse
| than a pair of $20 Bluetooth earphones that of course sound
| much worse.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Pretty much all multipoint Bluetooth headsets these days "just
| work". Hell, the only real upgrade they could make is muxing
| multiple audio channels from multiple devices. Beyond that, I
| honest to god don't see how Bluetooth headsets could really be
| improved.
| philistine wrote:
| Hopefully all those problems will go away one day. Apple is
| rumoured to be working on a new wireless connection to achieve
| lossless quality, which would mean a more modern interaction.
| The Airpods don't solve any Bluetooth problems, they hide them.
| SirFatty wrote:
| I have cheapy TOZO from Amazon, and honestly have none of those
| issues. At my desk, I toggle between the laptop and phone
| without issue...
| freeflight wrote:
| I've had a pair of Huawei FreeLace Pro for about a year now,
| using them with an iPhone, and the only issue out of those you
| described, I experienced, was the "re-pair once in every blue
| moon", which is an issue that seems to be pretty universal
| across bluetooth devices.
|
| They support multiple devices, but no automatic switching, it's
| just a button short-cut to switch between them, works quite
| nicely for switching from my iPhone to my iPad and back.
| tssva wrote:
| I have a cheap pair of SoundPEATS I got off of Amazon for $23.
| They don't suffer these issues. They "just work" with my
| Android phone and Thinkpad running Windows.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > one earbud playing while the other isn't,
|
| Funny, i deal with this nearly every day with my AirPods Pro.
| Often the pods do this when switching from high bandwidth
| listening to low bandwidth for mic/headset usage.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| The most annoying thing about my AirPods Pro, which I generally
| like very much ... my phone starts playing music from _its_
| speakers when I take the AirPods out of my ears (and was not
| previously listening to music). Not all the time, but maybe 15%
| of the time, enough to be annoying. I have no idea what 's going
| on. I've tried googling it, but nobody else seems to be having
| this problem. I've combed through settings but nothing seems
| applicable. I think I'm stuck with it.
| dnhz wrote:
| I don't have AirPods but this sometimes happens to me when I
| turn off my Bluetooth headphones. Usually it's Spotify that
| begins playing on my computer. I agree that google searching
| has been unhelpful.
| initplus wrote:
| Do you use Spotify? There is a really annoying feature on IOS
| Spotify where it hijacks the system volume control, and syncs
| it with the Spotify desktop app running on another computer.
| Sometimes even when the mobile app is closed!
|
| And inevitably because I don't use the desktop app volume
| adjust just the system volume, it syncs my phone volume to 100%
| every time.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Nope, Apple Music. You'd think if any music app worked
| properly with the AirPods it would be that.
| vernie wrote:
| CBB? Yes. Better than the alternatives? Also yes.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Some of these problems are because of Bluetooth (see complaints
| in this thread about Sony headphones -- a company that many
| consider to have a similar product design ethos as Apple).
|
| Others are due to bad configuration defaults from Apple. Forcing
| AirPods to connect to the last device and turning off "pause
| music on removal" fixes two of the author's problems.
|
| This isn't a defense of Apple or AirPods. They obviously don't
| "just work." But there are things that can improve the
| experience.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > Others are due to bad configuration defaults from Apple.
| Forcing AirPods to connect to the last device and turning off
| "pause music on removal" fixes two of the author's problems.
|
| I don't even necessarily think these are problems. I almost
| always want whatever I'm playing to stop when I disconnect my
| headphones, and there are times I don't want the headphones to
| connect to the last device (ie: I've been listening to
| something on my laptop, left the laptop behind somewhere, and
| want to start listening from my phone).
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Ok, so the reason I said bad is because this happens to me.
| I'm playing music on my laptop. I go to the bathroom. Maybe
| an auto-playing video with sound pops up on my iPhone. The
| headphones switch to my phone. Now I'm back at my laptop and
| have to manually reconnect the headphones.
|
| Perhaps this is what people want, but in my cases it's two
| tech annoyances (auto play video and fumbling with the
| Bluetooth menu).
| ninkendo wrote:
| > Forcing AirPods to connect to the last device
|
| If only it were that simple. Unfortunately this config option
| is not a property of the AirPods themselves, but to each
| individual device you own, so you can't just set it once. You
| have to go to each device you have on your iCloud account and
| set "connect only when last connected to this device".
|
| But it's even worse than that, because the option is only
| available to be changed _when you have the AirPods connected_ ,
| meaning you have to go to each device you own, connect your
| AirPods to them, _then_ go to the menu, find the option for
| connection mode, and set it to "when last connected".
|
| And if you forgot a device, it will happily steal your AirPods
| connection "automatically" the next time it boots up or decided
| it wants to connect them. And you have to search around and
| figure out what the hell your AirPods are even connected to.
|
| Did I mention Apple will occasionally release an OS update
| which changes this setting back to "automatically" again? Now
| you get to do this whole dance over again, but slowly, as your
| individual iDevices get rolled-out updates.
|
| (I have 5 devices near my work desk that are potential AirPod
| connection thieves, this is a huge annoyance to me if you can't
| tell.)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| In my case I seem to just not be able to disable this option
| at all. Rather, disabling it prevents the AirPods from
| _switching_ but they 'll still pause the currently-playing
| audio every time they get in range of another device.
|
| Every time I walk home with music playing it will pause
| because they're suddenly in range of my Macbook.
| rabuse wrote:
| Had a problem with my AirPods just the other day trying to show
| someone some "cool features" they can use them for. I go to put
| them in, and they essentially disappeared from my iPhone's
| bluetooth list, and it was not possible to reconnect them until I
| restarted my phone. I just said "they're great when they work..."
| ho_schi wrote:
| 3.5 mm jack
|
| Nasty. Yes ;)
|
| I'm sorry but it solves these problems and I think most of us
| have more prominent issues. Bluetooth - and even overpriced Apple
| products - are usually working well with one connection only. And
| the headset profile needs to sacrifice quality for voice input.
| This is to large degrees a question about priority of the user.
| If you need good or even excellent quality - opt for a good
| headset and a jack.
|
| Yes. Some issues can be solved with higher priorities by Apple.
| Or Apple doesn't care because it is good enough. Maybe Apple need
| an argument for another bad proprietary protocol to make things
| worse. I would be happy if I can switch my mouse from Logitech
| (Bluetooth) between two laptops with coupling them entirely
| again.
| afterburner wrote:
| In the winter, with all the various layers over my ears and
| possibly tangling with the cord? Cord all over the place while
| I'm biking or running? I definitely do not miss cords.
| eric_cc wrote:
| Ooof you could never convince me again to tether my head to my
| phone with a cord. No way!
| quacker wrote:
| Another option is 2.4 GHz wireless, which is common in gaming
| headsets, at least, for low-latency / high-quality audio. The
| downside is it requires a dongle.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Another option is 2.4 GHz wireless_
|
| Sorry to break it to you but Bluetooth also operates on the
| 2.4GHz ISM band. Those 2.4GHz dongles you're talking about is
| basically a custom wireless protocol that doesn't follow
| Bluetooth or any other open standard or OSI stack but is most
| likely based on some internal protocol of what the three
| major chip makers in the 2.4GHz space offer (Texas
| Instruments, Silicon Labs, Nordic Semi) .
|
| I think the world needs less proprietary standards, not more,
| where the dongle is paired to the device in factory and if
| you loose the dongle then most likely the headphone or
| peripheral is instant e-waste.
|
| So I'll stick with Bluetooth for the time being thank you
| very much.
| eqvinox wrote:
| The reason "2.4 GHz wireless" is an option is the very
| proprietary standard right there, or rather the static
| pairing coming with it. The absence of Bluetooth connection
| negotiation/switching/... removes an entire class of bugs
| and annoyances.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> removes an entire class of bugs and annoyances_
|
| Bugs and annoyances which not everyone is having.
| Stripping out functionality to crush bugs is like
| removing your stomach to get rid of a stomach ache.
|
| There are cases and classes of hardware where Bluetooth
| is not ideal and 2.4GHz proprietary standards are used
| (low latency audio, gaming mice, concert/conference
| audio. etc.) but those devices already exist on said
| proprietary standard instead of Bluetooth since they're
| usually not meant to be paired with changing
| hosts/clients all the time like most bluetooth devices,
| so what's your point? Do you want proprietary dongles to
| ship with every pair of earphones?
|
| 2.4GHz proprietary standards are no magic silver bullet
| either. Sure, compared to Bluetooth they can have the
| advantage of latency and bandwidth depending on how you
| implement said custom protocol in firmware, but it's
| ultimately the same damn overcrowded ISM band shared with
| the billions of devices everyone has everywhere
| (Bluetooth phones, smartwatches, headphones, cars, IoT
| devices, security systems, and, the 400 pound gorilla in
| the room, motha-friggin-Wi-Fi) . So due to pollution on
| the 2.4GHz spectrum you'll end up with potentially
| similar issues like Bluetooth devices except now you have
| a proprietary standard to deal with.
| lanstin wrote:
| If you need good audio in one home location, then the
| dongle is just fine. My best audio, speaking and
| listening, is a gamer wireless over the head/around the
| ears thing with a microphone that can extend to where my
| mouth is that I bought off my son after he switched to
| some fancier thing with a YouTuber style mic. It has a
| base station that plugs into USB and also charges a
| second battery so I can talk and listen continuously. At
| work, sounding clear and not having your sound break is
| quite useful. Also for online games. If it's just pod
| cast listening and yelling at kids to text when they get
| there or whatever, maybe it isn't as important as these
| other features.
|
| But also, in general, they say perfection is reached when
| there is nothing left to remove. Extra features often
| mean something is wrong with the design. Even with
| programming languages, it is vastly better for the
| default response to requested new features is "no."
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> If you need good audio in one home location, then the
| dongle is just fine_
|
| Well yes, for things that tend to stay in the same place
| no need use Bluetooth at all. Not denying any of that,
| but which of those are issue that have to do with
| Bluetooth?
|
| _> But also, in general, they say perfection is reached
| when there is nothing left to remove. Extra features
| often mean something is wrong with the design."_
|
| Perfect is the enemy of good here. Bluetooth wasn't meant
| to be the perfect way of connecting devices, that's
| impossible, it was developed back in the late 90's for
| connecting millions of mobile devices to each other over
| a standardized, cheap (in terms of silicon die area) and
| most importantly, low power connection (batteries were
| small back then), and it does all that pretty decently.
| Sort of a jack of all trades master of none.
|
| If you're looking for perfect solutions then you should
| be looking elsewhere and that's why proprietary solutions
| exist and there's nothing wrong wioth that.
| quacker wrote:
| >Sorry to break it to you but Bluetooth also operates on
| the 2.4GHz ISM band.
|
| Right, but "2.4 GHz wireless audio" is what to search to
| find information and non-BT products.
|
| It is interesting to see your comments about Bluetooth. I
| appreciate the standard. It's useful. But as a user I like
| things that just work, and Bluetooth audio has been subpar
| in my experience.
|
| Sample size of one, but my experience with non-BT wireless
| headsets is superior to Bluetooth headsets in pretty much
| every way: no pairing issues and no BT profile switching
| madness with varying audio quality when I want to use a
| mic. I get low latency, high quality (even lossless) audio.
| On my particular headset, replacement dongles can be
| purchased and you pair it with the headset once (I've not
| had to do this myself yet though).
|
| I would love to only use Bluetooth everywhere, but it is
| not without its shortcomings.
| Gigachad wrote:
| They put the complexity in to the dongle which if done
| right, just works. It's why I choose to use the usb dongle
| for my mouse/kb even when they support bluetooth. Because
| bluetooth works most of the time while the dongle works all
| of the time and doesn't have compromises like "It doesn't
| work here because the OS bluetooth stack isn't loaded yet"
|
| Bluetooth almost needs to be lifted from the OS and become
| part of the higher firmware so it works everywhere.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tonymet wrote:
| Let's stop to admire the excellent UX of the 3.5mm jack *
| tactile feedback when connected (it clicks, you hear it & feel
| it). * "find my device" : just pull on the wire * quickly
| switch between devices * instant pairing
|
| We just need a marketing guru to sell people on the 3.5mm wired
| headphones
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| We really might need one if chip shortages are gonna be a
| problem.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| It rotates and has no direction, so you can untwist your
| headphone wire without unplugging it, and plugging it in is
| foolproof.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It had some issues where in unplugging and plugging the
| cable would cause voltage spikes because the pins would get
| dragged across the wrong connectors and not all be
| disconnected at once. Which is why you hear that pop when
| using loudspeakers and (un)plugging the cable. This
| apparently lead to damage of the speaker over time as well.
| WheatM wrote:
| dangus wrote:
| Nice! I love the 3.5mm jack solution.
|
| All we gotta do is solve the "I got my cable caught on the door
| knob as I walked by" issue and 3.5mm will be perfect.
| lanstin wrote:
| Putting the phone in pocket and wire under shirt helps but
| not 100%
| dangus wrote:
| What happens if I'm wearing a dress?
|
| Selling me on going back to wired is like telling me to use
| an Ethernet jack on my laptop for optimal performance.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| None of the AirPod annoyances are as bad as having your
| headphones yanked violently out of your ears when the 3.5mm
| cable catches on a door handle.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| If you're walking around, yeah, sure - wireless all the way.
|
| But for desk use, I don't see the appeal of wireless, given
| all of the tradeoffs.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Even for desk use, wired headphones feel like being leashed
| to the desk. It's amazing to be in a meeting and then be
| able to just mute yourself and walk off to have a drink
| while still listening in.
| recursive wrote:
| For me, most of the AirPod annoyances individually are worse
| than cable yanking. Taken together, it's no contest.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| 1. A detachable cable will pull out easier than pulling your
| headphones off.
|
| 2. Run the cable of appropriate length inside your shirt or
| jacket with enough slack to move without restriction but
| without a bunch of extra slack.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| I carry my backpack or have a jacket on me at almost all
| times, and having the headphone cable holes in each has
| prevented this from happening anywhere as often as it used
| to. Plus the reliability of wired headphones has reigned
| supreme that I sold my AirPod Pros a few weeks ago after they
| sat for about a month or two between use, while my corded
| headsets are used almost daily.
| ivank wrote:
| If you have an IEM with a sturdy cable wrapped around your
| ear, snagging it on a door handle yanks the connector out of
| the Lightning to 3.5mm adapter instead.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I'm reminded of Alan Kay's quote on the Mac. Similarly, AirPods
| might be the first wireless headphones worth criticizing.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Too bad they didn't turn in those buzzing AirPods for the buzzing
| noise recall.
| teekert wrote:
| This is very good to know. I have all these issues with basically
| all my wireless headsets and was thinking: I should invest in
| Apple Airpods to get rid of this mess... Guess I'm not.
| atombender wrote:
| Annoyance 1: Go into the AirPods settings (which are,
| paradoxically, in your phone's Bluetooth settings, and _only_
| when connected) and set "Connect to This iPhone" to "When Last
| Connected to This iPhone". This will disable the wonky
| automation.
|
| I've never experienced 2, 2a, or 2b.
|
| 3: This is a Zoom problem, I believe. I find that Zoom
| periodically enables the microphone even though I'm not in a
| meeting, and you can see this in the latest macOS by looking for
| the orange dot in the upper right corner of the screen. The
| workaround is to quit Zoom, or go into Zoom's settings and change
| the microphone device to your Mac's.
|
| 6: You may have hit a hardware problem with early models.
| Happened to me, and I also often experienced a screaming feedback
| tone when I put the earbuds in my ears. Apple will replace them
| for free.
|
| 4, 5, 7: Definitely.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Annoyance 1 almost made me give up on the AirPods until I found
| that setting, I'd often have my phone at the very edge of
| bluetooth range and so it would keep reconnecting to it while
| listening to music from my laptop. I much prefer just
| explicitly connecting to the pods from the device I want to
| use, though this is more steps than it should be on iOS.
| morelish wrote:
| I have found HomePod (mini) to be not great. Doesn't work well
| with third party services like Spotify or radio providers, so
| it's content is limited. There's also a very large lag (5 seconds
| ish) for the sound to stream from my phone or Mac to the HomePod.
| Pausing or starting sound is delayed by 5 seconds (ish). The lag
| is so large you cannot really use the HomePod as a speaker
| attached to a Mac, if you watch a video, the sound comes in 5
| seconds delayed. Bit of a pity. Hopefully the next versions will
| improve the lag. Even providing physical audio cable input would
| be good. As the speaker itself is fairly nice.
| lifewallet_dev wrote:
| > AirPods are wonderful products. But I just wish these annoying
| gripes would go away.
|
| What's wonderful about all that? Our fanboyism is re-defining the
| word "wonderful", Annoyence 4 and 3 made me think AirPods broke
| and they happen so frequently, I also have the Sony wh-1000xm4
| and I cannot configure the mic without degrading my audio
| quality. I'm back to wired, I have a Beyerdynamic DT 1990 PRO,
| and none of these overhyped products match its quality, I can
| live with the cables :)
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I'm back to wired
|
| Same here. Absolutely don't understand the appeal of wireless
| headsets for people who are sitting at a desk.
|
| I've snapped up a bunch of used Bose QC25s from eBay, their
| last model that used a removable standard AAA battery.
|
| Great sound, solid noise canceling, the wired mic is fine, they
| work even if the battery is drained, sound is better than
| Bluetooth. I keep a little AAA battery charger on my desk so it
| takes 10 seconds to swap out a depleted AAA for a new one; IMO
| far less hassle than remembering to charge headphones with non-
| replaceable internal batteries.
|
| I expect the QC25s to last more or less indefinitely, aside
| from occasional replacement of the (insanely comfortable)
| earpads.
| loginatnine wrote:
| Yea I went wired at the beginning of the pandemic, QC-35
| wired with a wired antlion mic, works like a charm. 3 main
| reasons I went with this setup : 1- Reduce the audio lag
| (bluetooth comes with a noticeable lag in video conferencing)
| 2- Not having to worry about battery life (going wired vastly
| improved the QC-35 battery life) 3- Keep the stellar comfort
| (at least for me) of the QC-35.
|
| I personally don't understand why people endure the sucky
| audio quality of bluetooth handset profile. Couple this with
| a very ordinary battery life for airpods (I don't care if it
| charges in 10 minutes, when it's out and you need it you're
| stuck), I don't understand why this product is so popular.
| [deleted]
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Another nice thing about Bose is that they're "somewhat"
| repairable.
|
| They're not really designed to be, but because they sell in
| such huge quantities, there's kind of an "ecosystem" of
| replacement parts and YouTube repair videos etc.
| Replacement of the internal battery on the QC35 doesn't
| seem too terribly onerous. The earpads are shared with the
| QC25 too, which is nice.
|
| I'm not nearly as eco-conscious as I should be, but it's
| nice to keep things out of the landfill.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Yep, back to wired for me as well.
|
| Run the wire under the shirt. Need to switch from phone to
| laptop for a meeting? Unplug/replug. If I need to remove
| headphones to talk to someone, i just let them hang down. Never
| worry about charging them, loosing them, easily replaceable due
| to price (and with good sound quality as well).
| 0xedd wrote:
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I highly recommend Jabra bluetooth earbuds as a replacement for
| AirPods. They stay in your ears well, they're comfy, have pretty
| decent audio quality, good connectivity, good battery life, ANC,
| wireless charging. If you watch their website, they sell
| refurbished units for pretty huge discounts. The Elite 65t's may
| be old but they're still really good and super cheap now:
| https://www.jabra.com/deals#?pfs=discountedprice-desc&pff=2f...
| mleo wrote:
| With one phone and one pair of headphones, many cheaper truly
| wireless Bluetooth devices will be comparable to AirPods and
| probably suffer some of the same related annoyances with losing
| audio in one of the buds.
|
| Moving to multiple Apple devices, the AirPods are amazing, but
| still suffer the annoyances OP mentioned. I can pair AirPods to
| phone and then move them to Mac for zoom, watch for exercise, tv
| for listening to content in kitchen not appropriate for younger
| kids. Being available across all those devices was automatic.
|
| That said, the annoyances are real.
|
| The weirdest situation I have had recently was some how getting
| the left AirPod connected to one device and right connected to a
| different device with audio and mics simultaneously working.
| Luckily, mute worked on both devices and didn't have to speak to
| both at the same time.
| tomxor wrote:
| > when clicking the active AirPods in the bluetooth list, there
| is a short 3~ second delay which makes you think they haven't
| been disconnected, leading you to click it again. But your first
| click did actually fire leading you to be confused as to what
| state you are currently in.
|
| There is a known correct way to do this in UIs: no large delays
| for UI state change, even if the underlying function takes a
| humanly perceptible duration.
|
| Apple used to be good at this stuff, it's just attention to
| detail in UX... it's not like this is an area of opinion.
| victorbstan wrote:
| I hope someone at Apple listens to these things. There are a lot
| of little things that can be improved in general regarding
| Bluetooth devices. Currently, if my MacBook restarts, I can't use
| my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to input my password, I have to
| use the built in keyboard. Using Logitech devices.
| hbn wrote:
| I don't know if it's the same for third party peripherals, but
| I know I thought this was the case for a long time with my
| first party Apple wireless keyboard + mouse, but it turned out
| it just didn't automatically connect on the login screen, and
| if I just hit any button on the keyboard it would connect in a
| second or 2 (I'm guessing that hitting keys while it's
| disconnected sends out a signal to pair)
| the_watcher wrote:
| Annoyance 4 is the one that really bothers me (although to be
| fair, I have Beats Studio Buds that have exactly the same issue).
| Also, they get _really_ dirty and are very irritating to clean.
| Really not sure how Apple hasn't produced a good cleaning tool
| (or at least identified one and listed it in the store).
| toastal wrote:
| This Bluetooth headphone trend I think is mostly just to sell
| more products and bundles. Remove the headphone jack and now
| people need to buy the matching headphones they don't _really_
| want but the OEM is offering a $10 discount. Then they all have
| their own proprietary "app" for configuration that isn't cross-
| platform (have a Linux phone? add this to the pile of "sucks to
| be you"). Said apps always include tracking and phone homing and
| more permissions than needed because the other part was to sell
| your user data as the side hustle to Bluetooth headphones.
|
| I'm sad I fell for it after buying a newer ASUS laptop without a
| headphone jack and picking up a pair for my girlfriend too. The
| issues Bluetooth has caused me have wasted company money as I try
| to 'fix' my headphones for telecommunication. Active noise
| cancelation is nice, but not disrupting-my-work nice.
| baxuz wrote:
| Bluetooth audio is a mess with no way out.
|
| I really think that Apple is going to just drop Bluetooth audio
| at some point and make their own protocol, with Bluetooth perhaps
| being the "green bubble" fallback option.
| weedfroglozenge wrote:
| Something I've found annoying is if I'm using the airpods with my
| iPhone, and I'm chilling on the couch and decide to Chromecast,
| if I have already started chrome casting to the TV and then take
| my airpods out it will pause the show despite audio already going
| through TV?
| ryguytilidie wrote:
| My favorite part is how on Monday mornings when I have a meeting
| I can just 100% count on one of these things happening:
|
| -One of them will have a dead battery, even though they've been
| in a perfectly clean case that charged it yesterday and will
| charge it tomorrow. -They will no longer be paired with my phone
| for some reason. -They will pair with my phone, but just not
| recognize that they should be the primary audio output and calls
| will just play on speaker phone.
|
| But sure, they "just work".
| boardwaalk wrote:
| Meanwhile I've given them up since the charging contacts have
| gotten so bad at reliably touching. Most of the time I'll pick
| them up and they're dead or I'll spend several minutes (not
| exaggerating) putting them in the case and taking them out to get
| them to activate properly.
|
| No amount of cleaning or other finagling really helps.
|
| And this has happened to me in the very first AirPods and the
| AirPods Pro.
|
| I'm not sure how this bad design survives but fool me three
| times...
| notapenny wrote:
| I've "enjoyed" most of these including the occasional loud blast
| of white noise when trying to connect, and my favourite; they
| disconnect immediately when there's no output for a few seconds
| and then take a few seconds to re-connect. Mac OSX also doesn't
| seem to enjoy that, immediately reconnecting takes a bit and
| often fails. They're nice but they suffer from "trying to be
| smart" but end up being annoying.
| kawfey wrote:
| Regarding annoyance 6, Apple replaces crackling airpods for free.
| https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-airpods-pro-free-repla...
|
| I've had my left one replaced twice now, no charge. But since my
| left pod is new, and my right is old, the right has a rapidly
| decaying battery life, which cannot be replaced free of charge.
| SigmundA wrote:
| I turn off auto switching, it causes too many issues. Otherwise
| for me they have worked better than any other wireless headphone
| / earbuds.
|
| They need double the battery life and they would be basically
| perfect for my use, I am hopeful ver 3's will do this along with
| maybe some crazy move away from bluetooth which I still believe
| is the root of all the issues that even Apple can't fully solve
| without just making some different wireless protocol.
| toolcombinator wrote:
| This is part of Apple's problem right now.
|
| They've lost focus.
|
| TV shows, cars, VR headsets, six different iPad models.
|
| So the small stuff suffers: iOS. OS X. AirPods. Airdrop.
|
| Airdrop just stopped working for me recently. The clock app in
| iOS still only lets you have ONE reminder.
| apricot13 wrote:
| My airpod pros work better than my airpod pro max's but both
| buggy.
|
| - if your listening to your airpods and answer a phone call on
| your apple watch the speaker it chooses is not the airpods its
| your watch! so I'm thinking wow they're speaking really quiet
| only to realise its coming from my watch!
|
| - switching audio devices while on a call takes far too long
|
| - when I switch my audio output on my iphone sometimes the whole
| phone hangs. Seems to be fixed now but it was a problem for such
| a long time that I'm too scared to change audio devices on my
| phone
|
| - when I connect to my mac sometimes they just wont reconnect and
| I have to reboot
|
| - when I connect to my mac, then my phone or I disconnect them
| for a while when they come back the audio jumps up to max. I'm
| scared to use them with my mac because of this!
| martini333 wrote:
| Annoyance: When I use AirPods Pro and turn on my car, my iPhone
| automatically switches to the car-stereo's Bluetooth as expected.
| If I take the AirPods out of my ears for the first 5-10 secs
| after the switch, the iPhone pauses whatever was playing. I need
| to wait, or resume manually.
| bvogelzang wrote:
| I just got Airpods for Christmas and I love them. Most of these
| annoyances revolve around the fact that you're using two devices
| at the same time. I do the same on a regular basis and run into
| some of these all the time. One that is not on this list:
|
| Sometimes when I switch from my Mac to my iPhone, Spatialized
| Stereo does not kick in until I toggle the setting on my iPhone
| from off to on.
| leokennis wrote:
| I would be a happy man if I could tell my AirPods:
|
| "You only need to be paired to my iPhone. I don't need you synced
| to all my devices via iCloud and you never need to accept audio
| from and switch to anything but my iPhone. That'll do earbuds.
| That'll do."
| fungiblecog wrote:
| i don't find that any of my apple products "just work". they all
| have annoying "features" that sound great as a sales pitch but
| are crap in real life use
| gnicholas wrote:
| I also find the automatic device switching to be super annoying.
| In my experience it is both under inclusive and over inclusive. I
| have no idea how this passed muster for release at a company like
| Apple.
|
| There is a way to turn off this feature in settings, BTW.
| jcpst wrote:
| Sounds like a lot to deal with, for the price. I've never had to
| replace the pair of wired earbuds that come with an iPhone.
| nneonneo wrote:
| I've had to replace...a lot of wired earbuds. I have an entire
| shelf full of dead wired earbuds, from all sorts of
| manufacturers (Apple, RIM, cheapo $5 earbuds, Sony, Shure,
| ...), which almost uniformly failed in the same weird way: the
| right earbud becomes intermittently staticky after a few
| months. I checked with multiple devices (phones, computers), so
| it's probably not the socket, but more likely something to do
| with the way I tug on the cord when I run or walk?
|
| Anyway, after burning through a lot of wired headphones, I've
| had the current AirPods Pro for over a year with no trouble,
| and the sound quality is the same to me (plus, noise
| cancellation is useful).
| the-alt-one wrote:
| Good to hear the gripes with AirPods are identical to my $80
| earpods, nothing missed out on in other words :-).
|
| Edit: I have a pair of JBL LIVE300TWS. They're good!
| Grumbledour wrote:
| It feels really good to hear that the expensive models have
| mostly the same flaws as the cheap ones. So the people who tell
| me it must be my 40EUR anker models, because theirs always work
| fine probably just don't use them as much, but at the same
| time, spending more money would not have given me better
| functionality (except noise canceling).
|
| I guess the real thing to take away is, that cable is still the
| most reliable option (and also saves a lot on battery!)
| justinator wrote:
| Or my $30 ones...
| jhkiehna wrote:
| I had the same thought. These issues might just be issues with
| bluetooth in general, and not much apple can do about it.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I decided on the same pair of headphones vs AirPods: do not
| think it was a mistake.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Honestly, the whole Bluetooth pairing process is an industry-wide
| failure. I'd throw out all the pairing logic industry-wide and
| say "Connecting to Bluetooth peripherals requires NFC. NFC-tap a
| Bluetooth device to its host to connect".
| DavideNL wrote:
| Annoyance 8: Apple Music desperately tries to make you use it by
| automatically opening the Music app (even though you use Spotify
| 99% of the time)
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Annoyances 1 and 7 can be solved by changing the settings for
| automatic switching. The instructions for that are at the bottom
| of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212204, under "Turn off
| Automatic Switching".
| rogual wrote:
| Annoyance 8: When I'm using the (good) noise cancelling of the
| AirPods to eliminate distracting background noise so I can focus,
| after a few hours the battery will run down to 15% and trigger
| the EXTREMELY LOUD "PING-pong-pong-pong" low-battery noise, right
| in my ear, without warning.
|
| And it's Apple, so of course you can't turn it off.
| timtimmy wrote:
| Apple engineers reading this: The painfully loud "PING" sounds
| on the AirPods Max hurt my ears when I switch from transparency
| to sound isolation mode. It's really unpleasant and I'm
| concerned this is damaging my hearing. The "ping" volume level
| should be customizable or at least quieter across the AirPods
| line.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| What's the big deal here, Apple?
|
| People have been complaining about BEING CAUSED PAIN BY AIRPODS
| for YEARS and they are not doing anything about it!
|
| This being the top rated comment here further proves it's a
| major issue for airpod users. What the fuck, apple?
|
| I am absolutely terrified of that painful sound and will
| regularly check battery to ensure it won't hit me.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Just to provide my own ancedata, I've been an AirPods users
| for a long time, and don't find the alert sounds particularly
| loud or annoying.
|
| I think the volume of complaints and popularity of AirPods
| this speaks to wider variations in human hearing perception
| than one would expect. The main body of users have no
| problem, but enough people experience those sounds as painful
| to generate a volume complaints.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Conversely, it might just speak to the different kinds of
| music we listen to. "Dynamic range" is a pretty big phrase
| you'll hear in the mixing industry, and Airpods effectively
| have no way to determine how loud your music is before
| sending an audible notification. If you're listening to a
| song that's mixed at -12dbLUFS on Spotify or Apple Music,
| the alert will play at the exact same volume as it would
| when you're watching a Netflix show mixed at -25dbLUFS. The
| difference in sound is, quite literally, an order of
| magnitude apart, and could quite easily account for having
| such a loud and annoying sound blowing up your ears and
| ruining your listening experience.
| toxik wrote:
| Every. Body. I. Know. that has a pair of AirPods commiserate.
|
| I can only assume they know but can't fix it.
|
| In fact, why isn't there "adjust volume to surroundings" like
| there is for brightness? They should KNOW how loud is
| appropriate based on mic input.
|
| Maybe it's for people who drop their earbuds? So it can be
| heard from a distance? That would certainly explain it...
|
| A hack would be to put some foam or so inside to dampen the
| sound and then max out the volume. Then they physically
| cannot make loud sounds.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Clearly the problem is just with how your ears are
| constructed, or how you are using your ears. Apple only
| makes perfect products, after all.
| onphonenow wrote:
| Same when switching noise canceling - why so loud?
| lajosbacs wrote:
| Your comment made me realise that I actually never switch
| with the pods button (rather on the display of my phone)
| because of the loud noise. I don't get why they have not
| fixed this after years of complains from users.
| gabeio wrote:
| Doesn't it still make the noise when you use the onscreen
| switch?
|
| Either way it's horrible, all of these noises seem to be
| at a fixed or separate volume level than the media volume
| (which actually is common for apple). Siri used to have a
| separate volume than media (still might?), and then you
| also have ringtone volume, and sound in settings barely
| even hints that all these separate volumes exist.
| guelo wrote:
| Annoyance 9: Misplacing or losing these tiny $200 devices is a
| lot more painful than when I used to lose $20 wired headphones.
|
| Maybe I'm more prone to losing things than the average person.
| But after losing two of these things over the last couple years
| I'm not buying them again.
| tahnhnxfl wrote:
| I don't use my AirPods Max below 25% charge anymore because I'm
| scared of being startled by the ridiculously loud noise. I
| can't believe this passed Apple's QA.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| You'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams in
| your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on and
| the battery is almost empty. The flagship Sony headphone is so
| bug ridden it's a joke if you ask me.
| darrenf wrote:
| What bugs are you referring to?
|
| > _You 'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams
| in your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on
| and the battery is almost empty._
|
| I have the WF-1000XM4s. On the iOS headphones app, visiting
| System and turning off "Notification & Voice Guide" gets rid
| of the power on and battery level announcements leaving only
| the connection/disconnection alerts (although I keep all of
| them on as I find them useful, and wouldn't characterise them
| as screams).
| minhazm wrote:
| I have the same headphones and the main issue I have with
| it is their multi-device support is pretty much broken for
| me. If I'm on a zoom call and I get a phone call on my
| other device it takes over the audio (as expected), but
| then if I decline the phone call the audio doesn't switch
| back to my zoom call (computer). I end up having to turn
| the headphones off and back on for them to reconnect, which
| actually takes a good 10-15 seconds at least. The Bose QC35
| I had before handled multiple devices way better,
| unfortunately they just didn't sound as good as the Sony.
| lanstin wrote:
| I hate to say this but I mostly turn Bluetooth on and off
| as I use different devices. If I get a iPhone call during
| meeting that I can not listen to for a minute, then I
| will check mute, stop video, and then answer the phone on
| speaker. I try to have Bluetooth off when I am outside
| anyways for security and privacy reasons, so it is
| complementary to that.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| I too have the WF-1000XM4 and I only have the function to
| turn off the notification & voice guide that will stop
| making the sound that tells me what mode it is in. But it
| will happily scream in my ear that its either connected,
| almost empty or on / off. Regarding the bugs I experience
| on a regular basis: - Every off week the Speak-to-chat is
| somehow activated and than it drops me out of the music
| with the sound amplified. - The standby function does no
| longer work since a month or two and I find it empty every
| time I forget to either manually turn it off or put it in
| the charger - The multi device is so odd that I need to
| disconnect all devices in the surrounding and start
| connecting one by one - The dual bluetooth sometimes
| struggle to work with both Windows and Mac. - The
| connection with Windows was something I actually needed to
| Google as I couldnt get the quality to work, I somehow had
| to read somewhere that I needed to wait for +-1min till the
| actual device pops up in the list (Its registered as two
| seperate devices) but for this I actually blame Windows -
| Teams often refuses to play with the main device, but
| rather prefers the crappy audio system one.
|
| To finish off and it's not a bug, but the microphone they
| advertise is so laughably bad that roughly 80% of the
| people couldnt hear me properly on the other end of the
| line. But reading the reviews I find myself one of the few
| in this situation.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| I have a pair of (I wanna say Honeywell? Maybe 3m?) hearing
| protection bluetooth headphones that I simply keep off my
| head while pairing and unpairing because it's loud enough
| that I can hear it clearly with the phones down in my hand.
| zwirbl wrote:
| I can't comment on the bugs (I'm actually not sure that I've
| experienced any), but those connected etc. Messages really
| are very annoying, partly because they feel like forever
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I'm reasonably sure you can actually turn those messages off
| though. I did that for a while, but ended up turning them
| back on again as connecting them can be ... difficult ... and
| I'm never quite sure if they're connected until they tell me
| they are (and if I don't play any audio fast enough, they
| will also helpfully disconnect).
| [deleted]
| voisin wrote:
| There should be an option to have this information shown as
| an alert on the device. iPhones already show the battery
| charge level of the headphones so why not make it an alert
| banner?
| Macha wrote:
| You can use the android app to disable the device
| connected/disconnected dialogue.
| macNchz wrote:
| Reminds me of my roommate's Jambox bluetooth speaker years
| ago...I learned that it had this behavior while fully asleep at
| 4:30am after we'd had a party, when, every few minutes it
| started loudly blasting "BOOOOP. LOW BATTERY" alerts.
|
| The trouble was that it was hidden somewhere in our messy
| living room, and the alerts weren't frequent enough to find it
| quickly, so I was standing around in my underwear for ages,
| waiting for each subsequent alert and getting a bit closer each
| time, because it was too loud to go back to sleep.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I once had an EE friend that built these tiny chips he called
| Annoyers. They simply emitted a loud chirp at a random time
| interval. The interval was too long to effectively locate the
| chip, and the chirp was terribly annoying. It could take
| weeks to find the quarter-sides device hidden in someone's
| home (or the battery would just die).
|
| Of course, while he was explaining this to me, the chip
| slipped from my fingers and fell down an air vent of another
| friend's living room. The comedic timing was perfect, and it
| really might have been the funniest thing to happen to me in
| 2012.
| slig wrote:
| There's a commercial product called "Annoy-a-tron" that
| does that.
| san-fran wrote:
| When I started a new job at a NOC, I was pranked with one
| of those. I didn't know what to make of the odd recurring
| ~12khz beeps, and figured it was some old device slowly
| dying. So I pulled out a stopwatch to see if I could suss
| out the interval on the beeping. I was too focused on
| timing the beeps to notice my coworkers exchanging
| glances with each other after asking them, "Does anyone
| else hear that?"
|
| I found a pattern emerge. It repeated itself every 10
| beeps or so, with irregular intervals between those
| beeps. Armed with that information, I could effectively
| predict the next beep within 3-5 seconds (intervals
| ranged between 3-10 minutes, if I recall.) So I started
| walking around the room, standing in different locations
| as I stared at my stopwatch. The farther apart the places
| I stood, the better chance I'd have of triangulating the
| source with each beep.
|
| I got within 3-5 feet of it in the ~300 square foot room
| before the coworkers came clean about what they had done.
| I wasn't even mad, I was having a blast!
| emilecantin wrote:
| Sounds like the small slice of hell that is a low battery in
| most smoke detectors: one short (and loud AF) beep every ~15
| minutes. Fine when you have only one, but in a large house
| you never know which one of these f*ckers is actually the one
| complaining.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The first time I had this happen I didn't know what the
| sound was and it took me weeks to work out because it's so
| hard to locate where it comes from.
| muttled wrote:
| With Amazon Basics 9V batteries sitting at about $1.50 a
| piece, I've started the practice of just replacing all the
| smoke detector batteries when one of them starts getting
| low. When I get to the end of that supply, I'm going to
| switch to rechargeables and just recharge them all before
| they start chirping. One night of bad sleep from the option
| of laying awake, anticipating the next chirp, or going
| around the house changing batteries in the middle of the
| night isn't worth it.
| arnvald wrote:
| I had JBL earphones and they had exactly the same problem. Also
| couldn't turn it off. Extremely annoying.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Your (and other's) complaints about the volume of the AirPod
| alert notifications makes me think either (a) your hearing is
| more sensitive than most or (b) I've lost more hearing than I
| thought I had. Either way, those alerts play at what seems like
| a reasonable and moderate volume to me.
| matwood wrote:
| Those alerts are pretty loud, particularly with noise
| canceling on. One of the things I love about noise canceling
| is I can listen to my music almost at zero volume on the
| phone. With everything else blocked out, it's plenty loud.
| Then the 'bloop bloop' happens and it's like someone hit me
| over the head.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I know a lot of people use airpods as like ambient sound,
| just keeping them playing super quiet all the time. I
| personally keep them at a moderate volume because I have no
| interest in hearing anything other than my music, but maybe
| the low battery sound is volume-independent, so people who
| listen at 10% would be jarred by it.
| lowercased wrote:
| AirPod Pro 4, coming in 2025, will like have a feature to let
| you choose custom alert sounds, tied to ios 19. And it will be
| heralded with enormous classy custom Helvetiral fonts in a
| multi parallax scrolling site announcing "we've heard the
| future, and it's quiet". Or... "If you listen carefully, you
| can hear the future".
|
| Or they'll provide haptic in-ear custom vibrations in AirPod
| Pros 5, and their slogan will be "Your ears never felt better".
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Better yet, AirPods Pro 4 will allow you to adjust the volume
| of the warning tone, AirPods Pro 5 will allow you to
| customize it. AirPods Pro 6 will undo that but allow you to
| disable the tone and use haptic feedback. Then AirPods Pro 7
| will allow you to adjust the volume of the warning tone, and
| customize it.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The one you called AirPods Pro 7 will actually be AirPods
| Pro 6s+
| ConceptJunkie wrote:
| But they'll come in a new color.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Space Grey
| stillblue wrote:
| I read way too much of this comment before I realised you
| were joking. Got me good.
| lowercased wrote:
| I'm not actually 100% sure I'm 'joking'. I think we'll see
| some in-ear haptic feedback stuff in a few years, which
| take a few more years to get 'right', and will be confusing
| as heck, but will be useful. If it's customizable, there
| will be a small but fervent ASMR community around it. It
| will be pitched as accessibility-friendly, helping people
| with hearing issues or other sensory issues just 'feel'
| indicators. Wire it up to 'apple home' and you'll get
| little in-ear tinglings when certain people come home or
| leave, or when the garage door opens, and so on. Happy/sad
| emojis in iMessage will trigger certain ear vibrations,
| etc.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Having played around with very convincing binaural
| recording, I am all for subtle auditory haptics as an
| additional communication layer. I'd be surprised if it's
| strictly coded rather than localized to specific
| objects/interactions within your specific environment.
| jmacd wrote:
| SO LOUD
| lajosbacs wrote:
| Agree completely. My ears actually hurt when this happens,
| cannot be healthy.
|
| The 'device connected' sound is pretty loud as well.
| timtimmy wrote:
| I can feel my ears tense when those "pings" go off (on the
| AirPods Pro and AirPods Max). This can't be healthy.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| This is the ridiculous experience with all blue tooth
| headphones. "BATTERY LOW CHARGE NOW!", or "DING DING DING".
| Your battery is effectively 10% or 15% because they become
| impossible to listen to once they get low.
| break_the_bank wrote:
| If there are other runners here, with enough ear sweat the
| AirPods starts beeping, the noise makes you want to pull the
| AirPods away immediately. After some cool down they start working
| again, though my right AirPod now starts "hissing" sooner than it
| beeps. This is when I run at 100+ Fahrenheit. Still a great
| product though.
| becurious wrote:
| My original AirPods started to not charge reliably. It was
| corrosion from the sweat from running. I now have a pair of
| AirPods Pro which are supposed to be sweat resistant but I'm
| skeptical. If I do a long run in the summer there's a lot of
| sweat.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Apple stuff "just works" until it doesn't. As much as a fan I am
| of Apple, the lack of feedback when things stop working is
| absolutely infuriating.
| moooo99 wrote:
| This has been my observation as well. They mostly just work,
| but when they don't they are indefinitely more annoying to fix
| than ,,regular" BT headphones.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Had Music.app completely hose my entire data plan last month
| because it was downloading about 12 albums I had in "Downloaded
| Music" then deleting them then downloading them over and over
| last month.
|
| Not to mention Apple Music keeps turning itself back on when I
| turn it off.
|
| All impossible to diagnose why and the only advice is reset and
| delete everything and start over.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I was wondering why my phone battery kept running down some
| days faster than others. Seems it randomly turns on Apple
| Music even when the volume is down to 0% and I don't really
| notice that until I see it is actually playing on the
| notifications centre. I never, ever want it to play without
| me touching the play button on my phone, but that is not an
| option I guess.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Aha, just experienced this yesterday when I couldn't update or
| download any new app on my child's iPad with the newest OS
| because it refused to ever finish accepting my iCloud password.
|
| Through some obscure digging, I found that changing my region
| language on the ipad from English > UK English and back somehow
| fixed it...
| MereInterest wrote:
| And sometimes it "just works", but only if everybody is within
| the Apple ecosystem. Otherwise, it's just a net exporter of
| problems. See, for example, SMS message of "Liked an image.",
| email attachments converted into icloud download links,
| .DS_STORE files scattered everywhere, and so on. Any time Apple
| comes up with a new feature that would require improving
| capabilities at a lower level, Apple instead makes a new layer
| of abstraction on top. And oh how conveniently, that new layer
| of abstraction is transparent only to Apple users.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I overheard someone the other day ranting about Android
| phones and their broken SMS support. They apparently didn't
| realize it's actually Apple that has the buggy code/design
| and will try to send proprietary data to a non-Apple device.
| Jcowell wrote:
| Can you elaborate more on this
| MereInterest wrote:
| See my comment here[0]. Apple added application-level
| support for non-standard features not supported by SMS.
| When Apple sends message through the Message application,
| it selects either iMessage or SMS, based on whether there
| exists an iMessage connection, and whether the recipient
| has an iMessage account. This includes for things that
| are not representable by SMS. Reactions in the Message
| application, sent to a non-Apple device, show up as
| nonsense replies, such as "Liked an image", or "Liked
| 'The full text of the thing you just sent them.'".
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30085322
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| > Apple stuff "just works" until it doesn't.
|
| "Just works" is absolutely a statement that should be
| considered on a time curve! Some products work incredibly in
| the most trivial use case you test during unboxing, but fall
| apart when deeply integrated. Others are a PITA to set up, but
| stop requiring any unproductive attention afterwards.
|
| This was incredibly clear for anyone WITHOUT AirPods during
| 2019-2020. Everyone picked them up with their iPhone 11 upgrade
| and immediately started talking about how they "just work".
| Three months later, you'd see people fiddling with extra
| devices to keep them charged, or complaining about sending them
| through the laundry or into subway grates. Then the pandemic
| hit and they became an entire category of Zoom fatigue due to
| multiple bluetooth connections.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I think a lot of this is down to the fact that all issues that
| the user could resolve have already been fixed and when you
| eventually hit an issue, its some low level problem you have no
| hope of fixing anyway. While on windows or linux you often run
| in to situations where its just "Oh don't press that button,
| thats the button that makes it blow up, press the one next to
| it" while apple removes the button that makes it blow up.
|
| That isn't always the case, but it tends to be.
| gullywhumper wrote:
| My annoyance is that gen3 audio controls are significantly more
| difficult to use. With gen2 it was possible to simply tap the
| side of the airpod to pause, skip, or go back, and the user had
| the option to set which side controlled that functionality.
|
| Gen3 has a sensor that has the same functionality, but it is more
| cumbersome to use. The sensor is small and angled in a position
| that makes it more awkward and difficult to access. It requires
| some precision and dexterity - a pinch rather than a tap. The
| sensor is on the stem of the airpod, so it feels less secure to
| press. There is also a small click when the sensor is pressed
| that gets annoying.
|
| I live in a cold environment and frequently have to wear multiple
| layers of gloves, mittens, hoods, and hats when I go for long
| walks, so I lose that functionality.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| It is a fashion and convenience tool. Poor sound quality. Comes
| with the general Bluetooth problems.
|
| The funniest problem I had was on the subway and some bored kid
| next to me opened and closed the lid back and forth. For some
| reason this spammed my phone with connectivity messages to the
| point that I could not use my phone.
| duderific wrote:
| I think the sound quality is remarkably good given the size and
| form factor. It's not comparable to over the ear headphones of
| course, but that is a different use case.
| mucholove wrote:
| The worst thing about AirPods--specifically the AirPods Pro is
| that they provoke tinnitus.
|
| I can't use them. And so it goes...
| gnicholas wrote:
| Automatic device switching is hell. These two anecdotes happened
| since I read this article 10 minutes ago:
|
| I was listening to a podcast using AirPods and my iPhone. Someone
| _reacted_ to a message I'd sent, which paused the podcast. When I
| tried to resume a second later, my AirPods had magically
| connected to my computer instead of my phone. WTF!
|
| Still listening to the podcast and setting up a FaceTime call for
| my kid on an iPad. Before starting the call, I turned off
| Bluetooth, so my iPad wouldn't connect to my AirPods. Regardless,
| it connected to them anyway.
|
| Did no one at Apple test this 'feature'?
| barkerja wrote:
| If device switching is more of an annoyance/issue than it is a
| pleasing feature, you can configure it. And it's configurable
| per-device.
|
| When AirPods are connected, go into the bluetooth preferences,
| select "Options" next to the connected AirPods. Change the
| value for "Connect to This Mac"
| Spivak wrote:
| This is a bad end-user experience but I can kinda see the flow.
|
| You're listening on your iPhone but _using_ your computer.
| Device switching then says "okay since they're using their
| computer if any sound comes from the computer they should hear
| it" and then iMessage made a sound.
|
| Had the thing you did been playing a YouTube video or Spotify
| then it would be weird if your AirPods didn't switch. I think
| it makes sense for notification sounds to not trigger switching
| by default but IDK what they currently do isn't totally
| unreasonable.
| gnicholas wrote:
| This would make sense if I had been using my computer. But I
| was in the kitchen and hadn't played any media on my computer
| all day.
|
| Also, the distance from the devices should have been a
| giveaway: 3 feet from the phone and 25 feet from the
| computer.
| biot wrote:
| It's even worse when you're on an active phone call (the
| standard iPhone phone functionality, not third party
| meeting/voip app) talking to another human being and an alert
| sound plays on the computer, stealing the audio from your
| phone call and you can no longer hear or speak with the other
| person. I can't think of a better example where "don't steal
| the audio" is more applicable.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Another similar annoyance: I'm on my phone using my AirPods
| and I wander in range (but still rooms away from) my Beats,
| which happen to be turned on. Even though I haven't taken
| my AirPods out of my ears, my phone switches over to my
| Beats. Why?
|
| Surely the AirPods know they're still inserted and should
| be able to override any external switching cue. Also, the
| AirPods are still much closer to my phone than the Beats,
| so the signal should be stronger. Lastly, it's not like I
| just turned on the Beats, and they sent some sort of
| startup/activation signal. I literally just get home from a
| walk and my phone migrates to a different audio output.
| Maddening.
| vanviegen wrote:
| I strongly disagree. These kinds of annoyances are not
| acceptable, as the no-nonsense alternative (switching
| manually) is just great in comparison.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I do get some of the quirks, but not nearly that full list. If
| I'm on a call or listening to music through my AirPods when
| connected to my Mac, and then open my phone, they _do_ connect to
| the phone, but it does not switch the audio away from the
| computer unless I tell it to on the phone.
|
| I also have a pair of fancy Sony noise canceling wireless
| headphones, and they're much more finicky about connecting and
| staying connected than my Airpods are. Fundamentally the problem
| seems to be that bluetooth kinda sucks.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I barely ever use my headphones with my laptop, but my Sony
| headphones on an Android phone work 100% perfectly all of the
| time.
|
| I've never had a hiccup.
|
| Okay, I mean, if I'm in an area with thousands of others using
| headphones, I might get some interference. That's it. Otherwise,
| totally fine.
| paines wrote:
| >....if I'm in an area with thousands of others using
| headphones, I might get >some interference. That's it.
| Otherwise, totally fine.
|
| Which imho is completely unacceptable because it annoys the
| hell out of me. I was using AirPods with an Xiaomi 8 Pro phone
| half a year ago. And this happended constanly and most of the
| time at street crossings in urban areas where 2-3-4 people
| would cross your way. Since I switched to an iPhone this never
| happened again.
|
| PS: Why was I using AirPods with a cheapish android mobile
| phone? I tried lots of air pods like products from various
| vendors and each and any of them worked nicely for a couple of
| days until I would charge them overnight which killed the
| charging box where the headphones resided in or the headphones
| themself. Or like other useres in this thread described: one
| headphone would pair the other suddenly not anymore...
| greggman3 wrote:
| Well, since we're ranting about Airpods
|
| My Gen 2 Airpods work great. I tried Airpod Pro's and Airpod Gen
| 3. Both have the crappy "pinch" controls instead of the awesome
| "tap" controls. Pinching requires more fingers free so for
| example walking home from the grocery store with heavy bags in
| both hands and trying to control my Airpods (next song, pause),
| is much easier with tap (single finger, knuckle, palm) than with
| pinch (2 free fingers). Also while cooking, can tap with knuckle
| if hands are dirty but can't pinch with dirty fingers.
|
| Otherwise, they've worked for me 98% of the time. A few times
| they've failed to connect to one device or another and the only
| solution was to re-pair them (only ever used them on Apple
| devices). The other is they suck in crowded places like busy
| trains and stations in Japan, they'll cut out OFTEN! (Shibuya,
| Shinjuku, rush hour).
|
| My current ones cut out in my living room. No idea why but it's
| really annoying, I'm 1-2 meters from my M1X Mac and they're
| cutting out quite often.
|
| But overall I like them alot.
| soheil wrote:
| I never found AirPods convenient, there are just so many moving
| parts. There are just so many pieces you need to be mentally
| aware of, the left/right pods, the case and the charging cable.
| You need to then think about how this is going to connect to your
| device, you can't just physically plug them in and be assured
| they will just work. They run out of battery. The case will
| separately run out of battery. The BT quality isn't great and
| degrades depending on the conditions. You can't use one motion
| with your hands to take them out of their case and plug them in
| your ears like you can with wired headphones. You are more prone
| to losing the case or one of the disparate ear pieces since there
| are three different pieces. There is a bulge in your pocket if
| you keep them there, which is kind of even more visible and
| annoying if you wear something other than jeans.
|
| I'm not saying there is a better solution it's just that this
| product is a massive failure in my eyes.
| brezelnbitte wrote:
| Airpod Pros are great for running but that's it. I'm genuinely
| surprised to see them used in meetings given battery life and
| well with my ears they would fall out immediately. I can't chew
| or talk without them wiggling out. I tried beats fit pro and were
| worse.
| arthurmorgan wrote:
| I regret getting my AirPods Pro. I have them for two years now
| and went through 2 cases and 4 earbuds. The quality just does not
| match the expectation and price tag. My Sony headphones work like
| on the first day after 3 years, however they don't share the same
| form factor. :) I wonder how the WF-1000XM4 perform especially in
| combination with iOS.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| I have a $20 pair of Sony wireless headphones that charge via USB
| C that have equivalent audio quality to my $199 AirPods pro.
| somehnguy wrote:
| I absolutely love my AirPods, so much so that when my original
| AirPods battery started dying early during meetings I bought a
| new set of AirPod Pro without even thinking.
|
| That said, I experience all of these issues too. Another one to
| add to the list that I really don't understand. If I'm listening
| to a podcast on my phone and remove an airpod for a moment (to
| speak to someone or whatever) the podcast pauses as expected. But
| then putting it back in my ear there seems to be only about a 25%
| chance the podcast starts playing again. Most of the time I have
| to open the Spotify app back up and manually resume.
| muttled wrote:
| I've noticed when it doesn't resume, often the music player
| also isn't on the lock screen. I'm wondering if it's getting
| kicked out of memory if it happens to be in a non-active paused
| state when the device decides it needs to free some memory up?
| somehnguy wrote:
| If I had to place a bet - my money would be on your theory.
| I've noticed the exact same thing, which makes it even worse
| as I then have to pull up the app drawer and go back to my
| player app. At least it never gets totally kicked out in that
| the state is preserved/not reloading like a fresh open.
|
| I guess my question from there would be why does the device
| suddenly feel the need to release resources when the
| music/podcast pauses? I'm experiencing it on an iPhone 13 Pro
| which should have no shortage.
|
| If it was a once in a blue moon thing I would brush it off as
| just unlucky timing, but it happens very regularly.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I've only had bad experiences with Bluetooth devices so far,
| especially audio.
|
| Speakers, headphones, keyboards or mice.
|
| Drivers issues, spurious disconnect, hard reboot needed for no
| apparent reason, delays when connecting, sometimes even noise on
| the line, difficult to believe given that this is a purely
| digital channel AFAIK.
|
| Lately I am relying on good old analog electronics for audio, and
| wires for keyboards/mice.
|
| Not only those are more reliable and serviceable (I especially
| like dumb headphones in that regard) but without batteries,
| software update or even drivers, they'll probably last much
| longer.
| uzbit wrote:
| I think most of these annoyances can be taken broadly from the
| fact that everything about any Bluetooth experience is just
| absolute trash.
|
| Why does it take several tries to pair sometimes? When paired,
| why does it sometimes auto-connect and sometimes not? Why does it
| just never pair at all? What's with that pair code that it says
| to enter, but auto fills (sometimes)? And only sometimes do you
| have to use that code (which is a security thing only implemented
| on things with screens I'm guessing). I'm sure there's more, but
| I've already dedicated my days frustration to this.
|
| All that being said, I was very happy to "upgrade" to a Pixel 5a
| for the 3.5mm headphone jack. It's been a supreme experience to
| live in the past and future.
| hbn wrote:
| Wasn't that the entire selling point with Apple's W1 chip? That
| it's bypassing standard bluetooth handshake protocol and
| handling the pairing themselves?
|
| Airpods seem to be more reliable for that than most bluetooth
| experiences I've had, but it's still not as good as I'd hoped
| given it's supposed to "just work"
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > I think most of these annoyances can be taken broadly from
| the fact that everything about any Bluetooth experience is just
| absolute trash.
|
| That's not my problem. That's Apple's problem. There are
| solutions around this, and they made a choice to use the
| technology they did. End result is their product. These
| annoyances aren't because they have wireless headphones. It's
| because of the choices they made.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| How have consumers let companies get away with "premium" phones
| being the ones with fewer features?
| Gigachad wrote:
| Because I don't miss anything about old phones. Yes sometimes
| the airpods can work a little funny, but on a whole, they are
| so far ahead of the wired headphones I used to use that I can
| completely forgive the issues they have. Yeah it was cool to
| put an SD card in my phone, but it never worked that seamless
| and my phone now has more storage than I'll ever use.
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe they don't mind putting the adapter on their headphone
| cable? If you aren't switching devices a lot, it's a one-time
| operation that's pretty easy to manage.
| lanstin wrote:
| Because it is, statistically, an easier and more pleasant
| experience. I really get tired of taking twenty minutes to
| configure a bunch of settings for each marginally novel piece
| of tech I acquire.
| 0xedd wrote:
| GraemeMeyer wrote:
| I think of it like USB A ports. You miss it for a few years.
| And then you don't. And the products generally continue to
| improve along other lines
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| I've never had the bit snap off a USB A cable when it was
| plugged in yet it's happened to me twice with USB C. I've
| also had to replace ports due to the wear on the cable
| futon not being able to stay in place. Furthermore, I'm
| less certain if a cable I have lying around is going to be
| fully compatible. I also have to keep USB A around so
| there's this big growth in the number of cables and
| adapters that are necessary.
|
| In almost every way that is meaningful to me USB C has been
| a downgrade. I can't think of anything that improved my
| experience beyond saving a minute when I plug the laptop
| into only the monitor and not the power cable too.
| bradgessler wrote:
| Apple could get away with introducing their own wireless audio
| I/O standard the eliminated the need for Bluetooth for sound.
| This new wireless protocol would ideally:
|
| 1. Allow AirPods to be connected to multiple audio devices at the
| same time and eliminate the need to have to switch between
| exclusive audio sources.
|
| 2. Eliminate the problem where a Zoom call (or any call)
| downgrades audio quality.
|
| 3. Allow the playback of lossless audio wirelessly.
|
| I know there's a crowd that will absolutely hate this idea
| because it's yet another step away from a standard (Bluetooth),
| but the protocol has so much baggage that it's not delivering a
| great experience for people in the Apple ecosystem.
| deergomoo wrote:
| Expect this soon. There was an interview with an Apple manager
| in What HiFi recently and some of the stuff he was saying
| strongly suggested that they're considering doing their own
| thing.
| jugg1es wrote:
| I highly recommend the brand Jabra if you are an Android user.
| Basically all other bluetooth buds have horrible UX in my
| experience besides Jabra and AirPods.
| CTmystery wrote:
| I'm only an indirect user of AirPods and I really do not like
| them: Every time my team does a google meet / hangout the folks
| using AirPods sound terrible to the point that it's distracting.
| I don't know if it's in the microphone, the bluetooth connection,
| or the interaction with a google product, but it is much worse
| than (a) wired earbuds and (b) the folks using Bose QC 35s (which
| the company gave out a while back)
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Wired headphones have the mic on the wire beside your mouth.
| Wireless headphones have them around the corner on the side of
| your head, which is an objectively terrible location for a
| microphone.
| willchis wrote:
| I was about to post this. People with AirPods really should
| know this - you sound like you're talking on a 1980s radio when
| you're on a Slack/Zoom/Teams call.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Dankpods did a pretty good comparison of wired mic quality with
| wireless: https://youtu.be/N6Y_Q7RYmmY?t=315
| skinkestek wrote:
| More annoyingly for me they didn't show up in "Where is" or what
| that feature is called in English, even if they had power and
| were close to my phone and had been for hours.
|
| I recently wasted an hour or so thinking I must have left them
| behind at kids soccer training while they were just out of sight
| next to me.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _I get that Apple is trying to be clever and anticipate your
| moves, which I genuinely appreciate, but when it gets in the way
| it 's annoying._
|
| I wonder how long until devices regularly do eye tracking to
| figure out which device we're currently paying attention to. I
| think that could both be useful and extremely scary...
| poink wrote:
| Annoyance 4 is the biggest one for me, with the additional
| annoyance that "only one works sometimes" extends to charging,
| too. One of my AirPods will be dead when I go to use them ~10% of
| the time.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I didn't read the whole article, and this is quite a
| conversation. However, I have to ask: Why oh why is digital voice
| quality downgraded to telephony quality, when the computer and
| buds both play crystal musical audio? This happens for me in
| Windows, and IIRC in Mac as well. What about the audio device
| being headset vs. speaker changes things at a technical level?
|
| This only seems to happen for Bluetooth. Using a RF gaming
| headset or a wired connection causes no issue.
|
| keyword: Annoyance 3
| smaudet wrote:
| globular-toast wrote:
| I've bought 2 pairs of headphones and 2 pairs of earphones in my
| entire life so far (I'm 36). And guess what? They just work. Is
| it really worth it just to not have wires?
| jakereps wrote:
| The absolute worst annoyance, IMO, is that if you are listening
| to audio with an iPhone, AirPods (Pro), and an Apple Watch, and
| set a timer on your watch (say, a 1.5 minute rest timer at the
| gym) it will disconnect from your phone to play the alert from
| your watch and then fail to play music from your phone again
| without sometimes requiring full Bluetooth cycling, or another
| 1.5 minutes of fiddling - removing any and all convenience of the
| device ecosystem. There are support issues open on the Apple
| forums going back years, but it's still unresolved. To contrast,
| my Bose SoundSports can seamlessly achieve the above example just
| fine, so it's not a fundamental flaw in the use case, just
| Apple's implementation of some part of it.
| jonahx wrote:
| My addition...
|
| Annoyance 0:
|
| The default behavior is to pause when you remove a single earbud
| while listening to music/podcasts. But, especially when working
| out, this is not what you want, because you just wanted to
| scratch or wipe off your ear. At minimum, this should be an
| option I can set ("only pause if both buds are removed"), but
| afaik it's not.
| ushakov wrote:
| my personal complaint: sometimes the left earpod doesn't boot
|
| both are fully charged, but when i put them into ears, only the
| right one actually connects
|
| i have to put the left one back into the case and take it out
| again to get it to connect
|
| i assume this is a software issue
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| If you're within the warranty period (or have AppleCare) you
| should definitely bring them into an Apple store. It might be a
| hardware issue. If you describe the problem to them they will
| almost certainly take your word for it and give you a free
| replacement left AirPod. Even if it's not a hardware issue
| you'll get a fresh new battery for one ear :) I've done this
| several times between my two pairs of airpods.
| DrZootron wrote:
| Annoyance 8: More for those on a call with people using airpods
| or listening to them be interviewed on a news show - the audio
| quality is akin to that of a a tin-can-and-string phone.
| j_m_b wrote:
| relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2055/
|
| Bluetooth is still a nightmare after being around for over 2
| decades. Meanwhile, my wireless mouse with USB dongle just works.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Annoyance 1 (the biggest one), and Annoyance 4 are the standouts
| for me.
|
| ANNOYANCE 8: Updating the firmware. 'Nuff said...
| dilliwal wrote:
| Annoyance 0. Your blog post date is wrong
|
| But you have a point, I share some of your annoyances
| shaunpersad wrote:
| Airpods are by far the worst Apple product I've ever owned, for
| all the same reasons the author listed. I genuinely don't
| understand how they can still say they Airpods are "fantastic"
| and "wonderful".
|
| I would say on average I encounter these issues 50% of the time.
| Most of my day is doing Zoom calls and either myself or the other
| party (using Airpods as well) will spend the first 30-60 seconds
| either switching out for another pair of headphones or trying to
| get theirs to connect.
|
| I'm sure most of these issues actually have to do with Bluetooth,
| but the criticism still stands. Have we just convinced ourselves
| that they're great for some mysterious reason?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Airpods work wonderfully compared to previous headsets! Apple
| vastly improved the pairing process and reliability over
| previous products.
|
| What Apple needs to polish is the multi-device support. If
| you're going out for a walk with your phone they will work
| (nearly) 100% of the time. If you have a Mac and a phone and
| are switching back and forth for Zoom calls, they will reliably
| annoy the crap out of you. Before WFH I assume Apple thought
| this was an edge case, not something we'd be doing for hours
| each day.
|
| PS Google Meet deserves some blame here, too. I often end up
| with "Airpods for output, Mac speaker for input" and this is
| entirely due to Meet's burying these weird defaults in a
| Settings menu.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| I wished they were using a low latency bluetooth codec, such ad
| AptX or Aptx-LL.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Most of the authors complaints are valid. I'm definitely guilty
| of the 10-second 'Hello? Hello?' dance at the start of phone
| calls. However, AirPods are such a good product I can forgive
| them all of those flaws and more.
|
| One hidden feature: I was walking around my city listening to
| something on AirPods Pro. A truck in the lane adjacent to the
| sidewalk braked hard, making painfully loud squeal. Except I
| didn't hear it. The AirPod on the street side entered noise
| canceling mode quickly enough to silence almost all of the sound,
| and stayed there for a few seconds afterward before reverting to
| ambient sounds. I'm not sure if that was a purposeful feature, or
| just a volume limiter for the ambient-noise mode kicking in.
| Regardless, it was one of the most delightful experiences I've
| ever had with a product. The thing just quietly, casually making
| my day a little bit better, then getting out of the way again.
| adh636 wrote:
| So if I'm understanding this correctly, you had the device set
| to let in ambient sound, but a motor vehicle slamming on the
| brakes was filtered out, and you consider this to be a good
| thing? Sounds dangerous to me.
| kristjansson wrote:
| It was still audible, but filtered from 'damagingly painful'
| to 'perceptible', and only on the side that was directly
| exposed. I don't find a lot of navigational value in
| listening to someone's poorly maintained brakes while I'm
| walking around.
| Bud wrote:
| His gripe about the buzzing sound in AirPods is easily fixable
| and he obviously didn't even bother checking. Just went straight
| to blaming Apple.
|
| Apple will replace AirPods with this issue. For free.
|
| Several of the other gripes are spurious as well.
| justinator wrote:
| Oofta. Is anyone having trouble with white text on black
| background? That was a design anti pattern that I thought died
| out in the early 2,000's.
| d23 wrote:
| How's that an anti-pattern? With dark mode, it's more in style
| than ever now.
| [deleted]
| justinator wrote:
| It's an accessibility problem, especially for people (like
| me) who have astigmatism. But y'all don't look away from
| white text on black background to a bright light source (like
| a page of black text on a white background) and get a "burned
| in" impression of the previous page in your vision? Lucky
| you.
|
| Dark mode is fine, please let the user choose to have dark
| mode when she wants to.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I wish HN had a dark mode option.
| justinator wrote:
| Whip up some css to your liking and inject it into hn's
| HTML - there's lots of examples of people doing things
| like that.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I only browse it on Safari in iOS when I am wasting time.
| notapenny wrote:
| Out of sheer curiosity, is it just the white on black and
| would a "softer" light-grey on dark-grey be better for you?
| Or just generally light on dark?
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I actually prefer it. It's easier on my eyes.
| misterS wrote:
| This is called "dark mode" nowadays, and it's a feature.
| martneumann wrote:
| Same for me. It produces some glare for me and I use dark mode
| almost everywhere.
|
| I also don't like the huge font. Looks almost what I'd expect
| an h2 to look like.
| justinator wrote:
| There IS also a difference (as well) between Dark Mode and
| pure white text (or close to it) on pure black background.
| Usually a Dark Mode will have the contrast be slightly less
| (both text and bg are grays).
|
| Sorry to point this out, but it IS a UI design site, and the
| person is griping about the minutia problems of an Apple
| device, so: fair game.
| smoovb wrote:
| Back to my $15 Xiaomi Mi earbuds after trying the Airpod pros.
| While not great for calls, battery life after a year of use is
| 10x better than the Airpods. Plus a better fit for my ears and 0
| fear of loss.
| tarunkotia wrote:
| I love the AirPods but stopped using it because of what I have
| been reading about EMF radiation emitted constantly even when not
| in use by AirPods. I still need to read-up more about it till
| then I am using the wired headphones.
|
| https://www.macintoshhowto.com/hardware/extreme-emf-exposure...
| dools wrote:
| You can disable that automatic connection behaviour in the airpod
| settings from each device, that resolves a few of the issues
| rcfox wrote:
| e aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
| wwws
| KSPAtlas wrote:
| The date on the article is either wrong, or the article was made
| by a time traveller
| chaostheory wrote:
| Annoyance 1 drives me insane. I don't understand why it would
| switch when I'm actively listening to something. It should ask
| first on the new device instead of automatically switching.
| m12k wrote:
| >Annoyance 4: Sometimes, only the left or right AirPod plays
| sound. Taking them in/out of your ears doesn't fix it, you need
| to put it back into the case and take it back out, which
| sometimes, doesn't fix it. So you need to put your AirPods in/out
| of your case two or three times to fix it.
|
| I run into this too, anyone know what's up with that? Is there
| some "listen with only one headphone in" feature that I'm
| accidentally enabling?
| timemct wrote:
| Yes, there is a listen with only one headphone feature.
| dijit wrote:
| It's not a feature it's a bug that will affect nearly all
| Bluetooth in-ears that don't share a receiver.
|
| The design of Bluetooth buds is such that one of the buds is
| elected to be the receiver of data from the phone, it then
| propagates its signal to the second bud.
|
| What you're experiencing is a disconnection of one earbud to
| the other.
|
| FWIW: apples AirPods Pro's rehandshake (from the "slave" side
| towards the "master" side) every 10s- so you can have a lot of
| luck just waiting for it to reconnect; that is assuming that
| the slave device _wants_ to reconnect; it might believe it's
| not in your ear.
| toyg wrote:
| I disagree, it's definitely a feature in my book. It allows
| me to keep listening or stay on calls basically forever.
| hbn wrote:
| The ability to listen with one headphone in is definitely a
| feature, but the issue is that sometimes that's happening
| when it shouldn't be. You pulled both Airpods out of the
| case, put them in your ears, but only one connects. And you
| can't get the one with no sound to play sound until you put
| it back in the case and try again (sometimes takes a couple
| attempts)
| toyg wrote:
| Yes, it's meant to reproduce the traditional one-earplug
| bluetooth experience for busy people. It also allows one to
| effectively bypass battery limits: if you hear the battery
| alert, you take one earplug off and put it in the case - it
| charges so quickly, it makes it doable to put it back on before
| the other dies, and then you recharge the other.
| _1 wrote:
| I don't think that's specific to AirPods .. I have Sony's
| bluetooth earbuds and that occasionally happens. Sometimes just
| waiting a bit and one of the ears will reconnect on its own. I
| chalked it up to the bluetooth standard.
| nuccy wrote:
| I have a solution for that: with bare hands close your ears
| tightly with Airpods in them. Depending on the duration of such
| covering Airpods either just mute for a moment, or disconnect
| and reconnect right away. This helps to re-sync if one is
| ahead/behind another, or if one is not connected. I do that
| occasionally with my Airpods Pro connected to iPhone, Android
| or Macbook Pro - same outcome in all these cases. Such
| connection "reboot" helps in most described cases, though
| occasionally explicit Bluetooth toggle Off/On is needed,
| especially with the Macbook.
|
| I imagine that hands and head create an improvised Faraday
| cage. Though 2.4GHz Bluetooth signal should nevertheless pass
| thought the body tissue, likely there is just a signa-to-noise
| ratio rapid drop which forces Airpods to re-establish the
| connection.
| tjpnz wrote:
| >After several years of usage, my first two pairs of AirPods both
| developed a buzzing noise which became unbearable. The only
| solution I found was to buy a new pair.
|
| Is that really acceptable for premium headphones? My Bose QC25s
| continue to work fine after almost eight years of daily use. I
| realise that there's more which can go wrong with the AirPods,
| but two (?) years isn't much at all. The author should've taken
| the issue further rather than just giving Apple more money.
| capableweb wrote:
| It's acceptable if it's something you're used to the practice.
| Many Apple users use their products for seemingly infinite
| amount of time before retiring the device, but even more users
| keep buying the newest and greatest when it comes out because
| A) they want to have the latest and/or B) what they currently
| had broke and the accepted solution is to buy new.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Apple doesn't allow you to use ANC on AirPods when you have only
| one ear inserted.
|
| But there's actually a setting -- buried deep inside the
| Accessibility preferences -- that enables this feature.
|
| Why wouldn't they make this the default? Who would want ANC to
| work only some of the time? And what does this setting have to do
| with accessibility/disability?
| ynniv wrote:
| I've had it run with only one ear, and it feels uncomfortably
| lopsided. Maybe if you could only hear in one ear or had a
| hearing aid in the other you would want to enable this. In
| general, accessibility settings seems to be a place immune from
| the simplicity police at Apple. There are often useful features
| in there.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I completely agree. I actually just wrote a blog post called
| The Best Accessibility Features You've Never Heard Of, which
| details some of these features that Apple, Google, and Amazon
| hide within accessibility settings. [1]
|
| 1: https://beelinereader.medium.com/the-best-accessibility-
| feat...
| ahepp wrote:
| unless you were deaf in the other ear, why would you want to
| use ANC in one ear only?
| gnicholas wrote:
| I use one ear at a time, both for battery purposes, and so I
| don't have the two AirPods communicating with each other
| through my brain.
|
| I realize that we think nothing bad happens from the
| emissions from AirPods, but this may change in the future.
| Some have pointed out that prior studies involved devices
| that were not stuck quite so far into our ears.
|
| Since I listen to podcasts and books, I have no need to use
| two simultaneously.
| omgitsabird wrote:
| Does no one else view "it just works" as an incredibly annoying
| phrase?
| nneonneo wrote:
| Annoyances 1 and 7, at least, can be solved by disabling the
| automatic switching logic. When connected to the AirPods, under
| Bluetooth -> (AirPods name) -> Connect to this {iPhone/iPad/Mac},
| select "When Last Connected" instead of "Automatically". Repeat
| for each Apple device.
|
| It's a simpler mental model and it works way more reliably. No
| more weird handoff prompts and no unexpected switching. Yes, you
| have to select the device manually, but that takes just seconds
| from the control center or audio output menu.
|
| I definitely agree with some of the other annoyances, although my
| AirPods have been generally very reliable (and much more so than
| my other set of wireless buds!). The weirdest one to me is that
| Apple is still using the crappy HFP profile for bidirectional
| audio, leading to annoyance #3; I'm surprised Apple hasn't just
| engineered their own bidirectional audio profile, because the
| sound quality drop is so noticeable that it's laughable.
| knowingathing wrote:
| This is true... but I like the automatic switching when it does
| work :)
|
| I try my hardest not to adjust Apple defaults too much because
| on the whole, I really like their design decisions and their
| UX. So I don't want to start straying too far away from their
| core defaults. It's a slippery slope :)
| jhaile wrote:
| Annoyance 5 is the worst for me: the 5-7 second delay when
| switching from Mac to phone.
|
| I'm usually on my Mac during the day, Zoom calls, Spotify, etc.
| Then I get a phone call. If I just answer, it doesn't auto-switch
| fast enough. And if I manually switch, it regularly doesn't
| switch at all on the first try. And even when it does switch,
| there's a 5 second delay while the other person is going "hello?
| are you there?"
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| One of my past coworkers worked on AirPods hardware.
|
| One thing he could've said under gazillions of NDAs: software
| came much behind the hardware.
| tpict wrote:
| I swear that the automatic switching feature was almost flawless
| when it first shipped, but at some point the "is the user paying
| attention to this audio source" heuristics were changed. It now
| seems very eager to switch to my phone and reluctant to switch to
| my Mac.
|
| There was also a bug for a period of months-I need to check to
| see if this still happens, I've conditioned myself not to trigger
| it-where
|
| 1. I put in my AirPods
|
| 2. I click them in the audio drop-down in the Mac menu bar to
| connect
|
| 3. The "Connect to AirPods" notification appears
|
| 4. I click "connect" because I'm already connected and it's the
| biggest target to dismiss the notification
|
| 5. the AirPods DISCONNECT! Come on...
| sorahn wrote:
| I have slightly the opposite problem. My AirPods are too eager
| to reconnect to my Mac.
|
| If I'm in a phone call with someone, on my phone, using my
| AirPods, and my Mac decided to play a single alert for whatever
| reason (slack, mail, text, whatever) the AirPods IMMEDIATELY
| connect to the Mac to play that one single notification, and
| leave me trying to shout across my house to my phone to tell
| the other person to hold on.
|
| Super frustrating.
| plonkus wrote:
| A few commenters have mentioned the service program -- I think
| it's worth mentioning that if you're experiencing sound issues
| (buzzing, crackling) Apple will repair/replace AirPods Pro even
| if they're out of warranty (up to three years after the sale,
| which currently includes all AirPods Pro). I just sent mine in
| this week.
|
| https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...
| mgoetzke wrote:
| As for 1) You can configure devices not to auto-connect unless
| previously connected
| lowercased wrote:
| That simply doesn't work for me. Regardless of what options I
| set, about 60% of the time, if I'm talking on an iphone with
| airpod pros, and I walk within a few feet of my mac (which does
| have a connection to the airpods), it will switch from the
| phone while I'm talking and... there's no reliable way to get
| that back. In the phone app, clicking 'airpods'... is slow as
| molasses and sometimes shows them as connected again, but... no
| sound. Speaker works - the call is still ongoing. If I walk far
| enough away, _sometimes_ it will reconnect, but not usually.
| The only near reliable way is to disconnect the airpods in the
| bluetooth menu, then wait, then reconnect. This is annoying as
| hell for the person on the call to have to sit through.
|
| Yeah, sorry Apple support... I've only got the ios 15.x from a
| couple weeks ago. No doubt upgrading to the very latest will
| definitely solve all extant problems, everything will magically
| 'just work' and there will be absolutely no new problems
| introduced. /s
|
| When I describe this to some Apple store folks (2x last fall),
| they seemed 'shocked' (couldn't tell if it was fake or not).
| "Wow, never heard of that - no one's ever told me that before,
| that doesn't seem right. We have some training classes next
| week you can sign up for".
| jdminhbg wrote:
| In case you don't know this, since it isn't obvious, you have
| to set them not to automatically connect on each device they
| are paired to. And if you unpair and re-pair them you have to
| do it again. This is annoying but not as annoying as auto-
| pairing.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I hope it works for the parent, but in my case even that
| doesn't work. Whatever extra protocol or other crap they
| introduced with this "automatic switching" feature is
| garbage and worsens the experience even if you disable the
| new functionality. The audio menu and
| connection/disconnection being slow as molasses is a new
| thing introduced by this change.
| lowercased wrote:
| Yeah, doesn't work.
|
| "Connect to this iphone" in bluetooth settings..
|
| Options are "automatically" and "when last connected to
| thi..."
|
| These don't even make sense as options, imo.
|
| What I think they're meaning is "automatically
| connect..." and the options are "automatically" and "when
| last connected". But.. if the software is broken, and it
| 'magically' connects when I don't want it to, then that
| will be the last time it connected anyway.
|
| "NEVER" needs to be an option.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| "When last connected" is supposed to mean "if this phone
| is the last thing they were connected to when they were
| put away last time, connect to this phone when they are
| taken back out." "Never" in that context would mean each
| time you put them in, you would have to go to your device
| and manually connect.
|
| Of course if that's not working, that's a problem, but
| conceptually I think the options make sense.
| IndySun wrote:
| "It Just Works"... This is merely a tagline from Apple, an
| advertising slogan. As such, I have never taken it seriously -
| let alone the fact that it is also a hollow statement. Who
| does/did takes it seriously?
|
| That members of the wider YC community do take it seriously, or
| worse actually believe and re-bark it in the first place, just
| shows that, in this instance, being fluent in 'tech' is not a
| panacea for gullibility.
| dewey wrote:
| I encountered several of these annoyances myself. Turning off
| auto-switching removed some issues with them randomly jumping
| between devices but now it's just more manual labor to connect
| them.
|
| Having had my share of annoying buzzing sounds I wrote these up a
| while ago, since I got them replaced 3 times I don't have any of
| these any more though:
|
| - https://annoying.technology/posts/abea6876cf4f2e13/
|
| - https://annoying.technology/posts/d3e6a4bce1e140b2/
|
| I'm still using them every day and despite the annoyances the
| small form factor and the sound quality are just good enough to
| put up with it.
| dsizzle wrote:
| I got two pair of AirPod Pros replaced twice too. I wonder if
| OP knows about the defect and program that Apple will replace
| them?
|
| https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...
| eadmund wrote:
| You know what always just works? Plugging headphones into a
| headphone jack.
|
| It also uses significantly more well-developed technology which
| does not require the use of rare earth metals and eye-wateringly
| complex semiconductor manufacturing processes.
|
| And those wired headphones will still be in use years or even
| decades after those AirPods have corroded to nasty plastic and
| metal lumps in a landfill somewhere.
| criddell wrote:
| You still have that option but you might need to buy an adapter
| which doesn't seem like such a big deal.
|
| Those wired headphones with noise cancelling and transparency
| modes probably do require eye-wateringly complex
| semiconductors.
| recursive wrote:
| You'll never need an adapter if you never buy an audio-
| producing device lacking a jack.
|
| Passive attenuation seems to be almost as good as active in
| my experience. And when you factor in that the headphones no
| longer need a battery, it's a net benefit in my book.
| criddell wrote:
| Most people aren't upgrading their phone for audio
| functionality (I believe cameras are the biggest driver of
| upgrades). The fact that you need an adapter to continue
| using your favorite headphones isn't going to raise many
| eyebrows among the general public, especially when they are
| mostly moving to wireless headphones anyway.
| juramento wrote:
| Yeah, I suggest trying -other- brands of bluetooth earbuds and
| then write a comparison. After experiencing more frequent and odd
| annoyances, for me AirPods really do "just work".
| kbos87 wrote:
| AirPods are great when they work, frustrating when they don't.
| Mine seem to be in a frequent pattern of not connecting to my
| phone automatically lately, and I couldn't tell you why. I don't
| feel like that was happening nearly as often a few months ago and
| I'm guessing it has something to do with the many updates and
| changes they've made to how Bluetooth connections between AirPods
| and iPhone seem to work.
|
| I've also experienced my fair share of quality issues - static
| coming through when noise cancelling operates, which Apple
| replaced my AirPods under warranty for.) Now I'm experiencing a
| very tough to describe effect where one AirPod seems to cut in
| and out of transparency mode repeatedly and in a subtle way.
|
| All in all they are a great product and I agree with some of the
| other commenters that for all their flaws they are miles ahead of
| anything else I've tried.
| namelosw wrote:
| I'm using AirPods Pro & Max and multiple Macs. They're
| frustrating sometimes, but still substantially better than most
| Bluetooth devices especially Bluetooth headphones.
|
| Bluetooth is such a crappy technology that blocks for better
| wireless implementations we could have.
| bredren wrote:
| I also think these are overall the best wireless headphones on
| the market. Not just in Bluetooth connectivity.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| AirPods _used_ to work. They no longer do.
|
| I got AirPods shortly after they were released and they were
| great. They were basic Bluetooth headphones with a decent,
| minimalistic UI that "just worked". They wouldn't try to be smart
| and just remain connected to the last device they were on, which
| worked well 90% of the time and the last 10% wasn't a problem
| because the connection process was very quick. Under the hood it
| was presumably just bog-standard Bluetooth which is good enough
| and can actually be reliable given my experience.
|
| But then Apple couldn't leave "well enough" alone and decided to
| over-engineer and fuck everything up. They tried to do the whole
| multi-device thing where it's supposed to automatically &
| seamlessly switch between them, and the problems in this article
| arise from this - presumably they've now overlaid an extra
| management layer & protocol on top of the existing Bluetooth.
| Even disabling the automatic switching feature doesn't help, as
| the extra complexity seems to still be involved in the background
| and makes once quick operations take much more time.
|
| Connecting to AirPods from the audio menu on another device now
| takes much longer and doesn't always work - sometimes it'll keep
| spinning and eventually time out for no reason. Connecting via
| the Bluetooth menu always works and is faster - I wonder why the
| audio menu doesn't just do whatever the Bluetooth menu does? Same
| story on iPhone - connecting via the audio menu is now error-
| prone and I sometimes have to try again using the Bluetooth
| settings.
|
| Also a problem I have which I suspect is an isolated bug but is
| still annoying is that since these new changes, I simply cannot
| get within range of my Macbook without my music playing though
| AirPods on an iPhone stopping. I suspect the automatic switching
| garbage they introduced, which despite being disabled, still
| plays a part. The AirPods don't even actually switch so it's not
| like the setting didn't apply, they remain connected to the
| original device but merely _pause_ , so in the end it's the worst
| of both worlds as it's not even giving me the extra functionality
| and just ruins something that used to work perfectly.
|
| Not to mention, in typical Apple fashion, all these overlay
| protocols have zero observability and you can't even tell what's
| going on beyond a spinner that eventually times out. Same with
| AirDrop, HomeKit, etc but at least those are used infrequently
| enough that they aren't too big of a deal in practice, but
| AirPods are particularly problematic especially in a post-
| pandemic, fully-remote world.
|
| Of course, given the recent changes to iPhones, wired headphones
| are no longer an option either unless you keep dongles around.
| They should've either switched the new iPhones to USB-C or added
| a Lightning port to Macbooks so that wired headphones could be
| used without a dongle you'll inevitably be missing when you need
| it.
| fab1an wrote:
| Yeah, they're great, but definitely not quite perfect / magical.
| Another thing I noticed is that using the noise cancelling
| ocassionally gives me terrible, luckily short-lived tinnitus.
| Never encountered that with other (over or on ear) noise
| cancelling devices.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Pretty sure I had that from my QC 35 II
| danielktdoranie wrote:
| Mine work great.
| Audiophilip wrote:
| For me personally, one of the most infuriating product design
| decisions that Apple made was the removal of the headphone jack
| from the iPhones and iPads. This is literally the only reason why
| I switched to Android, despite being a long-time Apple user.
| grujicd wrote:
| Too bad Android manufacturers want to emulate Apple even with
| bad decissions. Headhpone port is getting rarer with each new
| release. Samsung S21 line doesn't have it in any model afaik.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I stayed with Apple, went through three of the super-fragile
| 3.5mm adaptors, and now am on a third-party "heavy duty"
| adaptor. Let's see if this lasts.
| ianthiel wrote:
| I've experienced most of these issues. Also, it appears this
| blogpost is from the future?
| scrollaway wrote:
| A list of a variety of bugs isn't what I expected from the title.
|
| Airpods are nice, but outside the Apple ecosystem they're
| horrendous (and somehow still better than most alternatives...).
| The proprietary chip / protocol in use makes me sad, but what
| makes me even sadder is that they're not actually even working on
| supporting them as a good product on Android.
|
| Maybe it makes economical sense but it's really sad that we got
| to the point that a company can release hardware and go out of
| their way not to support a significant amount of potential
| customers. This feels like what anti-monopoly regs try to
| prevent, but it's not a monopoly either so ...
|
| Also, the microphone quality is a lot worse than people say it is
| (I'm using the Pro version). They are barely usable for calls in
| a loud environment.
| recursive wrote:
| Apple has always gone to lengths to prevent their products from
| interacting outside their walled garden. The last straw for me
| (more than a decade ago) was when a firmware update closed a
| gap I was using to load music onto my ipod without going
| through the hateful ITunes synchronization process.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I had one pair of AirPods and left the charging case on a plane;
| getting a replacement case was a pain because I had to prove the
| AirPods were mine. When the battery died in them I gave up on
| them completely. Battery life too short, too easy to lose, and
| environmentally not sound.
| loevborg wrote:
| I don't have AirPods, but every time I've had a meeting with
| someone who does, the microphone quality has been terrible, even
| in quiet environments.
|
| The sounds has been muffled to the point where, while I could
| still understand the person, it took me 50% more cognitive effort
| to make out what they were saying because of the low quality.
| It's almost always much better when I ask them to switch to the
| built-in MacBook Pro mic (which is decent).
|
| It's an insidious problem. People like their setup because _they_
| can hear you well. But what they don 't realize is that they are
| themselves barely understandable. They don't hear themselves and
| people aren't used to giving them feedback.
|
| Is it just me?
| vxNsr wrote:
| It's not just you, but please let them know. I was experiencing
| this as the AirPods user but wasn't aware, it's kinda hard to
| know because even if you turn on "listen to this device" it's
| not quite what zoom/teams sends.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I have the "listen for Hey Siri" thing enabled on my iPhone and
| also my MacBook. I would like to be able to use this to start
| playing music on the Macbook. But when I say hey siri, and both
| devices are in range, they both answer, then the macbook shuts
| off, and siri proceeds only on the iPhone.
| pjerem wrote:
| If you think you have Bluetooth issues with AirPods, just try
| Apple Watch. It works, yes, but rarely.
| londons_explore wrote:
| When one customer finds 7 gripes, and they aren't an outlier, the
| product is bad.
|
| A good product would have 1 gripe found by 1 in 7 customers...
| jmacd wrote:
| There is something weird about the AirPods Pro product line. I
| think a lot of us who are very technology focused can appreciate
| the marvel of engineering that they are. Long battery life,
| excellent noise cancellation, the right weight, water resistant,
| etc.
|
| By many of my friends and my wife, all of who work in non tech
| fields but otherwise are 100% apple device people, all seem
| pretty much not impressed by them.
|
| For Christmas I got my wife a pair of Nothing headphones. They
| are 1/3 the price and I figured it was worth a try since she
| basically just stopped using her AirPod Pros.
|
| Now she raves about these cheap Nothing headphones. Tells her
| friends they are better. Less obtrusive, clear so they stand out
| less, good audio quality, and they don't try to magically switch
| devices, they just wait for you to decide what you want them
| connected to.
|
| They support AAC on Apple, but have not great Bluetooth Audio
| support for Android.
| openknot wrote:
| The price of the AirPods Pro ($329 USD, though they go on sale
| for a significant discount quite a bit) might be a reason.
|
| I purchased no-name Bluetooth wireless earphones for ~$55 USD
| before the AirPods Pro, and they were shockingly good for the
| price (super small, lightweight, long battery; similar
| observations that your wife reported about the Nothing
| headphones). I got the AirPods Pro after that, expecting a
| massive upgrade, but really the only significant difference was
| the noise cancellation (which is why I still use them
| primarily). The easier switching between Apple devices is nice
| too, but for my use case, I mostly use the AirPods on my phone
| anyways.
|
| So for the price differential between generic headphones, I
| would expect a massive upgrade, but now it feels like a nice
| upgrade but pretty expensive for what it does (especially since
| I'll have to consider replacing them once the battery
| degrades).
| dvtrn wrote:
| Very similar story with cheaper no-name bluetooth wireless
| earbuds. Honestly..despite the other complaints in the thread
| here about regular bluetooth earbuds...I've had a MUCH better
| experience with them than the airpods at doing one thing:
| being wireless earbuds.
| supernintendo wrote:
| I've had the polar opposite experience with the Nothing Ear 1:
|
| - I can't seem to use them for extended periods of time without
| running into this issue where one earbud stops playing audio
| entirely and I have to fully reset them to fix it.
|
| - The audio completely cuts out every 5-10 minutes for a brief
| (like under a second) moment, leading to these annoying gaps in
| whatever I'm listening to.
|
| - After pairing, the audio will sometimes be extremely low
| quality, output in mono or not output sound at all; usually
| unpairing and pairing fixes this.
|
| - Firmware updates have done nothing to resolve these issues.
|
| I tried reaching out to Nothing support to try to return them
| but have been unable to get a response. These headphones are
| unusable and probably the worst tech product I've ever
| purchased.
| pwenzel wrote:
| Thank you, I've had my eye on those and was searching this
| thread for just such a review!
| orkon wrote:
| I seem to experience troubles like that with any kind of
| Bluetooth devices. E.g., sometimes they don't connect or
| disconnect or lag. At this point, I am suspicious of the entire
| Bluetooth technology. The same is with WiFi actually: it does
| work well most of the time but sometimes it does not (for
| whatever reasons, bugs? changes in environment?).
| ConceptJunkie wrote:
| I find Bluetooth to be the flakiest of the common technologies
| I use. There are just way too many times that it just doesn't
| work for no discernable reason.
|
| I have 3 cars with Bluetooth and they all have their quirks,
| but they generally work. The Ford Fusion, which boasts the Sync
| system "by Microsoft" is the worst, though. It will always show
| the little Bluetooth icon soon after starting the car, but when
| you try to switch to your device, it says there is no Bluetooth
| device and I have to connect manually by selecting the phone
| (which Ford lovingly places behind about 8 knob turns and
| clicks). And of course, sometimes it simply refuses to
| acknowledge there is a phone at all, so we keep an analog
| audio-in cord handy.
|
| And I have had a couple of different Bluetooth phones. My
| previous phone was a Samsung Galaxy 4 Mini that I replaced
| about 6 months ago with an A52. Bluetooth always worked fine
| with both phones, but again, there are quirks. In my Honda
| Civic, the old phone would automatically connect to the car's
| system and start playing whatever music I'd left off within
| about 20-30 seconds, whereas with the new (and much nicer)
| Samsung A52, it takes 2 or 3 minutes... or until I get
| impatient and select the phone manually.
| dep_b wrote:
| I had AirPods since the launch day. The battery was not great to
| begin with and they decayed pretty fast. After that they're
| basically trash as replacing the batteries is about as expensive
| as buying new ones.
|
| I'm back to EarPods now. Don't listen to music on my phone
| anyway.
| glxxyz wrote:
| I've given up with AirPods Pro. I had to replace them several
| times during the warranty period (once was a recall). Even when
| working correctly they would have annoying connection problems,
| for several conference calls I had to switch back to an old
| school wired pair, which just always works.
|
| My attempt to have the case (which only showed life while
| connected to power) resulted in Apple throwing away my working
| AirPods and trying to upsell me a whole new case + 2 AirPods (at
| above market price, with no charging cable, and a shorter
| warranty).
|
| If you do still have AirPods out of warranty- a support adviser
| admitted to me that they don't actually service them, and they
| don't replace one component alone- if you send them in for repair
| they just toss the whole thing and sell you a new set. So if only
| one piece is broken just report it as lost and they'll charge you
| to replace it.
| Me1000 wrote:
| I usually dont buy AppleCare for my products, but I figured
| since this was a 1st gen AirPods Pro and they were so small
| AppleCare was justified this time. And boy am I glad I did,
| I've had my AirPods Pro replaced like five or six times now.
|
| Issues I've experienced:
|
| - Loud random static noise (usually for about .25 seconds).
| It's like someone screaming in your ear. I've experienced this
| now with TWO pairs.
|
| - Noise canceling/transparency mode just stopping working when
| you touch them.
|
| - "Hey Siri" just stopped responding (not usually a big deal,
| but that's usually how I make calls)
|
| - One pair just stopped working entirely. Wouldn't charge or
| anything.
|
| - Each ear would get out of sync until you took them out of
| your ears.
|
| AirPods Pro are by far the worst Apple product that I
| purchased. I regret buying them. I suspect the regular AirPods
| don't have most of these issues since I think the issues were
| mostly related to feature specific to the Pros.
|
| I can't imagine how angry I would be if I hadn't purchased
| AppleCare with them, so many defects.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| Annoyance 1 - you can configure auto-connect per device. I have
| three computers and an iPhone that have been paired with my
| AirPods. I only have my iPhone configured to connect to my
| AirPods automatically.
|
| Annoyance 2 - since you hear the "connect" tone when the AirPods
| connect to a device, my guess is the author's AirPods have
| connected to a device they are not looking at. This is what was
| happening to me before I realized the auto connection was
| configurable.
|
| Annoyance 3 - this happens for my other Bluetooth headphones that
| have a microphone when using Mac OS as well. It's a Mac OS issue.
| I've noticed with a recent update that it happens less
| frequently. The fix is to set the audio output to the computer
| speakers, then back to the AirPods.
|
| Annoyance 5 - yeah, switching takes time. Based on my experience
| with Bluetooth devices, I'm not sure how much this is AirPods
| specific. I ended up buying a pair of the Sony WH-1000XM4
| headphones because they can connect to two Bluetooth devices.
| This solved the switching delay, with the caveat that the mic on
| the WH-1000XM4 is not great so I also bought a cheap USB mic for
| meetings.
| cybertim wrote:
| And to add to this, i learned to not use the 'bluetooth' icon
| to manage the AirPods, instead use the 'triangle with broadcast
| signal'-icon found next to the volume in the control centre or
| on many other different locations on your ipad, iphone or apple
| tv.
|
| Just turn off the auto-connect feature and start using that
| icon, all the mentioned 'annoyances' will go away :)
| Veen wrote:
| > triangle with broadcast signal
|
| The AirPlay icon.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
| guideline...
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| I wonder, does "just work" mean work perfectly 100.000% of the
| time. Or is 99% of the time close enough?
| philjohn wrote:
| re: annoyance 1, there is a setting to disable this behaviour
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Without Apple device a firmware upgrade is not possible.
| simonista wrote:
| Two suggestions that might help OP with some of these annoyances:
|
| - See the "Turn off automatic switching" section of
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212204, to take manual control
| of when they switch devices
|
| - In System Preferences -> Notifications & Focus you can switch
| any apps notifications from "Alerts" to "Banners" which will make
| them go away automatically when ignored.
| JeremyHerrman wrote:
| Unfortunately the nearby headphone notifications are not
| generated by an app, so you can't use the normal notification
| banner settings. The only way I've found to disable them is to
| go to Bluetooth preferences (while the headphones are
| connected), click options next to the headphones, and change
| the "Connect to This Mac" dropdown from "Automatically" to
| "When Last Connected to This Mac".
|
| I'm not satisfied with this solution since I enjoy the
| automatic switching between devices, but I'm driven crazy by
| the notifications that pop up on my mac literally as I'm
| listening to music with those headphones on my iPhone. C'mon
| Apple - this is all within your ecosystem!
| gman83 wrote:
| My airpods broke so I bought some EUR25 Bluetooth earbuds and
| honestly they work just as well for my needs. The best thing is
| not worrying about losing or breaking them.
| kop316 wrote:
| Heh, I got my spouse a pair of AirPods, and long ago she went
| back to a pair of wired earbuds due to various issues with them.
| IIRC, noiuse cancelling didn't work well and causes a lot of
| sudio issues, there were connection issues all the time. The
| cheap wired heaphones work much better for her.
|
| Out of curiousity, does anyone have a good recommendation for a
| good pair of 3.5mm wired headphones with a microphone? I still
| have an old pair of Bose Sport headphones, but they are only
| wireless now.
| lowercased wrote:
| I generally like the QC20, but I think those were recently
| discontinued. The mic wasn't _the best_ , but for regular
| conversations generally didn't have problems if I clipped the
| mic to a shirt. If it bounced around and rustled on a shirt
| that wasn't good, but that's going to be a problem with any mic
| on a wire, I'd think.
| kop316 wrote:
| Yeah it seems that all of the (in-ear) Bose wired headphones
| were discontinued.
| falcolas wrote:
| The market, that ill-tempered, irrational screwball, has
| spoken, and its says that everyone wants wireless
| headphones. The manufacturers have listened, and fervently
| believe that you're wrong if you disagree.
| falcolas wrote:
| Sennheiser Momentum.
|
| Or if you want a boom mic, some of the "Pro" or "G" branded
| logitech headsets.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Still loving my cords and headphone jack...
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| The list of phones that still have a headphone jack is ever
| dwindling.
| blueflow wrote:
| Best thing: They are dumb. They don't even need a power supply!
| They don't have many ways to go wrong.
| thefz wrote:
| A million times. The "inconvenient" audio jack+cord does not
| run on batteries that will end in landfills. And it's barely an
| inconvenience at all.
| martneumann wrote:
| I'm not using Apple ear phones, but wireless head phones are
| seriously practical. Anytime I have to use my corded ones when
| walking the dog I get reminded of how they are actually pretty
| handy.
|
| Still use cord ones in other circumstances. When lying down,
| for example. I like to have the choice at least.
| pluc wrote:
| how the hell does a list of annoyances about a product makes it
| to the #1 of HN
|
| oh Apple I get it
|
| you people need to diversify
| recursive wrote:
| We also have Tesla annoyances and NFT haters. That's pretty
| much all I could hope for.
| BenderV wrote:
| Agree with the point of the blog, but the biggest hurdle for me:
|
| If you do a short and intensive sprint, Airpods usually will
| register a click and skip to the next song...
| faebi wrote:
| Wow, this was a perfect description of my experience. An
| additional factor is the release date of the used devices. My
| experience improved by a large margin when I replaced my late
| 2018 Macbook and my 2019 iPad. Another example are calls which
| ring on multiple devices. I'm using my iPad and somebody calls me
| on my iPhone, but the iPhone sends the call also to the iPad. The
| same when I have MS Teams on my Macbook and my iPhone. Once I put
| the Airpods in my ears anything can and does happen. Sometimes
| one Airpod is lost in these situations.
| graiz wrote:
| Bluetooth is so broken at a deep and fundamental level. We should
| really have a low-energy wifi protocol. The listed problems are
| just the tip of the iceberg.
|
| The fact that my headphones can't be simultaneously connected to
| both my phone and my computer is ridiculous. The connectivity is
| awful. The latency of connection and disconnection is
| embarrassing. On top of that Apple has the worst UI to handle all
| of of the weird things that can happen.
| shakna wrote:
| > We should really have a low-energy wifi protocol.
|
| HaLow? [0] It's been around since 2016, but never saw any great
| adoption. Which is a huge pity as it can actually achieve some
| crazy good speeds for such a low power draw. (300+ Mbit/s).
|
| There's also LoRa [1], which _has_ a fair bit of things
| implemented using it, but unfortunately it's super slow, and
| has some serious issues around acks that make it unusable for
| something like wireless buds.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa
| howinteresting wrote:
| Bluetooth LE is a completely different protocol from Bluetooth
| classic.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Here's a few more:
|
| - Airpods sometimes do not charge when in the case. Usually need
| to pull it out and put back in again.
|
| - Knowing what airpod(s) and case are charging. The UI on the
| phone, the open the case sliding window, the widgets, and the
| case light itself are not very useful.
|
| - Spatial audio working on some apps but you're not usually aware
| if it's on until you tilt an ear one way to confirm.
|
| - Out of ear detection sometimes doesn't work well and will drain
| the respective airpod.
|
| - No preference list of what devices should have precedence over
| others. Especially when working on 2+ devices.
|
| - Hand-off calls is a weird UX. Why would I answer a phone on my
| iPhone by default when it's clear I have airpods connected and
| being used?
|
| - The transparency / noise cancelling dance. Not sure if there's
| a preference, but it feels random which one is on by default.
| Always do a double check at the gym or when running as outside
| noise sounds loud.
|
| Still the best headphones and experience in my opinion and have
| enabled me to achieve a hell of a lot more because of them.
| Easily worth the price for how much I use them.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Out of ear detection is my biggest gripe. If I take them out
| quick and place them on a table because I don't have the case
| handy, they try to reconnect when I'm receiving a call or using
| audio in any way without them. I have to look for the icon in
| control center and manually remove them. It's incredibly
| annoying.
|
| I also noticed the membrane sounds like it's getting blown out
| when they attempt to deal with loud noises in the environment.
| hbn wrote:
| Am I crazy or have Airpods gotten worse recently? I didn't get
| mine until recently (November?) and for the first month or so
| they kinda did work perfectly. The auto-pairing was annoying
| like the article mentions (switching from my Mac where I want
| it to my phone cause I pulled it out to look at something), but
| I turned that off and it was all good. But at some point in
| December I started constantly getting the issue where one
| doesn't have audio playing and I have to put it in the case to
| reset it, sometimes the tap gestures don't work, it'll pause
| when I pull one out (as intended) but doesn't unpause when I
| put it back in, etc. I wonder if they pushed some bad firmware.
|
| Oh, also here's another complaint: when your Airpods are
| connected to your iPhone, they HAVE to be the microphone. Which
| is annoying because for one thing, their microphone is way
| worse than the one built into your phone, and the other thing
| is in winter I usually have my AirPods concealed under my toque
| so my ears don't freeze off, but that means literally no sound
| will make it to the microphone, and I'm just SOL if I want to
| use my microphone (and when it's freezing out, I'm less likely
| to want to try typing a message with the keyboard, so it would
| be nice to just send a voice message to someone, but I can't).
| Of course no one at Apple will ever experience this cause
| they're all in California!
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Clearly, no one at Apple considered cold weather when
| designing the pinch based Airpod Pro interface. Just about
| impossible with gloves.
| hbn wrote:
| Yeah, that's actually one of the reasons I didn't go for
| the 3rd gen even though they were out when I got mine
|
| I can't use that through a toque, whereas with the 1st gen
| I can double tap the side of my head through the toque and
| it pauses
| saurik wrote:
| Yeah: the tapping interface for the original AirPods is
| one of the most interesting mechanisms I'd ever seen,
| both obvious in retrospect and yet not at all obvious. I
| think of it as one of the more "inspired" mechanisms I've
| ever seen in such a product... and then they replaced it
| with "the kind of thing an idiot might have built".
|
| And like, I know the pinch mechanism _does_ have some
| smarts to it: it isn 't even really a button, and the
| thing you think you are pinching is haptic feedback; but
| that frankly just makes it _worse_ as the _only reason_
| why the pinch feature is better than the tap feature is
| because the tap feature had an unfortunate requirement
| that you had to have it in your ear to use it (and to the
| extent to which it would accidentally work when not in
| your ear was, fwiw, annoying)...
|
| ...but then, for some inexplicable reason, they decided
| that the pinch feature also shouldn 't work if the AirPod
| isn't in your ear, only, due to the dynamic haptic
| feature, squeezing it suddenly isn't a button anymore and
| I find myself just squeezing it harder, twisting it
| around trying to find the button, until the part of my
| brain that knows how it works turns on and goes "there
| isn't really a button there" and I go into problem-
| solving mode to figure out I need to put it in my ear
| again for it to work.
|
| The tapping interface was (/is, as I still have them)
| incredibly intuitive on that front: the part of my brain
| that wanted to interact with it fundamentally got that
| "you have to put this in your ear in order to tap it",
| and I don't ever use them wrong. But with the new pinch
| interface, I've had a pair ever since they came out (and
| now have a pair of the AirPod 3, which I don't like
| anywhere near as the old ones) and I continue to
| routinely attempt to pinch them when they aren't in my
| head.
|
| What is crazy to me is that I've complained about this to
| various people and the response that I tend to get--both
| from people "in the know" as well as end users giving me
| this exact complaint back--is that a sizable number of
| customers apparently really really _really_ hate tapping
| their head: they find the action annoying and the sound
| it makes in their skull / ear canal unfortunate. The
| pinch interface is simply sufficiently boring that
| everyone seems to be willing to do it without squinching.
| :/
| dont__panic wrote:
| I really wish they'd add an LED per AirPod in the case, as an
| easy visual indicator that they're properly seated and
| charging. I don't know if I'm especially oily or something but
| both pairs of AirPods I've used have had charging issues in the
| case after just a few months, and it's so frustrating that it's
| almost impossible to tell if they're _both_ charging in there.
|
| Nothing like going out for a run and figuring out 50 feet down
| the road that your audio is only playing through one bud.
| mns wrote:
| Ha, the preference list is interesting, I don't know how some
| stuff works for Apple when connecting the AirPods even with
| multiple apple ids. I had my girlfriend connect her AirPods to
| my iPad to watch a movie on the plane. A couple of weeks later
| I was using airplay to stream a game on the TV, while my gf was
| in another room wanting to watch something on her phone
| connected to her apple id. All of the sudden sound goes off on
| the tv, and after a couple of seconds stream is paused. She
| comes in that the game was playing on her AirPods. I have no
| clue how the AirPods connected to my laptop after 1 month of
| her using her airpods only with her devices.
| Lamad123 wrote:
| 28 January 2022?! First time in my life reading something before
| it was published!
| d23 wrote:
| I have many of these problems plus: the advertised tap-to-control
| behavior never seems to work when I want it to. It only activates
| when my AirPods are misinterpreting my adjusting them as trying
| to pause what I'm listening to. And, of course, tapping again
| doesn't restart playback.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| Airpods Max are a disaster! I had trouble with bt range on my
| qc35 ii, switched to sony and will never go back. just wish I
| could return my airpod max, they're engraved
| imron wrote:
| Try using them on Linux. Then they really don't just work.
|
| As headphones yes but good luck using the mic.
| davidbenhaim wrote:
| deleted
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > My bose headphones that used to work great now don't work as
| well as airpods.
|
| My _AirPods_ experience has also declined the past couple of
| years so I think it 's just over-engineering and ruining the
| perfectly functional Bluetooth and/or audio stack rather than
| an intentional attempt at ruining non-Apple headphones.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Can people stop overusing and throwing the word "monopoly"
| every time they're not happy with an Apple service or product?
|
| What's next? Apple is monopoly on ARM? Smartwatches? Monitors?
| Touchpads?
|
| It sounds like a cheap internet attempt to bash a company using
| a lately popular but completely irrelevant word in relation to
| AirPods.
|
| I use both AirPods and Bose QC35 II for years, everyday for
| hours, without any issues. I haven't had my Bose quality of
| experience degrade, so I don't know what you're on about.
|
| You enable pairing mode, select your headphones in list of
| Bluetooth devices, that's it.
|
| They even swap between Mac and iPhone without much issues.
| soared wrote:
| Apple has not degraded 3p Bluetooth - that is bullshit. My Bose
| work just the same as they did years ago and behave similarly
| to my AirPods.
|
| You cannot expect Apple to not develop better features in their
| own products.
|
| This is not anything close to monopoly and it's wild to say
| that.
| [deleted]
| tksb wrote:
| > ...Airpods have a ton of extra UX settings in iOS that are
| not available to other bluetooth headsets.
|
| To be fair, AirPods have "a ton" of hardware capabilities built
| in that are also not technically available, but that's kind of
| exactly the point, right?
| jon889 wrote:
| It would be nice if audio from all your devices played at once
| through AirPods instead of it trying to switch by guessing which
| one you want to listen to. In exactly the same way you can hear
| all your devices at once if not using headphones, the advantage
| being only you can hear them and not anyone else.
|
| Eg if watching TV on a laptop with headphones but you get sent a
| TikTok or short clip on your phone it plays over the TV and you
| just tune out the TV for a few seconds like you would if your
| were at home watching TV while using your phone.
| sancho_panza wrote:
| It's so nice being able to bt connect to my Apple watch for the
| lovely ambience of tick, tock, tick.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I bought a pair of AirPods Pro and I loved how they sounded but
| hated how they made me look, because my skin is very dark and the
| little white things stood out like sore thumbs on Zoom calls. I
| returned them for the Jabra Elite 85t which are less comfortable
| in my ears but which match my skin color much better. Apple lost
| more than $249 of revenue because they don't make them in black.
|
| There's something to be said for considering the diversity of
| your market.
| mbreese wrote:
| Annoyance 1 actually has a setting. You can setup the AirPods to
| actively switch to a preferred source (your phone), or stay
| connected to your computer. This one bugged the hell out of me
| for months before I found the option.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/switch-airpods-betwee...
|
| _> To prevent AirPods from automatically switching between
| devices, go to Settings > Bluetooth. Tap the Actions Available
| button next to the name of your AirPods, tap Connect to This
| iPhone, then tap When Last Connected to This iPhone._
| medbrane wrote:
| Note that you have to configure that on each device separately.
| mbreese wrote:
| Very true, and it's not very intuitive, but at least the
| setting is available.
|
| I guess that's the problem with "it just works" magic -- when
| it doesn't work, you need to have a few settings available.
| And unfortunately, those are rarely included.
| nemacol wrote:
| It is my opinion that bluetooth headphones are garbage.
|
| I have several - cheap, expensive, ear buds, over ear. They all
| suffer from issues between devices, one device out of range weird
| noises, can't decide which device to connect to. Some of the
| issues I blame on my phone (Pixel3a).
|
| I spend so much time walking around my house turning BT off on
| all but one device so I can go outside and listen to something.
|
| Much easier to plug my wired headphones into the device I am
| using. It is simple, reliable, and I don't have to charge my
| wired headphones.
|
| For me BT headphones go mostly unused except for
| yardwork/woodshop time, where the wire poses extra annoyances.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| BT is garbage except for very simple products like mice: poorly
| thought out, even more poorly implemented, generally brittle.
|
| And the audio quality is compromised, although aptX Lossless
| may finally start changing that.
| tapoxi wrote:
| I'm a Bose QC-35 II convert. Slide forward on the power button
| and it'll switch the paired device. Also excellent sound
| quality and ridiculous battery life.
| AndrewWarner wrote:
| Most of my frustrations with AirPods could be eliminated if they
| connected to multiple devices at once. The back-and-forth does
| not work well.
| brenelson wrote:
| Try getting another set of Bluetooth earphones, then weigh in the
| quality.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I would posit that the AirPods _used_ to be the most magical
| "Just Works" Apple product I've ever owned, but over-time as
| Apple has added more features and complications to them, they've
| lost the magic.
|
| Those first generation AirPods were a thing of beauty. Newer ones
| now are technically better--better sounding, longer lasting, ANC,
| etc. But I've experienced a lot of the same annoyances that OP is
| complaining about.
|
| I still love them, but the experience is definitely a little
| fiddly these days.
| cabirum wrote:
| I want so much the wireless headphones fad to go away.
|
| When batteries deplete in the middle of a meeting, what are you
| supposed to do? Connect a spare pair via usb dongle?
| mmcdermott wrote:
| I don't generally struggle with battery in meetings (I
| prioritize battery life when buying ear buds), but I keep a set
| of wired earbuds with a USB-C in my laptop case as a backup.
| They don't come out often, but they have gotten me through a
| couple of meeting marathons.
| myko wrote:
| After replacing mine 3x and my latest Pros just shitting the bed
| (the left one has a weird echo sound in it, but the Apple Store
| says it's fine so they won't do anything) I'm done with AirPods
|
| Hopefully the Samsung Buds I have ordered are better
| qwertox wrote:
| My "it just works"-setup is the following: all devices are
| connected via a cable to a cheap audio mixer, including one
| Bluetooth receiver to which my phone can connect to.
|
| The mixer has a long cable to a well positioned spot in the
| apartment and the cable ends with a Bluetooth transmitter. A
| small (4cm x 4cm x 1cm) Bluetooth receiver has wired in-ear
| headphones connected to it and that's it.
|
| This receiver has small a magnet glued to it, and the desk has
| another magnet glued to it. The USB-charging cable also has a
| magnetic adapter so that the micro-USB end is left in the
| receiver, and when I leave the desk I just have to pull the
| receiver way, which stops the loading process since the USB cable
| is also easily separated. When I get back to the desk I just snap
| the receiver to the magnet of the desk, and if I feel that I
| should charge it (no issues with using it 6 hours without
| charging it), I just snap the magnetic end of the cable to the
| receiver.
|
| Every device which wants to send me audio can do it, and I can
| move freely around the apartment without any interruption.
|
| When I go out I use another Bluetooth headset connected to the
| phone.
|
| The annoyances listed in the article would drive me absolutely
| mad.
|
| ---
|
| Basically 3 of these: https://www.amazon.de/1mii-Bluetooth-
| Transmitter-Dual-Verbin... (one for phone, long cable sender,
| magnetic receiver)
|
| one of these: https://www.amazon.de/Moukey-Mischpult-Mikrofon-
| Keyboard-B%C...
|
| one of these: https://www.amazon.de/JEEREE-Magnetisches-
| Schnellladung-Magn...
|
| and all the cables needed to connect the devices to the mixer.
|
| I have this setup for some years now, so my gadgets are not the
| ones listed here, but an older equivalent. APTX-LL removes any
| noticeable delay between video and audio.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| Annoyance 8: I get anxious when I get on a video call and see the
| other person is wearing airpods because they're always cutting in
| and out.
| bironran wrote:
| My one mega-annoyance is no mute button. Not being able to mute a
| Zoom call (or a phone call) using just the Airpod hardware
| interface is... annoying. I don't use Siri that often and would
| honestly remap long click as mute/unmute. I'm willing to pay
| premium for that feature alone. Hell, I'm willing to subscribe
| that feature. Apple, "take my money", just give me a mute button
| that works without the phone (or watch, or laptop).
| ZitchDog wrote:
| The worst part about the click is that it hangs up your call. I
| was on hold with the IRS for 3 hours and hung up on the
| representative when I adjusted my airpod. Rage inducing!
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I generally enjoy my AirPods. They are occasionally quirky, but
| most of the time they really do "just work" for me. The
| annoyances are annoying when they happen, though.
|
| The strangest part is that the annoyances aren't getting any
| better over time. At first I assumed that they were growing pains
| of an early product launch. Yet now we're years into the AirPods
| experience and they continue to be just as quirky as when I first
| got them.
|
| Apple seems so hot or cold on fixing their own bugs. Certain bugs
| get rapidly patched in the next iOS or Mac software release.
| Other bugs languish for what feels like forever. Do Apple execs
| just not use AirPods? Are they using a different configuration or
| hardware combination that doesn't have these bugs? Have they just
| trained themselves to overlook the bugs because the workarounds
| have become a reflex? I can't imagine working at any tech company
| where one of the flagship products had such a high rate of
| annoyances without having a lot of engineers diverted to
| replicating, diagnosing, and fixing it ASAP.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| In my experience, the annoyances actually get worse over time.
|
| I got my AirPods back when the original ones were released and
| the experience probably was as good as physically possible
| (short of including multiple radios so they can maintain
| connections to multiple devices in parallel and simply mix the
| audio client-side).
|
| They then (2 years ago?) released this new feature where
| AirPods could automatically switch between all your devices
| which is just too slow and is more of an annoyance in practice,
| but even disabling the behavior made the existing experience
| much worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30085538
| Gigachad wrote:
| Yeah I totally know what you are talking about with it being
| too slow and unreliable. But it's also the primary reason I
| use airpods. They are the only device I know of that let me
| almost seamlessly switch between my macbook, iphone, ipad,
| and while running they connect direct to my watch. It's worth
| so much to me that I don't even consider any competitors.
|
| And I will put up with a lot of quirkyness or waiting for
| connection to have that.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Whoa I thought that was just me. It used to be pretty easy to
| switch the device AirPods are connected to. Now, AirPods
| connect to the right device in 50% of the cases, 30% of cases
| they do not, but I can click connect on the new device and it
| works, remaining 20% the only way to get things working is
| either manually disconnecting on the device they attach to or
| putting them in the case and trying to get happy scenario
| again.
|
| To summarize, things are generally better but way less
| consistent.
| indemnity wrote:
| It's not just the AirPods, the experience is as crappy on
| the AirPods Pro and Max.
| hughrr wrote:
| The experience is mostly crappy when you involve macOS.
| No problems moving around iOS here with my Pro's.
| [deleted]
| liber8 wrote:
| I agree. When I got my first pair roughly two years ago
| (after years of using various versions bluetooth earbuds you
| could buy on Amazon for $20) they seemed like magic. Take
| them out, they automatically and nearly instantly connect,
| and almost never had any issues.
|
| I just bought v3, and while the sound is noticeably better,
| the connections are all over the place. At least once a day,
| the connection simply dies. Multiple times a day it decides
| to connect to another device that I'm not using. If you
| answer a call and then put an airpod in your ear, it's got
| about a 50% chance of connecting, after a multi-second delay.
| Sometimes it says its connected, but it's not, so the iphone
| isn't emitting sound from its speakers and nothing is coming
| out of the airpods, leaving me sounding like an idiot
| repeating "can you hear me now?" until I manually kill the
| connection and use the built in speakers. Absolutely
| infuriating.
| a-dub wrote:
| i don't know if it's limitations of the bluetooth protocol, or
| necessary optimizations in order to maintain battery life, but
| in my experience most battery operated bluetooth devices seem
| to have pairing issues.
|
| i suspect that it's probably a combination of three things:
|
| 1) reliability is hard when on a power budget. if power was
| free, they'd just always be looking to renegotiate, but since
| power is limited, they probably are very miserly about this
| process which leads to getting stuck in states that require
| power cycling to force retries.
|
| 2) interoperability is hard with open standards, especially old
| standards that are complicated.
|
| 3) open standards come with limitations that sometimes cannot
| be worked around. (this is where i'm surprised apple hasn't
| just cheated as they usually do when open standards result in
| ux they find unacceptable, this leads me to believe the problem
| itself, of distributed consensus between multiple wireless low
| power devices with potentially noisy links, is actually _very_
| hard)
|
| when you think about it, the technology behind wireless earbuds
| is nothing short of astounding. they're little battery operated
| wireless two node compute clusters that can literally fit in
| your ears, stream audio and maintain nearly perfect
| synchronization when rendering that audio in the most absolute
| basic use case.
| asdff wrote:
| >The strangest part is that the annoyances aren't getting any
| better over time.
|
| Like most of what apple releases lately. People claim apple
| maps is better now, but its still missing a lot of data around
| the LA area especially with local business that Google maps has
| no issue crawling, and generally shoddy navigational asks (like
| unprotected lefts). Siri has also gotten no better since its
| release 10 years ago now (wow), if anything it defers to
| coarsly googling my terms more and throwing me the first couple
| irrelevant results as a response. If I wanted to do that I
| would open a browser and touch to talk into the search field.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I don't care, I want google maps and I want the default to be
| google maps, but there's no way of setting that, I even tried
| uninstalling apple maps and now when I click on addresses it
| prompts me to reinstall it.
|
| Didn't Microsoft get done for antitrust for similar dark
| patterns in the late 90s?
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| I hear you, though Google Maps still seems terrible with
| unprotected lefts in LA. Just yesterday, it directed me to
| make one one onto a six-lane road.
| asdff wrote:
| They seem rarer for me with Google maps. Imo I think
| rerouting is better with google maps as well. If I get an
| instruction like that I'll ignore it and turn right and
| Google will pick up a new routing before I get to the next
| intersection. If I do it with Apple it might ask me to do a
| u turn after a right turn and still try and make that left.
| To be fair I don't use apple maps at all anymore but I see
| it fail horribly whenever my partner uses their phone for
| navigation. Its missing a bunch of local businesses and
| restaurants and sometimes looses the GPS lock on the phone
| too (like assuming you are on the parallel road to the
| freeway and trying to route you back on rather than
| correctly assuming you are still on the 5 and didn't
| teleport onto surface streets)
| lqr wrote:
| If by "unprotected" you mean "no green arrow", in what part
| of the LA area is it feasible to avoid unprotected lefts?
| They are all over the place in my neighborhood.
|
| If by "unprotected" you mean a left from a stop sign onto a
| street that does not stop, then I agree. They can be almost
| impossible. Waze was especially notorious for them a few
| years ago.
| asdff wrote:
| The latter I mean. "Take a left on pico from this stop
| sign, hold your breath and good luck, no one will let you
| in." Somehow google maps ignores these and prefers me to
| make a right out of a parking lot or a stop signed street
| and take my lefts at lights (or off the major arterial)
| seems like its just a simple set of rules you can apply to
| your navigation algorithm to avoid these entirely, but the
| fact that they are still there years later tells me the
| Apple maps designers really don't care too much.
| deergomoo wrote:
| The maps themselves are fantastic if you live somewhere
| covered by the latest round of updates. I think the business
| data will _always_ be trailing Google Maps though. Google has
| their entire search engine to grab data, they crowdsource
| data via app notifications, and in cases where businesses are
| updating their own info it wouldn't surprise me if they do it
| on Google Maps and just don't bother anywhere else.
|
| Siri does continue to be lame though. Driving is the one
| place I would want to use it for anything beyond timers and
| reminders, but I don't dare because I can't check to see if
| it's doing anything dumb. Last time I tried to text someone
| while driving using Siri, it got picked up by my Apple Watch,
| which worked great, but also my phone, which picked the same
| message up and promptly sent it to a totally different
| contact.
| dannyw wrote:
| Apple seems to only improve peripherals (like the AirPods) with
| new hardware releases; not software updates. They make money
| based on units of AirPods moved.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Not strictly true in this case. Apple added a lot of
| additional functionality to the airpod pros over time. The
| tuning is hidden under the accessibility settings, but it's
| there.
| Gigachad wrote:
| They have added some things to the airpods over software
| updates. But I assume they are pretty limited if they are
| already pushing the hardware to the absolute limit on
| release. A lot of the stuff they push over updates seem to be
| things they already planned to have but perhaps didn't have
| the firmware polished enough yet.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Extend that to AirPods Pro. My right ear cup crashes
| periodically - then I can only hear out of the left side until
| the watchdog timer engages and nukes the left cup too. I
| frequently have to reset it by holding down the buttons for 10
| seconds in order to get it to connect to anything. It
| frequently disconnects and refuses to reconnect if I take off
| my mask out from under it. It stops detecting my head
| occasionally. An iOS bug probably, but I can't change the Mic
| mode anymore when on calls - it just shows me them menu options
| but I can't tap any of them. And the ear cups started to smell,
| lol, but there's no clear way to actually clean them due to
| their, well, magnets. I bike to work and have to dry them when
| I arrive because sweat builds up _under_ the cups. They 're
| also just too big to fit into _anything_ practical, so I end up
| just carrying them around in one hand.
|
| All in all, they're fine, but they most certainly do not just
| work for me, and they're not a $600 product IMO.
| initplus wrote:
| If you are experiencing all of these reliability issues, have
| them replaced by Apple. My original AirPods Pro had some
| serious issues. Firmware would update on only one of the
| pair, and so preventing them both from connecting to the same
| device. Or one would just crash frequently...
|
| After having both replaced I have had zero issues since. I
| assumed it was some hardware quirks with earlier models.
| arcticbull wrote:
| That's good advice. I'll set up an appointment.
| COGlory wrote:
| Can I ask why you purchased them in the first place? They
| seemed very obviously to not be a $600 product from their
| announcement.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Are there any other over the ear headphones that provide
| great sound quality, noise cancellation, pair with
| computers and smartphones, and have a solid mic?
|
| I've looked at the Sony XM1000's and from what I understand
| there is some issue with Windows where if you enable the
| mic, it goes into some different Bluetooth mode that
| degrades the audio quality coming out of the headphones.
| Many wireless headphones are advertised to only work with
| smartphones.
|
| I just want something that does it all, connects to all my
| devices, and works.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Wait is there a device that can do stereo AND mic? I'm
| not aware of any and I've searched long and hard. AFAIK,
| there is no way it is possible with the current BT spec.
| Are you saying your Apple headphones can do that?
| fphhotchips wrote:
| A quick look through Reddit shows that no, they can't. ht
| tps://www.reddit.com/r/airpods/comments/kg3w4n/airpods_ma
| x...
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| 21h2 and more recent versions of Linux allegedly add
| these codecs, but I don't know how that played out in the
| real world
| arcticbull wrote:
| I used my Developer Transition Kit credit, as I'd already
| purchased an M1 laptop and had no need of anything else -
| other than headphones.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I like "workarounds become a reflex". This is a very succinct
| way of describing one of the causes of why people often claim
| to have no issues using something that universally has issues.
|
| A great example is the gaming PC vs gaming console war. PC
| gamers often seem to refuse to admit there's untold little
| quirks you have to deal with when using a general-purpose
| operating system and modular hardware to play games. They don't
| notice the workarounds they are continuously employing, because
| it's become a reflex.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > there's untold little quirks you have to deal with when
| using a general-purpose operating system
|
| "Though initial iterations of the software for the original
| Xbox and Xbox 360 were based on heavily modified versions of
| Windows, the newer consoles feature operating systems that
| are highly compatible with Microsoft's desktop operating
| systems, allowing for shared applications and ease-of-
| development between personal computers and the Xbox line."
| Wikipedia
|
| > and modular hardware
|
| This is true. There are, e.g., fake GPUs that will make your
| experience quite bad. I always buy pre-build PCs from my
| favorite tech store, and I have personally avoided the
| problem. But Steam forums show that some people is not so
| fortunate. Also there is people trying to run modern games in
| very old PCs, consoles solve that problem by not running new
| games in previous generation consoles.
| musicale wrote:
| > newer consoles feature operating systems that are highly
| compatible with Microsoft's desktop operating systems,
| allowing for shared applications and ease-of-development
| between personal computers and the Xbox line
|
| Microsoft created its Universal Windows Platform (UWP) to
| enable software to run across multiple Windows devices from
| desktops to tablets to consoles. It has not really been a
| resounding success, though it has some inconvenient
| limitations as well as business restrictions such as being
| tied to the Windows Store.
|
| Even the Windows Store has moved away from UWP by
| supporting Win32 apps.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| It's not about the OS technology in use, it's about all the
| practicalities of how it is deployed on consoles vs. on
| desktops. Things like immutable OS volumes, fixed
| configuration tested on the hardware, the extent to which
| they build higher level automation to do what the user
| expects, etc. "The Xbox One runs Windows" ignores all these
| details which make it a much more seamless experience than
| on a PC. The PS4 runs FreeBSD, but try gaming on FreeBSD
| and let me know how it goes in comparison...
|
| Honestly, it's plainly obvious that gaming on consoles is
| much more seamless than on PCs. If you don't think so,
| you're not recognizing all the little quirks you're dealing
| with on a PC. When was the last time a driver update broke
| a game on a console? Ever had to install support software
| to make a game work well with a particular controller?
| Issues with overlays and system feature integration?
| Unexpected performance loss due to a weird configuration?
| Mysterious DRM malfunction issues? Windows Update gone
| wrong? Those things (mostly) just don't happen on consoles
| because it's a much more controlled ecosystem.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > When was the last time a driver update broke game on a
| console? Ever had to install support software to make a
| game work well with a particular controller? Issues with
| overlays and system feature integration? Unexpected
| performance loss due to weird configuration? Mysterious
| DRM malfunction issues? Windows Update gone wrong?
|
| I agree (I don't get why people downvotes). My argument
| is that a quality PC does not have that problems. The
| fact that you can get a very cheap PC creates many of
| this situations. But I get into "No true Scotsman"
| territory with that logic. And that is why I agree with
| your arguments.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| But those things I mentioned happen regardless of the
| hardware build quality. Hardware quality will avoid
| hardware issues, things like overheating or stability
| problems. The things I mentioned are software integration
| problems that are a natural consequence of the PC
| ecosystem being much more heterogeneous. It doesn't
| matter how good your hardware is.
|
| There's just no way around the fact that when your
| ecosystem gives people much more choice and flexibility,
| it's going to be jankier than one which doesn't. It's
| just math. As you add dimensions to the problem space you
| reduce the fraction of the problem space you can test to
| ensure the user experience is good, and you rely on users
| to figure out how to reach a good point in that space,
| since you can't do it for them. If your dimensions are at
| least separable you might have a better chance (linear
| scaling instead of exponential), but modern systems are
| too complex to keep one issue from influencing others.
| It's a massive engineering problem.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| There's also a lot of little things. Like, you launch a
| game and there's no audio. Well, Windows at some point
| decided to switch audio outputs on you. You may have a lot
| of them. Line out, headphones, a bluetooth headset, a
| virtual out for streaming software, a monitor with built-in
| speakers - and now you've got to click the little speaker
| icon and try to figure out what should be selected, which
| may be named after the driver or hardware vendor and not
| totally obvious.
|
| That's the sort of thing that for the most part just
| doesn't happen with the consoles, because they're limited
| and tuned for the intended experience.
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| On my PC each legitimate output device has a duplicate
| with the same name that does nothing. Every once in a
| while when I launch a game it will switch to the
| duplicate entry and I will have to switch it back. It's a
| quirk where the fix has become a reflex.
|
| I've never had to deal with this on any console I've
| owned.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > Well, Windows at some point decided to switch audio
| outputs on you. You may have a lot of them. Line out,
| headphones, a bluetooth headset, a virtual out for
| streaming software, a monitor with built-in speakers
|
| I agree that I have found that problems. I just get the
| same problems with my TV (Samsung) when I have several
| audio devices. Maybe one can argue that is a TV problem,
| not a console problem. But non-portable consoles need a
| TV to work. So, the problem exists but it's moved
| somewhere else.
|
| After your comment I realize that portable consoles are
| that ideal all-in-one, at least older ones without HDMI
| or Bluetooth.
| wanderer_ wrote:
| Yeah, there's something to be said for playing an online
| game in which everyone has the same exact hardware
| (mostly). This is coming from a person who occasionally
| plays competitive games on a 2012 Thinkpad and comforts
| himself when he loses by saying, "it's ok, their computer
| cost as much as a used car. Don't feel bad about losing".
|
| Happy 10th birthday T-530, 1 decade and still trucking!
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> A great example is the gaming PC vs gaming console war._
|
| Which war was that? A bunch of teenagers and man-children
| arguing online between PC vs console superiority is in no way
| a 'war' and is anything but a great example for "workarounds
| become a reflex". Online squabbles between rabid fanboys and
| brand loyalists should be left alone and not be used in
| logical debates.
|
| _> PC gamers often seem to refuse to admit there's untold
| little quirks you have to deal with when using a general-
| purpose operating system and modular hardware to play games._
|
| I highly doubt your broad generalization is accurate. Do you
| have any sources for your claims? Every PC owner and gamer I
| know both online and IRL openly admits this hobby is not a
| smooth sailing endeavor. Again, I would love to see your
| sources for your claims, otherwise I feel HN is degrading
| into reddit where people make broad fact-less generalizations
| with no arguments and others upvote regardless because it
| gives them self-approval and dopamine hits.
|
| _> They don't notice the workarounds they are continuously
| employing, because it's become a reflex._
|
| My personal example would be MacOS, when I, an outsider who
| never regularly used MacOS, point out various UX quirks that
| trip me up and cause issues for me rather than make my life
| easier as I was promised, I saw that everyone I know who is a
| long time user of MacOS got so used to the quirks that they
| formed some workarounds that turned into reflexes and just
| became part of the experience and not viewed as issue anymore
| but as tolerated and expected behavior. Basically for them
| MacOS is simpler because they already know the quirks and
| workarounds inside and out, not because it's objectively
| simpler than the alternatives. Same goes for long time users
| of Linux and Windows if you're coming from the other side.
|
| So in the end it's not about one being objectively better
| than the other, it's about people always will have more
| issues with the things they don't know very well and be
| subjectively biased towards the things they already know and
| like. It's the nature of humanity.
| rashkov wrote:
| I recently upgraded from an iPhone XR and a lot of frustrating
| software problems just went away. Nothing to do with AirPods in
| my case, but it made me realize the effect of having an older
| phone with less processing power and less developer attention
| paid to it. I wonder if your AirPods problems might have to do
| with having older devices connecting -- ie. the other side of
| the Bluetooth connection.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| It's not always processing power. Some of the older phones
| had known issues, for example the iPhone 7 often had a faulty
| audio IC, and the iPhone 6/6+ had low RAM relative to its
| larger screen size and bigger graphic sizes.
|
| Prior to the 8 and XR, iPhones had Bluetooth versions 4.0 or
| 4.2, which meant things were slower to connect, and also
| meant lower microphone data quality. Apple hasn't done any
| customer education around this. A lot of people with older
| MacBooks have poor microphone quality when using AirPods -
| but it's primarily their computer that is the bottleneck.
| michelb wrote:
| I have an iPhone 13 and I have all of the annoyances, often,
| except 6+7. In fact I have had these annoyances with all my
| iPhone and Airpods combinations. It's probably all due to
| bluetooth, even though Apple uses their own W1 chip to
| connect.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| I've similarly found AirPods both "just work" from a user
| experience, especially compared to alternative bluetooth audio
| devices, and also are quirky from a reliability standpoint.
| There have been fixes pushed out in past, particularly with the
| earlier models, where fixes could be done via OTA firmware
| updates.
|
| The remaining quirks all feel related to Bluetooth tech and,
| specifically, the low-power available to AirPods (compared to,
| say, my giant Bose headphones).
|
| I can only speculate but I think AirPods are currently limited
| by the bluetooth tech itself. What I expect we'll see is apple
| will ship a version with a proprietary radio system. They
| probably won't be compatible with non-Apple devices but they'll
| be 10x better than today's AirPods (more reliable, simultaneous
| audio from multiple devices, even better battery life, etc.).
|
| There's no guarantee Apple will pull this off. But I'd bet it's
| far more likely there's a team of engineers dedicated to this
| strategy as we speak than that Apple just "gave up" on one of
| their best-selling product lines as soon as the MVP proved
| there was a huge market.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Man, you sure are overly optimistic. That part about
| bluetooth doesn't make sense, tons of products work reliably
| with similar dimension/weight restrictions as airpods. If
| Apple with its army of engineers can't make their products
| work reliably, how could have much smaller companies
| succeeded? Btw one of biggest disappointments for me with
| airpods (pro) is weak bettery life compared to competition.
|
| I am currently shopping around for new truly wireless
| headphones for iphone and not a single comparison has apple
| airpods/pro as winners in 2 most important categories (for me
| but I believe for many others too): sound quality and battery
| life. Same for their smartwatches but thats another topic.
|
| Apple, or any company, sees that even product with such flaws
| still sells very well, so there is little pressure to fix
| things asap. That some engineers somewhere are working on
| next gen (or even 2 next gens in parallel) is expected, but
| these generational updates are very iterative and never
| revolutionary (that's what new product lines are for, for
| much higher price).
|
| One anecdote from today - had a year end review call with my
| boss while being on sick leave due to covid. He desperately
| tried to pair his new iphone 13 pro max with his new airpods
| (not sure if pro or regular) and gave up after some time. It
| just didn't work and we had good old phone-in-hand call.
| oriolid wrote:
| Could you give examples of some Bluetooth devices that work
| reliably?
| guntars wrote:
| If you know any bluetooth headsets that don't have similar
| quirks to what the post talks about, let me know, because
| otherwise I'm thinking this is Bluetooth and it wont get
| better until we ditch it.
|
| Quirks of Bose AE2 that I'm dealing with:
|
| 1) Switching to the low fidelity Bluetooth headset mode
| when the mic is activated. Why does this still exist? I'd
| be happier if they just didn't add a mic if they can't
| support better quality audio. 2) The headset nominally
| supports connecting to two devices, except there's no
| mixing. One channel is primary and will override the other.
| Annoying when you're on a meeting on a laptop and a
| notification arrives on your phone and the audio cuts out
| to play the notification tone. 3) To add, sometimes Apple
| devices just play silence? Meaning, the secondary device
| will get muted and it will take a minute for you to figure
| out why it's not playing. There's no user control over this
| primary/secondary aspect. 4) Oh, yes, I use three devices
| daily which results in a lot of manual switching. 5) The
| devices or the headphones don't always automatically
| connect for some reason. It's not clear either if it's from
| me manually switching them or what.. 6) Endless issues with
| Spotify "Failing to play song" when the audio output
| switches. 7) Not bluetooth, but this headset gives the "Low
| power, charge me!" chime when the battery is low, even when
| plugged in and charging.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| re #1: This is basically because it's written into the
| standard that everyone implements. There are non-
| standardized extensions to get around this that nobody
| implements because they're non-standard and a perpetual
| "This will be fixed by the next standard!". There are
| also codecs that mitigate the issue by solving the
| underlying bandwidth problem, but nobody implements those
| because there's licensing and thus it's not universal.
| All of this is made worse by the fact that there's really
| only a few vendors out there. Almost everyone buys the
| same stuff, which makes the same tradeoffs and the result
| is that everything sucks in basically the same ways.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Which is why people pay extra for Apple products, because
| they don't make excuses like "this sucks because of the
| Bluetooth standard", they build something that works even
| if it's incompatible with non-Apple systems.
| dnadler wrote:
| So, I just switched from Android to iOS, and I've noticed
| that the bluetooth reliability is significantly worse
| than what I've become used to.
|
| I switch from a Pixel 4a to an iPhone 11, and both my
| Bose QC 35 headphones and Sony wireless earbuds are
| having lots of issue that I never head on the pixel.
|
| So, my takeaway is that iOS is behind here, though I
| don't know enough about the underlying tech to say
| anything for sure. Just my anecdotal experience...
| keltor wrote:
| I've used 100+ Bluetooth devices and ever single one of
| them had weird connection quirks. Hell every wireless
| protocol I've ever seen has been similar excluding some
| actual industrial stuff.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Would love to know which BT products are actually reliable.
| Seems like the best are only "reliable" relative to others
| which are "downright unusable".
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| My only other bluetooth headset is a set of Bose QC35s. As
| sibling comments reported, quality is about par overall. I
| find UX of Bose is worse on all counts when working with
| multiple devices. And the battery life of my AirPods is
| less on a single use, but much better overall considering I
| can recharge in the case.
|
| My airpods, generally, also have to put up with more. I
| don't use my Bose with my phone or on the go which is,
| generally, where the AirPods experience 90% of their
| quirks.
|
| That makes for a poor sample size though so would
| absolutely love suggestions for more reliable alternatives.
|
| Edit: apparently I don't know how to spell Bose
| erichurkman wrote:
| > I don't use my Boss with my phone or on the go which
| is, generally, where the AirPods experience 90% of their
| quirks.
|
| My experience is the opposite. When I'm not on the go,
| the likelihood that my AirPods pick up the right device
| is slim -- like trying to connect to an iPad on a
| complete different floor vs. the phone I'm trying to make
| a call on.
|
| When I'm on the go, the only device they can find is my
| phone, and all works great.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Yeah, makes sense for that problem specifically. I don't
| really have that problem ever. All my problems are
| skipping audio, dropped connections in one pod, and other
| intermittent problems.
|
| My Bose always connect to the wrong device in my home and
| have zero method to correct. So I'm quite satisfied with
| the AirPods which seem to get the right device 99% of the
| time (no exaggeration - probably use 4x per day and
| connect to unintended device maybe once per month). I'm
| sure it helps that my phone is always on silent mode.
| visarga wrote:
| My AirPods2 switch to low quality audio - they sound like a 5$
| pair of phones, presumably on account of the microphone being
| activated.
|
| I am very disappointed, already looking for my AirPods1 to
| replace it. It's just not as easy to use as the old ones. They
| fall off my ears, they die suddenly with no warning (old ones
| were better in this regard).
|
| I mean, Apple makes the AirPods, Apple makes my laptop, so why
| don't they ... you know ... make sound? They fail at performing
| the main functionality.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I would add to the list that it is environmentally negligent to
| allow for such a complex device to be near irreparable
| (specifically on battery replacement).
|
| Unless you are selling medical devices your electronics should
| never be thrown away because after-sales cannot swap a battery.
| Then again Google just dropped the Pixel 3 after just 3 years so
| this is clearly an issue with the consumer electronics business
| model.
|
| Consumer electronics will remain a vastly wasteful business
| unless governments force tighter environmental regulations.
| 323 wrote:
| How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with
| replaceable batteries?
|
| Or put another way: people throw away phones after 3-4 years
| regardless of if you can replace the battery or not.
|
| You can pretty cheaply replace the battery in any phone at a
| repair shop. But people don't want that, they want the new
| phone with new look and new features.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| How many 2010 smartphones are still getting security updates,
| or updates that let them work with modern network standards?
| LTE was only barely available in 2010, and 3G is almost gone
| now.
| 323 wrote:
| LTE/5G is a hardware thing, you can't add it with a
| software update. Yet another point that it's not the sealed
| battery which is the problem.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| You can't add it with a software update, but you could
| provide a modular phy (or continue support for older
| standards).
| 323 wrote:
| Not talking about you since I don't know, but a funny
| thing I noticed, is that people who are very loud about
| saving the environment are always the ones with the
| latest iPhone 13 Max/Macbook Pro M1 in their hands one
| week after it's released.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Notice that you just went from "people don't really want
| it", to "it's not really feasible", all the way to
| straight up ad hominem.
| 323 wrote:
| It was a side point, because it's always very rich people
| with iPhone 13 Max which are like "poor people should use
| 10 year old phones, but not me, I can't be seen on gram
| with that, I need credibility so I can speak out about
| the climate"
|
| Modular phones were tried and were a complete market
| failure. Because they sacrifice thinness, robustness and
| water proofing.
|
| Older standards are removed because they are not used
| anymore, so the bandwidth is freed for newer ones.
|
| And "people don't really want it" remains just as true.
| Just like people didn't want small screens, until even
| Apple famously yielded.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| > Always the very rich people with iPhone 13 Max ....
|
| Funnily enough, I can name numerous people who use iPhone
| 13 Pros/Pro Maxes, just bought this past year and are
| certainly making less than median wage.
|
| Part of it is fashion, 'not appearing poor', and they may
| only know iOS due to a history of using it. So no, the
| very rich aren't the only ones buying iPhones. The stigma
| that they are phones for the wealthy should go, just as
| the idea that Android phones are for the poor.
|
| Many people I know who make well more than three or four
| times what I do use a variety of Android devices.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with
| replaceable batteries?
|
| How many 2010 smartphones have security updates that you can
| safely use? It's a chicken and egg problem.
|
| For every person that chases the shinny new thing there are
| plenty of people who don't care about that and just want to
| have minimal functions, phone, sms, video chat, some decent
| photos/video, and occasional online banking.
|
| However due a broken business model from Tech giants and
| firmware lock-in from Mobile SoC manufacturers this is
| unattainable at the moment.
|
| Vendors should be forced to maintain an LTS work stream to
| give the alternative to those costumers who do want to act
| sustainably. Unfortunately that will never happen unless they
| are forced by regulatory changes.
| 323 wrote:
| For the last 6 years, the average number of new smartphones
| sold per year was 1.5 billion. There are 6.5 billion people
| with smartphones in the world. So that's at most a 4 year
| churn rate.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-
| smartphone...
|
| https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-
| the-w...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| In 2010, smartphones were just taking off, every new
| generation offered significant improvement. 2010 smartphones
| are terrible by today's standards: small storage,
| underpowered, no 4G, bad camera, etc...
|
| 2015 smartphones are a different story. Things have
| stabilized, and a good 2015 smartphone should be perfectly
| usable today, a bit sluggish, but usable. And interestingly,
| that's when they stopped having user replaceable batteries.
| More generally, the market shifted from real obsolescence to
| planned obsolescence.
| soared wrote:
| Airpods are insanely small and the outside casing is pretty
| much a single piece of plastic. I am all for right to repair,
| but it does not seem feasible or reasonable for AirPods -
| they'd have to be bulkier.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The airpods in entirety would be less waste than the
| packaging most spare parts come wrapped in. It just feels
| worse because they cost a lot more than a plastic foam pack
| your steak comes in.
| delecti wrote:
| > they'd have to be bulkier
|
| Then make them bulkier. What's worse, filling the planet with
| garbage, or a few industrial designers having _slightly_ less
| impressive portfolios?
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's actually pretty bad for the airpods. The gen 3 airpods
| are bulkier than the 1 and 2 which now means they don't
| stay in my ears nearly as well. I never had issues with the
| originals falling out which I now do with the gen 3.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| That's entirely fair, but the issue is the demand for the
| less bulky bluetooth headset isn't there. To think that
| this will be solved from the supply-side is wishful
| thinking at best; if folks really demanded repairable
| headsets, the supply would take care of itself.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I mean there was no demand for more expensive unleaded
| fuel but we still regulated leaded fuel out of existence.
| What consumers want and what is needed for the
| environment is not always aligned.
|
| Consumer demand is not a very good guiding principle for
| environmental protection.
| [deleted]
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Apple consumers don't care about the environment, that's why
| they buy products that need to be replaced yearly by choice or
| by design. So these arguments are lost on them.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Just as a gentle counterpoint, consider the magnitude of the
| problem. Let's say there are 300m AirPod units that have been
| produced (60m sales per year for the last 5 years). Each unit
| is about 2oz, mostly plastic and batteries. That's roughly
| 20,000 tons. Los Angeles County alone (to pick a place)
| generates about 100,000 tons of solid waste per _day_, of which
| about 20,000 tons makes it to landfill[0][1]. If they were all
| thrown away at once, all in Los Angeles, they'd hardly notice.
|
| Semiconductors and consumer electronics are more
| environmentally sensitive than they were, and can be better
| than they are. With the lithium and trace metals, AirPods are
| more damaging pound for pound than bulk waste, and you're right
| to insist that Apple do a better supporting recycle and
| recapture. We should also focus on how those materials are
| mined in the first place.
|
| However, even a repairable AirPod would generate lithium waste
| as the batteries wear out. If we're going to have consumer
| electronics, there's going to be a bit of waste. Let's just
| keep in mind that real problems are coal and SUVs and beef and
| so on. A business like AirPods (or all of electronics) that
| generates fractional ounces (or pounds considering everything)
| of waste per person-year while enabling environmentally-
| positive changes like remote work is perhaps not the first
| target for reprobation.
|
| [0]:
| https://dpw.lacounty.gov/epd/swims/OnlineServices/reports.as...
| [1]: https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev04.php
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Wholly agree that transportation and energy usage of
| coal/natural gas should be our primary target.
| fsflover wrote:
| Related link: http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-
| recycling-imposs....
| mckeed wrote:
| At least Apple pays to recycle them, which is more than most
| companies making devices like this would do
| https://onezero.medium.com/what-really-happens-to-airpods-
| wh...
| Raed667 wrote:
| For anyone who wants something very close to "just works"
| checkout the Jabra Elite 85t or 75t.
| pbc wrote:
| I use jabra 75t and personally I'm not that impressed with
| them. Connection to 2 devices at the same time indeed works
| fine, mic quality for earbuds is also very good.
|
| But they have other issues like if you remove the right earbud
| from your ear the left one stops (due to their choice of tech
| for bud to bud connection), sound glitches randomly when paired
| to m1 macbook, in ear fit is ok but not great.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I have the 65t, absolutely love them, insanely solid, always
| seem to have charge, pair to everything instantly. I wear them
| during workouts and they get covered in sweat and chalk still
| sound beautiful.
|
| Love them a lot and agree. Check out Jabra!
| Raed667 wrote:
| Had the 65T for years and can confirm. They are very solid
| and sound great.
|
| I only upgraded when I lost them. And appreciate the smaller
| size on the 75 model.
|
| I still very much recommend them to anyone on a budget.
| jugg1es wrote:
| I've never had a single problem with them besides the fact that
| they think that they are in my ears when they're actually in my
| pocket so they will unpause whatever you are listening to.
| agency wrote:
| I just upgraded to a pair of AirPods Pro after my old AirPods
| were slowly losing battery life until they can barely get through
| a single podcast ep. It was pretty cool and eerie putting them in
| for the first time and having the noise cancellation activate and
| just drop out all the ambient noise. I've never used active noise
| cancellation and it really makes you realize how much ambient
| noise you tune out.
|
| Beyond that I'm not 100% sure how I feel about them yet. They
| definitely don't fit quite as well in my ears as the originals
| and anecdotally a couple coworkers mentioned returning theirs
| because they were falling out. And they definitely don't fit in
| their case in the same way as the original. The way the originals
| just magnetically fall into place perfectly is an amazing piece
| of product design. Really makes them feel like some otherworldly
| artifact. The Pros are definitely not the same in that regard.
| amelius wrote:
| Are AirPods safe for audiophiles?
| resfirestar wrote:
| I really hope Apple decides to improve things for their ecosystem
| within the framework of Bluetooth rather than go their own way as
| some people here have suggested. That route would almost
| certainly lead to a proliferation of proprietary PAN standards
| and allow cell manufacturers to tax (or just acquire) consumer
| audio companies, many of which are struggling to compete with
| AirPods already. Anyway, we're going to find out soon: Apple has
| all but confirmed that they're working on something to solve
| their Bluetooth bandwidth problem [1]. Could just be a new
| Bluetooth profile, and I feel for the Apple users because that
| would almost certainly just multiply these annoyances rather than
| fixing them (wider audio quality gap = more people notice when
| the connection is inexplicably stuck on the ultra-low quality
| voice call profile which happens all the time, causes the OP's
| Annoyance 3 and is one of the causes of Annoyance 4). But I think
| we'll be better off in the long run if Apple and others in the
| industry work on Bluetooth improvements that everyone can use
| without paying up to Qualcomm.
|
| [1] https://www.whathifi.com/features/is-bluetooth-holding-
| back-...
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| The bluetooth standard seems to move very slowly though. We've
| had bluetooth headphones around for so many years and they
| usually leave a lot to be desired.
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| Personally, annoyances like this is enough for me not to want
| wireless headphones. My wired headphones work 100% of the time.
| It's obvious what they are connected to.
|
| (PS, I also prefer transport belts over robots in factorio, and
| explicitly constructed objects over dependency injection in
| programming)
| surfsvammel wrote:
| Wow. I do agree with some of the annoyances, now that I read
| them. But, to me, my feeling about my AirPods where the exact
| opposite. I only got them recently, because I didn't quiet see
| the point of yet another pair of earphones. But man, They Just
| Work, has been my feeling about them so far and I have not
| regretted getting them.
|
| Maybe I have not had them long enough to actually start having
| them annoy me...
| knowingathing wrote:
| Basically, yes. That's been my experience. Even though I listed
| all of these annoyances, I still really like them :)
| j2bax wrote:
| I've been using Airpods since day 1 and although they didn't
| quite deliver on the promise of "it just works" when it comes
| to connecting between multiple devices they have been my
| favorite new technology since the iPhone released. They feel
| like the closest thing to a fully realized "wearable" computing
| device to me. I bought the Airpod Pro's the first day they came
| out and haven't ever looked back to my wired headphone past.
| They are the perfect balance of comfort and features for me. Of
| course I'd like to see them improve and work out the general
| bluetooth issues, but I can't imagine living/working without
| them.
| soheil wrote:
| > Annoyance 7: When moving from working on my iMac to my MacBook,
| I get a notification asking me if I want to switch my AirPods
| over to my MacBook. The notification isn't an issue, but the fact
| it doesn't go away after you ignore it is
|
| I have the same issue with Do Not Disturb notification on Mac.
| There is no way to have it not show up if you have a set time for
| DND unless you completely disable all notifications.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I use Airpod Pros (no Apple, I will not say "Airpods Pro"). Some
| of the gripes are familiar; some not.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| I have a $200-250 pair of AirPod Pros, and a $40 pair of Tozo
| NC7's that I bought for a backup. The Tozo's get way more use, to
| the point where I regret buying the AirPods.
|
| Your ears may vary, but "dot" style earbuds are WAY more
| comfortable (and likely to stay put in my ears) than the "stem"
| style buds. The spatial audio thing turned out to be a pointless
| novelty that wore off quickly, and isn't even supported on half
| of my Apple devices.
|
| I also get tired of the weird glitches, where my AirPods will
| spontaneously decide to drop my connection, and connect to a
| different device. With other earbuds, it's a mild annoyance
| having to manually tell one device to drop its connection so
| another device can connect. But the truth is that I don't have to
| do this THAT often, and the unwanted switchovers are far more
| frequent and annoying. Plus, there are a ton of bluetooth earbuds
| and headphones that accept two or more simultaneous connections,
| which eliminates the issue and is better than what AirPods try to
| do, honestly.
| mcphage wrote:
| > a $40 pair of Tozo NC7's that I bought for a backup. The
| Tozo's get way more use, to the point where I regret buying the
| AirPods
|
| Thanks for the recommendation... I almost lost one of my
| airpods in 18" of snow last week when snowblowing, and I
| decided it's not a good idea to wear my airpods when
| snowblowing anymore.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I have a pair of fancy Bose over-the-ear headphones. They have
| the "connect to 2 devices" feature you mentioned. And it
| inconvenient.
|
| It will connect to my cell phone and computer at the same time.
| I'll be on a zoom call (computer) and _something_ will make it
| decide to disconnect and reconnect from my phone - so I 'll get
| a 10 second interruption notifying me of this glitch.
|
| Also, if someone calls me, I haven't figured out how to force
| it to switch to my cell phone.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| You can pull the power button to switch between devices the
| headphones are paired to.
|
| I've instead found it useful to disable the voice prompts.
| The connects/disconnects become a short beep that doesn't
| drown out anything else.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| That doesn't sound like simultaneous-connection support is
| inconvenient. It sounds like Bose's buggy implementation of
| it is inconvenient.
|
| Back when I used to lug around over-the-ear headphones, I
| mostly used a $50 pair of bluetooth headphones by Taotronics
| (a no-name, fly-by-night company that doesn't even seem to
| exist in Amazon's catalog now). And they work flawlessly with
| two simultaneously connected devices.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| Taotronics were one of the brands banned from Amazon last
| year for inflating user reviews[1].
|
| [1] - https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/1/22703276/amazon-
| banned-br...
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Huh. Looks like the company behind my "Taotronics"
| headphones are the same people who made the "Vava" USB
| hub that I use with my Mac (and which has been more
| reliable than Anker's that I've paid twice as much for).
|
| Stupid. They would have done just fine relying on organic
| reviews, but now they have the death penalty. It's like
| watching Richard Nixon get Watergated out of office,
| because he thought he needed an edge to beat George
| freaking McGovern.
| elteto wrote:
| I have exactly the same problem! I've resorted to manually
| disabling Bluetooth on the device I don't want to use...
| never had that issue with Airpods.
| numpad0 wrote:
| AirPods are held on ears similar to how a wine glass should be
| held in hand. There is a opposing pair of protrusions in human
| ears, between which the stem goes through, and the flexion of
| that protrusions works against the force exerted by the bulb
| and hold earphones in place.
|
| I don't understand why Apple went with that as a default; that
| part of my ears seems to have evolved so as not to catch
| debris, and EarPods-style earphones just comes off as they
| should. And it is not that likely I have a million in one ear
| leaf genetic subtypes.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| It does depend on ears, for sure. Most in-ear headphones are
| painful for me, including the "dot" ones. Stem ones tend to be
| far more comfortable, with the Apple ones the most comfortable.
| I've also never had AirPods fall out of my hears even when
| exercising. They seem to be made for my ears.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| My counter point is that I have my AirPods paired with 4
| different (Apple) devices, and I'm constantly amazed that they
| always seem to be connected to "the right one" every single
| time. The handoff is seamless and hasn't made a mistake about
| guessing which device I want to be driving them in the two
| years I've owned them.
| post_break wrote:
| Too bad the NC7s dont remember which state they are in. You
| have to toggle them every time you put them in you ears.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| It's weird to me how many people are like "yeah but every other
| bluetooth is worse". I have Airpod Pros and experienced every one
| of these issues and many more on the regular with them, but my
| several years old now Bose QC 35II never have any of these
| problems, still last like 5 times as long on battery after years
| of recharge cycles, interact better with two simultaneously
| connected devices, have better signal range before dropping out,
| and I can control the damned volume without trying a dozen times
| to get Siri to wake the fuck up because airpods have no built-in
| volume controls and Siri's voice activation is worse than
| terrible.
|
| The Airpods are set to connect automatically to my macbook when I
| wear them AND THEY DON'T. EVER. And then calls on my iPhone will
| stupidly decide to connect and route audio to airpods that I'm
| not even wearing while they are just sitting on my desk when the
| phone was literally moments before using the handset speaker for
| a video. Know what bluetooth device does not have these problems?
| You guessed it, the one not made by Apple. Like...come on.
|
| I really want to like airpods, but they're just not good.
| dempedempe wrote:
| I had my QC 35IIs stolen when I forgot them in a Sixt rental. I
| decided to get some Airpods as a replacement as most reviews I
| found online said they were comparable. God, I miss my QC
| 35IIs...
| afterburner wrote:
| Meanwhile my $30 versions work great. And look better IMO
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| That's even more weird given my experience with a pair of Beats
| Studio 3 headphones I have which are _de facto_ a brand of
| Apple headphones. They 've never given me Bluetooth grief once
| in years of very regular use, it's not like they can't do
| reliable Bluetooth equipment.
| krferriter wrote:
| I think part of the problems you describe is the failings of
| the bluetooth stack in MacOS, not the Airpods themselves. I
| have had bluetooth device issues in MacOS on a brand new
| Macbook, and of course MacOS offers no advanced control options
| or access to underlying defaults it plugs into device and
| connection configurations, and there are forum posts about
| issues going back many years with no acknowledgement by Apple
| and seemingly no plans for a fix.
|
| My main problem with Airpods is the physical design, which
| simply refuses to stay in my ears at all, rendering them
| totally useless, even if I'm just sitting relatively stationary
| at a desk.
|
| My Samsung Galaxy Buds have been doing pretty well, though I
| just started having a problem where the left earbud is
| extremely quiet.
| pjerem wrote:
| I have to reassure you, the Windows BT stack is actually a
| pile of garbage. And I'm talking about things like the whole
| audio system crashing when trying to use my XM4 on any
| videoconference software, my Xbox controller randomly
| disconnecting for several seconds while in game (I play at a
| <1m distance) or my keyboard suddenly disconnecting while I
| work.
|
| At this point I'm starting to believe that even Linux has a
| better Bluetooth stack than windows and OS X.
|
| iOS is okayish but I have random issues with my AirPods.
| Generally they just stop being recognized and I have to reset
| them and to setup then again. Boring.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > At this point I'm starting to believe that even Linux has
| a better Bluetooth stack than windows and OS X.
|
| With Pipewire, this seems to have come true in it's
| entirety. Connecting multipoint Bluetooth headsets to
| multiple Linux devices works astonishingly well, and I
| don't think I've ever had a connection drop or encountered
| a real "bug" with it. The only annoyance is that if you
| have one device playing audio and another starts playing,
| it will cut out for a fraction of a second while the
| headset negotiates it's connection. Besides that it's
| almost scarily flawless.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| I have found for years that Linux offers the best Bluetooth
| experience. Does Android use their BT stack or do they have
| their own?
| StaleTortilla wrote:
| Agreed on Bose QC 35II being great. I hardly ever have any
| issues with them. The only issues I do have with them are when
| they connect to my work MacBook Pro. The biggest of these
| issues is that the MacBook refuses to let any other device be
| the active device. If my Bose QC 35II connect to both my
| MacBook and my PC or phone (Android), and I want to listen to
| audio from the non-MacBook device, I have to first disconnect
| the headphones from the MacBook. But for my PC and phone, I can
| be dual connected to those, and as long as I have nothing
| playing, I can start playing something on either device and
| immediately hear it. At this point I've given up on using the
| Bose with the MacBook.
| leo150 wrote:
| I'm having exactly the same issue. Moreover, when you have
| multiple devices and want to switch to a new one, first you
| have to guess who hijacked the sound.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I don't know about "every other Bluetooth," but I certainly
| experience _different_ problems with other Bluetooth devices.
| :) My regular experiences:
|
| - The AirPods Pro and AirPods Max generally work well. I've
| experienced most of the annoyances the OP lists _occasionally,_
| but not _regularly,_ although the "autoselect the device want
| you want" outsmarts itself semi-regularly. (Not quite enough to
| make me disable it, but it's close.) I have never attempted to
| control the volume of the AirPods Pro using Siri because it
| sounds like a bag of hurt.
|
| - My Bose SoundLink II will immediately _say_ it 's connected
| to the last device that it paired with when I turn it on, but
| sound won't come out of it. Depending on what seems to be
| random chance, either it'll start playing in ~15 seconds, or it
| will repeat its "Connected to [Device]" voice cue and _then_
| immediately be available for play, or once in a while it will
| put itself back in "I'm not connected!" mode and I will have
| to go into Bluetooth settings to manually connect.
|
| - My Vanatoo desktop speakers have Bluetooth, and once they're
| connected to the phone they don't want to let go. I'll have
| successfully sent sound to the SoundLink, or the AirPods, or
| just the phone's own speaker, and then suddenly the sound will
| mysteriously vanish because the Vanatoos have woken up and
| grabbed the signal. (This sometimes happens before the Vanatoos
| have powered up their own internal amplifiers.)
|
| - The Bluetooth pairing in my mother's car consistently has the
| weirdest behavior: I connect, it starts playing a podcast or
| music, and the audio just cuts out every four seconds or so at
| a regular cadence. It seems like it might be playing just a
| _little_ too fast and there 's a buffering issue. If I
| disconnect the Bluetooth and reconnect it, then everything's
| fine. But the first connection after the car starts will always
| be broken.
|
| I mean, I know that's all anecdotal. But at least for me, the
| AirPods are the least broken Bluetooth audio devices I use. I
| get that "it works less frustratingly for many people most of
| the time" is not nearly as catchy as "it just works," but until
| Bluetooth gets properly sorted out in 2083 or whenever, I guess
| I'll live with it.
| TylerE wrote:
| I have to wonder if it's time to just say screw Bluetooth,
| and deploy a new standard that's specially oriented for
| audio.
|
| Requirements aren't crazy. It just needs to support
| uncompressed 96/24, full duplex.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I don't think you need a new standard for that -- UWB
| radios, like Apple's already-deployed U1 chip, have the
| bandwidth to easily be bandying about 96/24 FLAC/ALAC
| files, at the least. (Personally, I'd settle for topping
| out at 48/16 lossless ALAC.)
| bsder wrote:
| Except that requirement _IS_ crazy--when you put all the
| other stuff around it.
|
| Must work at 2.4Ghz--even in the face of 200 WiFi access
| points and 3 times that number of devices.
|
| Must stay in sync to within a millisecond ... even though
| there is a large bag of RF absorbing water in between them.
|
| Should work on a battery smaller than a thumbnail.
|
| Should process audio but not generate enough heat that you
| notice it in your ear.
|
| I can go on. The engineering requirements are quite severe.
|
| ... for something that we can do with a 10 cent wire,
| ironically.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| So true, we take the complexity for granted. It's
| actually a really hard problem.
| chowells wrote:
| You can hear 48kHz tones? Wow.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I know some people have experimented with WiFi direct for
| that, but I'm not really familiar with it's limitations
| besides "you have to be hooked up to a router for it to
| work". One thing's for certain though, if someone made a
| pair of lossless cans that could "find" devices over
| arbitrary WiFi networks, I'd probably switch just for the
| improvement in latency alone.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Wifi has an ad-hoc mode which doesn't require a router.
| fphhotchips wrote:
| Ah yes, the famously well supported and not at all prone
| to weird bugs Wifi Ad-hoc mode.
| pahomov wrote:
| And zero delay, please. I'll take two.
| oynqr wrote:
| Why waste a bunch of bandwidth on 96 kHz when 44.1 is fine?
| [deleted]
| tmh88j wrote:
| >It's weird to me how many people are like "yeah but every
| other bluetooth is worse". I have Airpod Pros and experienced
| every one of these issues and many more on the regular with
| them, but my several years old now Bose QC 35II never have any
| of these problems
|
| I've also experienced these issues with my airpods, but my
| Sennheiser PXC-550's are 10x worse and cost twice as much.
| Great audio quality, feels like cheap throw-away walmart junk
| in every other regard. I only use them if I'm going to listen
| to music and nothing more.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Yeah, using my AirPods Max is one of the most frustrating
| experiences. In the past week I've had to force reset them so
| many times and it almost seems arbitrary when it actually
| connects. I can't imagine a non-savvy tech person being able to
| easily debug it.
| bredren wrote:
| With Mac / iOS devices? It should not behave like this.
| Consider swapping them out.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Yes with iPads and iPhones. It's not an uncommon experience
| if you google it. I imagine its a software issue not a
| hardware issue too.
| r00fus wrote:
| Reviewer didn't say which ones he has nor which phone.
|
| My view of "AirPods" has changed over the years - had them since
| the OG launch with my iPhone7. A lot of the gripes make sense
| with the older models. Then I upgraded my iPhone to latest, and
| got the AirPods3.
|
| With the v3 I finally feel it's a great product. I turn off the
| "automatic connection" BT settings for all but one device
| (iPhone) and it works as I expect. The spatial audio is great.
|
| I tried a non-Apple AirPods equivalent for a while (cheap now,
| $30) and really missed the "find my" feature, plus the sizing was
| off.
|
| My favorite new feature is the Find My where you can play
| MarcoPolo with your missing AirPod. THAT was much better than
| with my OG pods. Of course, the "your AirPods have been left
| behind" is often spurious so that needs improvement but better a
| false negative than a missed positive.
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| a lot of these annoyances can be solved if the author slightly
| changed their behavior. I still think AirPods Pro are some of the
| best new tech of the last 5 years
| baby wrote:
| For the pros, I don't understand how anyone can use these air
| tips, they never stay in my ears :(
|
| also no more volume and previous/next buttons :/
| drewg123 wrote:
| For me, the most annoying "feature" of airpods vs other BT audio
| was that Siri started announcing incoming calls, and reading the
| contact name in full, or the full phone number, both of which
| take forever. I finally found a recipe to shut that off.
|
| I don't recall siri being this invasive with my Bose BT
| headphones. I wonder why airpods got this special (annoying to
| me, likely wonderful to others) treatment.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > I don't recall siri being this invasive with my Bose BT
| headphones
|
| I think it's just because Apple is intentionally gatekeeping
| the feature to AirPods even though it can technically work with
| any headphones, so in this case your Bose headphones were
| spared the annoyance because of Apple's anti-competitive
| practices, whereas AirPods have it on by default. Fortunately
| it's easy to disable in Settings -> Phone -> Announce calls.
| [deleted]
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