"AirPods will be shipping in limited quantities at launch and customers are encouraged to check online for updates on availability and estimated delivery dates."
That's like "We look like fools. At least get -something- out there".
To me these seem pretty stupid. Major features (to me) of ear-buds with wires and 3.5" jack are: 1) being attached with wires means I don't easily lose them when they slip out of my ear/hand/pocket. 2) the 3.5" jack actually keeps them pretty solidly attached to my phone (again, less risk of losing them). Walking around with two loose tiny objects seems less than ideal - at least to me; I'd lose them within days.
I used to think this way until I bought a pair of JLabs bluetooth ear buds. Now, I hate using wired headphones because the wire is literally always in the way. I hate being forced to keep my phone right next to me, and snake a wire around.
Now, in the gym, I can throw my phone in my gym bag and not worry about it while working out. I'll never go back to wired.
Don't think one can be too active with these ones, though. Looks like shaking your head will make them fall out. No silicon that shapes it to the ear, no over-ear stuff or anything that should make it sit.
Many reviews have stated the opposite: that, despite the reviewers feeling like the airpods would fall out when in motions, they stayed in just fine despite shaking heads and jumping up and down.
> Exactly, doing anything active with wired headphones on isn't fun.
I do active things with wired headphones all the time, and they rarely get snagged on anything or pulled from my ear.
That said, not having to carry the device that provides the sound source is a convenience that's worth something (though nowhere near the additional cost of these over wired earbuds.)
I still use my HD558s on a very regular basis, including with my phone, but for mobile use that's actually mobile, I'm right there with you - Bluetooth devices do occasionally misbehave in ways that annoy me, but the enormous convenience of not being festooned with wires more than makes up for the occasional transient signal drop. Especially when I'm bundled up in three layers with my phone in my pocket, gloves on my hands, and a beanie or a balaclava on my head. Routing wires is a complex topological problem in these circumstances, and it's nontrivially convenient to just pop an earbud in my ear, start a podcast playing, and go.
Makes perfect sense to me. I run about 4 days a week with my phone strapped to my arm. The current headphones cable wraps around my arm once or twice, and sometimes gets tangled mid-run.
It's a pet peeve of mine. Wireless is a good thing.
I don't need more than 2 hours tops when running, so the 5+ hour battery life is great.
I never had any problems with the current earphones slipping out of my ears while running - rain, wind, or shine. Airpods seem to follow a similar model, so I don't anticipate issues there either.
I don't really see what these offer over say my Plantronics BackBeat Go 2 which lasts 4 hours. They're also connected to each other, going behind my neck. You may think that is a disadvantage, but I can easily have one in and one out if required. Besides, these Airpods don't solve the quality Bluetooth lacks. A disadvantage is you can already lose these easily (if disconnect both and keep hanging around). I don't even wanna think about Airpods and how easy they will be to lose.
Try putting your smartphone in a safe place, and have wired or wireless headset, and use some kind of smartwatch to control your phone and receive feedback on your performance. I use a Pebble 2 for that, but there's other alternatives available.
Bonus points is my phone is stored safely without saying to random strangers "rob me".
I did 4 marathons last year along with 2,000km of running mileage, and if music is a must while you run, then at x4 a week, it's worth looking into for a better setup. Even a basic GPS watch with a separate cheap music player (look for a clipping one) and you'll be much more comfortable. Granted, this won't allow to send/receive texts or calls, but hopefully you can manage to disconnect from the world for 1-2 hours.
I don't come across too many even semi-consistent runners who take their phone with them. Most can't stand a big iPhone 6/7 or Samsung strapped to their arm like a piece of armor. I don't think these AirPods will improve the running-music duo at all. The technology doesn't quite cater to us yet. Lightweight, sturdier earbuds (check out yurbuds) with a cord under the shirt down to the waist isn't noticeable and is hard to beat.
Bluetooth headphones are great. You don't have to worry about the wire snagging on things and getting in the way. Wires have been progressively eliminated everywhere else e.g. wireless networking, wireless mice, wireless keyboards, wireless phones...I'm not understanding why people are clinging to wireless headphones so hard.
Your risk of losing your headphones is really that high?
I like wireless headphones for the simple situation that I switch from podcasts on my phone to video on a kindle fire and back during my commute, and pairing with various devices from a variety of manufacturers seems like it would be very slow compared to popping the jack. Though, to be fair, I've never used wireless headphones (other than xbox), so don't know what the pairing process looks like. I just know that in the past cheap bluetooth speakers have been slow to match and sometimes forget that they're friends with my phone.
My headphones (Plantronics) will connect to two devices at the same time. The controls interact with whichever was playing more recently, and an existing stream takes priority over a new one. So I can quite happily stop my music from my phone and start up a call from my laptop, then switch back, without re-pairing at all.
If I did need to re-pair, it's as simple as picking the phone from the phone or laptop's recently-used devices list. I usually only have to do that if the phone has decided it wants to keep talking to my headphones while I'm in the car. Pairing from scratch with the phone is as simple as holding the phone to one of the ear cups, but I've only had to do that once and I can't remember which one now.
It's less about the process of pairing being painful and more about the amount of time it takes to pair. I also use a plantronics headset sometimes and it usually takes somewhere from like 15-60 seconds to actually pair up and have audio coming through. Vs the 2 seconds it takes for me to plug in a wired pair
The Backbeat Pros have a "nice" start-up chime. If you push the play button while it's playing that, it'll start playing music once the chime ends. Less effort and delay than untangling the cable and plugging it in (which is an option: I still keep the cable in my bag).
I'm also enjoying auto-pause when I take the headphones off -- no more fiddling for the pause button when someone wants to talk to me.
For me it comes down to a few things. Bluetooth has some major downsides: First, you now have to charge your headphones or you can't use them. This is a HUGE downside when coming from something that literally never needs to be charged, I mean considering nothing else, would you rather have something that needs to be charged daily or something that never needs to be charged? Second, transmitting audio over bluetooth requires digital compression, which affects sound quality. For some this might not matter, but when I listen to music on headphones I want the highest level of quality. This is probably less of an issue for anyone considering airpods, as apple's headphones, even the wired ones, have never been great. Now the classic response to these points is "But just charge them at night, I never have to worry about it!" or "I can't even tell the difference in quality!" and these things may be true, however for me, if I'm sacrificing sound quality (even if it's minimal) and sacrificing unlimited "battery life" (in quotes because there is no battery life for wired headphones but you get the point) I better be getting something well worth it in return. In this case, that something is what, not having to plug my headphones in? Not having a wire connecting me to wherever the sound is coming from that literally never gets in my way except MAYBE very occasionally when working out? I'm sorry but that is absolutely nowhere NEAR worth the tradeoffs. It's not that I'm against bluetooth headphones, it's that the benefits do not outweigh the costs. How many times have you really found yourself genuinely bothered by wires on your headphones? I know for me the answer is almost never (realistically only when working out, which is the only situation where I'd even consider wireless headphones)
When you can get bluetooth headphones that last 40 hours I don't see battery life as an issue.
Quality sounds fine to me as well. Are there any blind tests that show people can notice differences with Bluetooth? Even if the difference is slightly noticeable I doubt you would notice wearing headphones on the move, at the gym, in the office etc.
> How many times have you really found yourself genuinely bothered by wires on your headphones?
Multiple times a day. Any time you're doing anything active besides just walking (e.g. reaching for things, carrying something) or putting on a jacket the wire gets in the way. Getting them caught on a door handle and having in-ear headphones ripped out of your ears is really unpleasant.
Which is better, unlimited "battery" or a 40 hour battery? It may not be a big issue for you, but for me that's a very significant tradeoff. And I haven't looked into studies but I have personally done multiple side by side comparisons of the same headphones/speakers connected via bluetooth vs wired and have yet to find a set where I was not able to notice a difference in the sound quality. For me, that's enough, but I'd encourage you to try it out yourself or seek out some studies (I haven't even bothered looking).
In the end it seems more of a question of which bothers you more:
1. degraded sound quality and drastically shorter (since one is unlimited) battery life or
2. having a wire from your headphones to your audio source.
For me, there's no question that 1. is more of an issue, for others, 2. is a bigger problem. I consider bluetooth an alternative to wired headphones but absolutely not a replacement since both have tradeoffs
I think an apt analogy for the transition towards wireless audio is that of desktop to mobile computing. In the same way that mobile isn't an end-all to desktop computing for professionals, wireless headphones aren't meant as a replacement for everyone, such as audiophiles.
That said, I've personally tried a half-dozen wireless headphones over the past few months. I strongly feel that the technology has progressed to where the tradeoffs of battery life and sound quality are minimal for the general consumer.
Right now, price is probably the limiting factor in adoption. However, as the price decreases over the next 3 years, I think you'll find that wireless will become the primary means of audio consumption for the average Joe.
I would happily bet any amount of money that I can tell the difference between my nice pair of IEMs and the stock apple ones every time. It's not the bluetooth transmission that's the problem, it's the actual sound producing hardware. Customers like you dwarf customers like me, so Apple and Beats don't bother to produce great sounding phones beyond a certain point--it even appears AirPods have basically stock earphone sound quality.
I would love the convenience of AirPods, just upgraded with nicer drivers, and would be willing to pay $400 for them. There just isn't a big enough market, so I'm left feeling the pain of people that fall outside of Apple's inner circle.
This is even more perplexing to me because Apple consistently puts screen quality as a very high priority. I'm just flabbergasted at how much they could be dropping the ball for audio.
A deaf person can tell the difference between nice IEMs and the stock apple ear phones. I don't think anyone is disputing that. Now take some nice bluetooth IEMs and compare them to similarly priced wired IEMs, then it gets a little more difficult. Bluetooth transmission is very much a problem when it comes to sound quality, since the audio needs to be compressed to send wirelessly.
Can't speak about 1). Can't speak about 2) either; but HNers told me Apple did extensive testing to ensure pods would not fall while being in your ears (the physics hints that earplugs fall mainly because of wires).
Still 1) is a good question. I thought they came with a tiny casket, so they wouldn't fall out of your pocket like that. Still subtle when you remove them from your skull.
They come with a charging case which looks to be about the size of the little plastic spool-box of dental floss with which some here might be familiar. It's not very large, but shouldn't be small enough to easily drop out of a pocket without being noticed, either.
I'm not sure what I expect with regard to staying in ears, though. They appear to be closely modeled on the wired EarPods, which in my experience don't reliably stay in the ear on their own, to the point where they are best worn with the cable wound around the crease of the pinna - both for strain relief, and so that they're easier to recover and less likely to be damaged when they do inevitably pop out.
On the other hand, I signed up instantly because I need these things to go to the gym.
Right now I have some cheap headphones I bought at Ross and even if they're wireless, the little rubber headband is uncomfortable when I'm bench pressing.
I like volume control, and play/pause/skip. I like and use them a lot. On these it seems you have to ask Siri to change the volume, which is awful, and ask Siri or take 'em out to pause.
Please someone tell em if this is not the case. I really want it to not be true.
How do you think you will view this comment in 5 years when 90% of new ear buds sold are completely wireless? I'm guessing it will be similar to how people view Steve Ballmer's comments on the original iPhone.
Being attached with wires means they catch on something and are violently ripped from my ear at least a couple times a week.
I cannot overstate how angry this makes me. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. It can literally ruin an hour. I'd rather be randomly slapped by a stranger.
Just out of curiosity, what type of situations cause this to happen to you? This literally has never happened to me except while working out, and workout time amounts to probably 5% or less of my headphone usage
1) I love it when that cord gets hooked on something and damn near rips my ears out.
2) I don't lose things.
This is like a guy leaving a negative review of feminine hygiene products. When a product designed for people with different needs and desires than yours, it’s not necessarily “stupid.”
You've never used an entire product category and you want to call it stupid? The first step to building good products is to understand how people use them.
Wireless headphones are about as stupid as wireless Internet.
Just like wired Internet, wired headphones will continue to have a place for people who need certain capabilities or ruggedness or etc., but for most people, wireless headphones are the way to go. Let me walk you through some of the advantages:
1. Working out. Wired headphones constantly get caught on things and sometimes get violently ripped from your ears.
2. Related to point one, any activity or job where you could risk a loose wire being caught is perfect for wireless headphones. It very well may be significantly safer.
3. Wireless headphones have bigger range than wires. You don't have to place your phone in your pants pockets, for instance, to use wireless headphones. You could even have your phone in your bag, and everything will still work. Much of women's fashion either has no pockets or pockets of little value. This is a major reason women carry around purses. But you can't use headphones with a phone in your purse, hence why women are often physically carrying their phones in your hands. With wireless headphones, they can keep their phone in their purse or jacket and still listen to music or respond to calls.
5. Or if you are doing something around the house, you don't always have to have your headphones on you at all times. This could be particularly useful if you are doing something like washing a car where you might get your pants wet and don't want to have your phone on you.
6. With this new class of wireless earbuds that are small and lightweight, you could keep one of two of them in much of your day to answer phone calls or ask Siri or Google questions.
I don't disagree with any of those points. But to me all of them are dwarfed by one thing: sound quality. Listening to the crap quality of apple buds is like connecting to a shitty CRT. Paying $160 for the privilege is just an added insult.
If you cared about watching beautiful movies, would you downgrade to a wireless display with grainy definition, because "no wires"? That's how I feel about audio quality, and why I'm not an apple or beats customer (and why I lament the iPhone7 headphone jack changes).
Of course time will help, and in a few years the sound quality streamed over wireless should be transparent, at which point I'd gladly convert.
None of the reviews I've read say the quality is "crap".
Or are you correlating your one experience with half a decade old BT headphones to current top of the line wireless? That's like saying all Wifi is shit because your PCMCI 802.11a Wifi card in 2005 had shit speeds and range.
There's like a next-level Apple marketing babble on that page:
"AirPods introduce an effortless wireless listening experience packed with high-quality audio and long battery life. These magical wireless headphones use advanced technology to reinvent how we listen to music, make phone calls, enjoy TV shows and movies, play games and interact with Siri, providing a wireless audio experience not possible before."
Both the magical and reinvent I'll happily concede, but in defense of the "not possible before" I think there's an argument to be made that their pairing UX is so much better as to constitute a whole new experience versus standard bluetooth?
[Of course, I say this as someone who has been happily using wireless Jaybird earbuds with a variety of iOS and macOS devices for the past three years without many complaints. I won't be buying the AirPods since pairing problems have not been an issue for me.]
But that doesn't automatically transfer to all the other devices you own. After using them with your iPhone they would also work with your Mac, your Watch, and your iPad without having to do separate pairing.
That's what makes the pairing more than just NFC (you're right, that's been around for years).
I'll definitely grant you that. A shared pairing database would be nice.
Hopefully it's implemented well. My Text Message Forwarding still lists:
- iPhone
- iPhone (2)
- iPhone (3)
- iPhone (4)
- iPad
- iPad (2)
etc, et al. Note that I don't own four iPhones, I've just upgraded over time. I have to play a guessing game as to "Which MacBook Pro is the one sitting in front of me?"
I dunno. I bought a Sony Walkman NWZ-A829 (OK, Apple kicks their ass at naming stuff) way back in 2008, which had built-in Bluetooth, and about a year later bought some no-name $25 Bluetooth headphones for use in the gym. Never had any issue with pairing or connection dropping, used that combination for a couple of years before going back to wired.
I recently bought wireless bluetooth headphones from Sennheiser. The pairing process consisted of holding the phone next to the headphones for a second, done (thanks to NFC). Not sure how you can improve much on that.
As much as I've also become an apple hater recently because of what they've done to iOS10 and the new macbook pro, I think criticizing a marketing copy for being a marketing copy is not fair.
What are some of the things you hate about iOS 10? I've also disliked a few changes they've introduced, but after spending more time with the OS, I've discovered that some changes were not as bad as I'd initially considered. It was more a matter of getting used to.
I guess people don't like changes to the things they've grown accustomed to.
Not the OP, but I hate the 2-page swipe-up screen. I can't get used to it. Having so much real estate dedicated to crap like AirPlay, AirDrop and NightShift makes zero sense to me.
I'm not in love with "click to unlock" either, although the 7 makes it bearable with raise-to-wake (it's just stupid on my 6, though).
There's an option for the home button under "Accessibility" called "Rest finger to open". Turn that on, and you'll be able to unlock your phone with no clicks. It probably doesn't work for non Touch ID phones.
I hate the apple apps. People have loved to hate Apple apps for years but I've been ok with them.
However, more and more I'm running into things that are just stupid or buggy or both.
The TV app is the latest annoyance. All our purchases are under my wife's account, and there seems to be no way to view family sharing purchases with the app.
I'm using a beta of iOS and I keep hoping it'll be added, but this is the seventh beta I think, and I've pretty much given up.
> I guess people don't like changes to the things they've grown accustomed to.
Trust me I used to be one of those people who would say the same thing you're saying. I was like "What's the big deal? These people just don't like change. They'll get used to it."
Except that you don't anymore.
The reason I hate these changes is because things just don't work smoothly and disrupt your workflow, not to mention the UI being messy design-wise (I have NEVER complained about Apple's design changes ever since the first iPhone).
And this is all because of the new features they introduced they're trying to shove down user's throats. Most of these features are built to satisfy Apple's agenda instead of making it easier for users to use. Just read what others have already said, these are features built for Apple, not for users.
Yes they are. Apple forces you to upgrade all the time. They keep sending push notifications until you find the option hidden somewhere in the settings and turn it off.
You're assuming all changes are progress. They are not.
How the hell do you turn that off? I'd love to know, because I'm not going to upgrade to iOS 10 until I'm sure it won't hose my phone, and I'm sick and tired of being bothered about it twice a day.
Perhaps, considering that I don't recall having ever had Automatic Updates turned on, and yet my phone had downloaded 10.1.something and was nagging me about installing it. (Automatic Updates already wasn't turned on when I followed the steps to disable it.) Deleting the update from the storage UI is a piece I hadn't previously run across, and I've gone ahead and done it.
I'm now seeing the 10.2 update available, but it hasn't (yet) been downloaded; if a day goes by and it still isn't, then I'd have to say I owe you a beer, or several, for pointing me at a way to relieve what was getting to be a real pain in the neck. (Although why I failed to find this clue for myself is a curious question in its own right - it's certainly not for want of looking! In any case, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to point it out.)
Having long since ceased to trust automatic app updates in any case (cf. Uber location awareness creep and YouTube's perennial UI brokenness du jour), I see no problem there.
On the other hand, I'm increasingly sure I have never had automatic updates enabled on this device, yet I had the iOS 10 update downloaded regardless. Perhaps I forgot having done that by hand, or perhaps the setting doesn't apply to OS updates; in any case, time will tell.
Update: Looks like I owe you a beer, or your preferred alternative beverage! The email address in my profile is a good place to send details of how I may remit the requisite funds; or, if you're in the Baltimore area and want to pick a bar, a day, and a time, I'm good with that too. (Preferably not Fells, though; crowds of drunk twentysomethings and the occasional mugger aren't really my idea of a good time.)
Thanks again! That was really getting on my nerves.
What does that have to do with his statement? He never said that he wanted them to stop making progress. He wants them to stop making changes THAT AREN'T PROGRESS.
And yes, sometimes you DO have to update for current versions of software to work.
What is "Apple's agenda"? It seems to me you just dislike the changes (which is fair) and are dressing up your dislike as a conspiracy theory. Have you considered that the designers simply thought they were making it better?
There are a lot of small things that are making me hate iOS 10.
1) Unlock process: When the fingerprint reader fails it now takes several presses on the home key to get a keypad to pop up so I can input my code. With previous versions I could just swipe when I knew the fingerprint reader would fail (e.g. wet hands).
2) App updates: When apps are updating on my phone it decides it really wants to stay on the home screen. I can swipe to get to the other screens, but it goes back before I can tap any apps. Also, when I can get into an app they tend to lag and crash more when updates are happening in the background.
3) Control Center (bottom menu): Trying to slide the brightness or volume controls on the control center menus usually gets interpreted as a swipe to the next control menu. I have to be very precise when touching them for the sliders to actually work.
4) Safari: Auto-hide of the control buttons does help page visibility, but showing them seems to be glitchy as hell. They appear and then disappear before I can move my finger to tap them.
5) Crashes: At least daily now the whole phone crashes to a black screen and then comes back to the lock screen a few seconds later. Seems to involve location services.
Also, not exactly iOS 10, but the new Watch OS completely broke the usability of the Weather app for me. Something that was fairly intuitive and useful is now cumbersome and basically useless to me.
I also had your issue 5. I can't say for sure, but taking a fresh backup, then restoring from that backup seemed to have fixed it for me. Best of luck!
2 & 5 don't appear to be happening here, and 4 only seems to happen with the embedded browser view in some apps, not the 'normal' browser. At least, that's how it is for me.
And they've done stupid things like REMOVING the analog-display option from the clock app. WTF? Now you have no display of seconds to set your watch with (except the puny, puny icon on the home screen).
Good news/bad news for 5. Try backing up and restoring. It's a huge pain and shouldn't be required, but it does tend to fix outlier issues.
A friend has a 16gb iPhone and has managed to deal with that little space until just recently. She'd run out of space completely, I'd hand-update apps one-at-a-time trying to free up temp download space. Deleted her local music. A few weeks later deleted her local photos. iMessage claimed 1gb of space, it's a little opaque and manual to clean delete things. I finally convinced her to delete all messages older than 1 year. She got 500mb back. The next day her phone was full again without an obvious reason. Backed up her phone and restored. Everything seems to be there and now she has 5+gb free.
I was having the battery issue they're fixing the 6s for. Because I knew they'd ask I restored my phone (and grabbed yesterdays update because that had a fix related to this, too). It seems to be fixed as well by restoring.
...but all of this is souring me on Apple. I wish I was more confident about other options.
You can clear out a lot of space by trying to download a huge movie from iTunes. Just trying is enough. It will first purge all accumulated cruft before telling you you still don't have enough space.
Even though people disagree, what Apple does there makes sense to me. It's like all of my kind of tech savvy friends always complaining they're out of RAM. It gets freed when you need it. Having empty space does you no good, deleting caches prematurely wastes resources both deleting and regenerating it. It does suck not having an accurate count of how much free space you have when you're making sure you have space to download an app or take pictures for your trip. I think it's terrible for so long Apple only sold 16gb phones and the next size up was 64gb. They're also so stingy on iCloud space that most people I know can't keep an iCloud backup.
However, in my case had I tried this and it didn't work.
I'm really glad that I'm not the only one who's been frustrated by iOS recently. Their user interactions have become so inconsistent and there are so many places (like control center) where simple tasks like pausing music playback have additional friction for really no reason. Why would they split it into 2 screens when one worked just fine? Why did they eliminate slide to unlock? (My conspiracy theory here is to upsell people new devices because the home button unlock is absolutely horrible to use on anything < iPhone 6s). There are lots of places where things are just downright much more difficult than they have to be. In the end, I switched to android after using iOS for the last ~5 (maybe more?) years and I have to say my phone actually feels smart again
My lil complaint is that the "notification actions" are much less smooth then they were in iOS9. This is the feature where you can reply to a text or snooze an alarm or whatever directly in the drop-down notification while the phone is unlocked.
Also I've found that apple music CONSTANTLY loses my place if I pause my music for more than a couple minutes. This never used to happen with the old music app.
This is exactly what I meant by apple pushing their own agenda instead of making user experience the priority.
They are pushing this new notification thing which is pretty out of touch with how people actually use the phone--they think interacting directly from the notification is how people want to use it, when most people feel claustrophobic and would rather see the whole thing before making any action--and because of this, it introduces another step for people who just want to open the app and do the damn work
im using the previous version of ios 10 (one before current) and it has some weird battery draining bug and will shut off my iphone 6 plus at 30% and it's very hard to repower on without a charge source (e.g. ext charging battery). it also drains my battery heavily.
the current version supposedly fixes the battery drain (not sure about the shutdown bug) but introduced a bug into another app that i use and don't want to risk upgrading for either.
and this is the problem. apple charges premium prices but their software has gotten sloppy. macos and ios10 included. i upgraded to the latest macos version, sierra, and my escape key would not work for some reason (i was using vim and ended up doing ctrl-c? to activate) then i find out that killing siri on mac would fix the problem. then i found out a couple days later that their new macbook pro would not have an escape key. gee i wonder why they never caught this bug in testing?
thanks for this. i don't have a 6s. either that or it thinks i've already had a battery replacement. which could be true? this is my third 6 plus.
my original's lcd screen had the touch disease, since it was just inside warranty they "replaced" it by just giving me a new phone.
the replacement died within a week. serious wtf. so i went in and got yet another one.
this one has been fine, mostly. but i'm probably not going to get a iphone for my next device. not saying no other devices do this but that touch disease should be fixed even if you're outside warranty and not be charged with the $329 it cost. my original phone was susceptible to it and only by sheer "luck" did it happen within my warranty.
Brand new mbp on 10.11.6. Opening new tabs in safari then cmd-L to put focus in the location bar would beachball safari for multiple seconds.
The solution after much debugging was to disable com.apple.imklaunchagent
These lazy engineers really should be ashamed of themselves. This was an out of box install on a brand new laptop on their browser with minimal 3rd party software installed (chrome, brew, intellij, but nothing that should interfere with the os.) I wasted 5 free hours trying to make the damn browser work.
The things mentioned by other people - message notification lag, stupid slidy cards for brightness and volume, lockscreen press home button to jump through hoop. Also
- Photos. Wtf is the distinction between 'photos' and 'albums'. Why does Photos pretend to be a chronological hierarchy of Year -> Month -> Day but then drop to Tumblr style 'related' links, while Memories contain your grouped photos in any order, but so does Albums. Albums also try to dynamically group things by 'location' and 'selfies' and 'video' and 'camera roll'. Oh, they're all showing the same thing - the last thing I recorded? Useful. It's a complete mess and super frustrating to use.
- The changes to take and send photos in iMessage. Used to be that taking a photo meant pressing and holding the photo button, sliding up to take a video. Now it's more steps, and the camera shutter button is awkwardly at the bottom of the screen, then there's another slider to the left to reveal another camera button, to switch to the camera app, to take a video. More steps for everything, which also displaces 'insert a previously taken photo'. Who benefits?
- Video editing (trim) was glitchy in iOS9 and still is in iOS 10. Seriously, take photo, play with trim, randomly the video stops changing with the slider position, then the screen goes black, have to task-end the Photos app and try again. Video playback in Safari, also glitchy - pause somewhere, or skip forwards, get it playing from the start at 10x framerate (or more) with no audio, to 'catch up' to the new seek location. Seeking is still fiddly and often doesn't work well.
- Still need to care about WiFi vs. Cellular because "we changed our App icon to a Christmas one" still means tens or hundreds of download.
It's like calling a Tesla "an electric version of the same cars that were on the road for decades". Each headphone has a new chip that could probably run a whole smartphone few years ago - but I mean, if the fact that they are wireless is not impressive, then I don't think we can convince you.
Honest question: can you point me to some other earbuds of the same size that are totally wireless (not even a bridging wire) and that also include a microphone, etc.?
The AirPods honestly do seem like a somewhat unique entry into the market to me, but it's such a crowded market that I could have easily missed a competitor somewhere.
That said, the lack of any sort of wiring is actually a negative to me, because that's primarily what makes it seem like these will be so easy to lose.
The Bragi Dash and the Samsung Gear Icon X both do this, and also include fitness tracking functionality. The Samsung ones can even be loaded with music and cache your fitness data so you don't need a phone with you.
I think this is hilarious, even as someone who owns multiple Apple devices. "This is revolutionary. Nothing else does anything like this." "These do." "Well they cost more!", or "doesn't look as cool". Moving goalposts.
And eh, I realize that Apple almost never goes below MSRP/list, but don't act like the "after $50 off" is some special promotion. It's not a rebate, even an instant one, just 'cheaper than list'.
Your lack of awareness of the market does not mean that it does not exist. It is not helpful to pretend that your unwillingness to do simple research on the matter makes you an expert.
- Apple Airpods ($160) W1 Chip to quickly switch devices+, Can use either headphone independently+, 24 add hrs of charge in case, only comes in one size- -- 5 Hours
yeah this falls under "that isn't exactly the same product," above. I'm not sure, for instance, why you left 'can use either headphone independently' off the Gear IconX entry, because you can. I'm not sure why about half of these entries leave out the charge-case entry, because a lot of them have it.
But it's irrelevant. You can say "apple's product is better." You can say "these other products are terrible." You can even say "I hate everything that is not from Cupertino." But the claim here is that these things are some kind of revolution. The claim we are trying to rebut is not "apple airpods suck and are not worth buying." I, and many others, are merely explaining that there is nothing magical or even particularly new about airpods. They are an iteration on an existing product segment.
You, so far, have done nothing to demonstrate otherwise.
He's probably not impressed by the fact they're wireless because wireless headphones aren't new. I mean, even stodgy grumps like me have a pair that works well and cost $20. Wireless headphones just aren't impressive technology in December 2016. They've been done. Again and again. This isn't a Tesla situation by any means.
Apple might have executed particularly well, but I see his point.
Wireless headphones aren't new. Wireless headphones at that size/feature set/price point seem to be. The only comparable thing I know if is Samsung reportedly had some similar but they only had like 90m of battery life.
I'm curious how well the battery life claims hold up. It's impressive but sometimes the real world battery life doesn't measure up. The new MacBook Pros are a good example of this (even if the current battery life is temporary and may be fixed by OS updates).
Eh, you said it... YOU believe them. A lot of people here don't anymore.
Let's wait to see what real world use looks like. I mean, if you take the emoji touch bar at face value it's the coolest thing since sliced bread. However, real world use indicates that it might not be as useful as Apple wants it to be.
I think you misunderstood me. What I said is that Apple's numbers are highly accurate FOR WHAT THEY TESTED.
The problem here is that Apple hasn't given numbers about what it's like under heavy load. Or really any load it all. If you stick to doing the kind of things Apple does in their battery life test you WILL get what they say.
Unfortunately as we seem to be finding out if you go outside of that you're screwed. Obviously harder workloads always hit the computer more, but this year the delta seems much much higher. They are cherry picking tests that make their battery life look reasonable.
I should also note that this is not the first time Apple did this. The quoted battery life on the iPhone 7 is basically the same as before, but they made a slight change to the wording. This year there tests are all with wireless headphones. This is likely because it's always been down that using the speaker on an iPhone to listen to music will lower your battery life pretty significantly, and now that the new iPhone 7 has a double speaker arrangement it's likely an even bigger effect than before.
Apples not lying like so many PC makers used to do, they're playing lawyer games and choosing their words incredibly carefully.
This is not a good turn. Apple giving real life accurate battery estimates used to be one of the things that put them above PC makers in my mind. If they're going to start redefining the workload to doing nothing on your computer... why bother?
I'm not saying they're the greatest ever, but sync was easy, they play music without any problems, they hold a charge for a few days, and they haven't broken. What more does it take for a pair of Bluetooth headphones to work well? My expectations are pretty low.
They could absolutely be better, if for example, the charge lasted two weeks, or the sound was higher quality (I'm no audiophile but I'm sure if I was I'd find they could be better) but they're Good Enough.
I can't speak for the other guys above, but I must have missed something. I am baffled why this particular set of wireless headphones has received as much press as it has. It seems so overblown that I have to wonder if people with iPhone 7s have actually been refusing to use existing wireless headphones because they are actually waiting for these.
I've had a set of $25 Motorola wireless (Bluetooth) headphones that I use on my daily walking commute to and from work for many years. They work and sound great. They double as a wireless microphone and playback controls. I charge them every day via a USB cable. Woohoo.
I can't see anything specs-wise with the Apple headphones that is interesting. Auto-pause? Okay, cool, but I can press the pause button on my Bluetooth headphones from 2010. Switching between devices? I can enable or disable Bluetooth on my devices, I guess, if I had wanted to use the headphones with more than my phone (though I do not want that).
These new features seem incremental at best. The clamor for these—and the fact that their availability is a high-ranking news item on HN—seems to suggest I am missing something very fundamental. And yet, it feels that I am not. These are wireless headphones with a couple incremental features and an Apple logo.
It's Apple. Pretty much anything and everything Apple does right now gets lots of press, much of it of the fawning variety. Apple has a strong brand affinity, so people will shower love on anything Apple-related.
Looking at the list of specs you mentioned, yes, you missed something. There's another guy right above talking about the non-music related features, take a look.
The other two from that message that I didn't mention were auto-mono and a carrying case. Are those the other features you're referring to?
Auto-mono: I guess I see some people listening in only one ear sometimes, but that's not my way of listening to music or podcasts. The cheap Motorola headphones I use are traditional "headphones" and not earbuds. I prefer headphones over earbuds. But even if I used earbuds, I'm not interested in single-ear listening.
Carrying case: This is a big deal? On my walks, I "carry" my headphones on my ears. When I get home, I charge via a USB cable.
Whatever; I suppose I don't begrudge anyone for being excited by Apple headphones. I just find the hype level amusing and silly.
I had a pair of wired Sony's wayyyyy back in the day in this wrap around ear/neck band form factor that I really loved when I was a kid. Lately though, I find anything that covers my ear too warm and uncomfortable. This is why I'm excited about the AirPods. I wouldn't really classify these Motorola's as truly wireless because of the connecting band.
That's cool with me. A sense I have picked up from your reply and another message in this thread is that Apple is attempting to evolve the definition of "wireless headphone" to require no bridge between the two ears. I think that is a vocabulary change that is causing a lot of us to scratch our heads in confusion. Conventionally, "wireless headphone" has meant no wire to the device—no headphone cable and no 3.5mm connector. And by that definition, wireless headphones are old and boring.
That said, I'm not a fan of earbuds, wired or otherwise. So whether removing the bridge wire is a revolution is lost on me since I'm not interested either way.
Yeah... My bad, agree on the terminology. I think a more appropriate way to refer to them would be 'wireless earbuds'. In that case, I would say anything connecting them would be cheating and taking away from the truly amazing feeling of having audio delivered to your ears with no connecting wires to get caught on things, pull, vibrate when turning your head etc etc.
I could buy a dozen of the Motorola wireless headphones I use and I expect the results would be consistently satisfying. In fact, a couple years back I did buy two spare pairs that are new in box in case I ever lose my current pair. At $25 a pop, I figured why not have some insurance.
But I understand you. If you've not previously used wireless headphones and you're satisfied with Apple quality, this new offering is a known quantity. I'm still not really feeling the innovation. Except of course, as someone pointed out, this is a subtle redefinition of "wireless" to mean not just removing the wire to the device, but also any bridge between the two ears. For me, that bridge isn't something I care to remove. But okay, that's cool.
> I can't speak for the other guys above, but I must have missed something. I am baffled why this particular set of wireless headphones has received as much press as it has.
They're tiny, they pair to multiple devices trivially, and are well designed. They're one of the big reasons Apple is supposed to have removed the headphone jack off the iPhone 7. "You don't need it, let us show you why" kind of thing.
The other reason is that this is releasing MONTHS LATE. It was supposed to be released at the end of October, now it's coming out end of December. That's HUGE.
When was the last time Apple screwed up the launch of something big like this? The biggest one people can recall is the white iPhone 4 which basically released 9 months late. At that point most people just waited the extra 4-5 months for the iPhone 4s.
Ignoring that they're neat little headphones, this is big news today because APPLE SHIPPED LATE. That just doesn't happen. Maybe quantities are low (Apple watch), but not a flat out delay on a major product after announcing a release date.
Eh, they'll pair trivially to other Apple devices (which ... NFC assisted pairing is not new).
It's months late, it's still not here yet, AND there's a "big" warning on the page that even when it is here it will only be in limited quantities and that prospective buyers are "advised" to check online for stocking levels... very un-Apple.
I would agree that old Bluetooth devices (especially those from around 2005 or earlier) often sounded poor. But modern Bluetooth devices (say 2009 onward) have generally sounded fine/great. I would go so far as to say that if you're listening to MP3s and not FLAC, then Bluetooth isn't your biggest signal loss.
I believe modern Bluetooth headphones are indistinguishable from equivalent non-Bluetooth headphones. If you can tell whether headphones are Bluetooth or not—the other components being equal—then you have particularly acute hearing. And if that's you, then you are probably a FLAC aficionado.
For what it's worth, I listen to MP3s on Bluetooth headphones and they sound great.
(Though to be clear, I've not actually researched the bit rate of Bluetooth, though I suspect it's high enough for 44 KHz stereo. To my ears, Bluetooth is indistinguishable from an analog 3.5mm connection.)
It's not all about the codecs. On my Sony MDR-1RBTs — which are admittedly a few years old at this point — you can hear the radio buzzing when there's nothing playing. I don't know if it's possible to design a pristine, noiseless set of Bluetooth headphones when there's just so little room in the earcups.
The quality has nothing to do with Bluetooth, it has everything to do with the digital-to-analog converter. A $25 headset is going to have the cheapest chip the manufacturer could find. Non-Bluetooth headsets don't process digital signals and don't have to do this conversion, it's up to the device you're listening on.
Again, that's my point. Bluetooth has a undeserved/outdated bad reputation for adversely affecting audio. I contend that, all else being equal, I could not distinguish a modern Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired headphone.
Yes, as you point out, they also need a DAC. So I will clarify my contention: all else being equal, I could not distinguish a Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired USB headphone that uses the same DAC.
I haven't done work in the Bluetooth space for years now, but a big problem with audio streaming in the Bluetooth 1/2 days was that devices wouldn't reliably adjust their page and inquiry scan intervals (time the radio spends listening for connections and answering device discovery requests, rather than sending data).
The effective remaining bandwidth fell far short of what the default Bluetooth codec, SBC, required. SBC was already pretty low end, more like MPEG Layer-1 audio. Even so, for point to point streaming if the devices cooperated well there was enough bandwidth for fairly good audio quality. It's just that it was a crapshoot what any pair of devices would get you.
The other big issue is that there wasn't, at least at the time, any standardized method for synchronizing the audio sampling rates of the source and sink. This could have been achieved by slaving the audio PLL to the connection master's frequency hopping clock, which the slave has to follow to even maintain a connection, but there wasn't any requirement to do so. Plus it'd be a massive layer violation in the Bluetooth stack. We basically ran a software PLL on the sink side to try to match what the source was giving us, but packet retransmissions due to loss could gum up the timing. You could get a pitch-bending effect as a connection was starting up, or had just suffered a lot of loss.
> I imagine they've sorted most of that out by now.
I think they have. Giving some leeway to my bluetooth Motorola headphones since they are super-aural, to my ears—and I feel I am fairly picky—they are not significantly worse than my circumaural Sennheiser HD 380 pros on my workstation. I suspect the principal reason I feel my circumaural headphones sound a bit better is simply that they are circumaural.
Just go grab a pair of BT headphones with aptX support and you should be fine. Unless you are a tube amp and $1.5k headphone kind of person - then you most definitely aren't in the target segment.
Actually it is a bit more than "a pair of fucking headphones". As someone who spends a lot of time throughout the day listening to music, and finds Apple's Earpods to be some of the most comfortable nice sounding headphones I have owned, I'm rather excited about some innovation being done around this space.
A few features that make them new/innovative:
• Smart switching between multiple devices logged into iCloud. You need only pair with one of your iCloud devices and the rest will auto pair.
• Auto-pause when removed from ears.
• Auto-mono when only one is in your ear.
• Carrying case that charges them rapidly and keeps them safe in your pocket.
Edit: I said AirPods when I meant EarPods (the current wired ones). I don't currently have the AirPods.
Edit 2: Another reason I'm excited about these: I absolutely abhor talking on the phone (like holding the phone up to my ear) and find single ear bluetooth devices to be lame in both function and appearance. I might be a smidge hard of hearing, so I much prefer to have both ears in on the action. I've tried a handful of Bluetooth headsets in the past, and they've all left me seriously wanting. Connectivity isn't consistent. Audio quality isn't great. If something doesn't just work like my wired headphones, I'm not going to switch. If these turn out to have the same issues, I'll gladly report how inaccurate Apple's marketing was and how disappointed I am.
Like with most things Apple, they don't necessarily create the first product in a space, but they define the category by refinement of user experience and inventing the necessary tech to support that.
This Plantronics case isn't that great. You have to open it with two hands in front of you, and carefully place the awkwardly shaped headset in. You probably have to look at it while doing so. It's rather large, and the clear plastic cover looks like it can break pretty easily. It's also only one ear, and it's a $30 accessory.
The AirPods can be opened one-handed while in your pocket, and you can place them in without looking. They're also smaller, the case looks quite a bit more durable, and they work with the charger you already have as an iPhone user (lightning). The AirPods and case were designed with a broader UX scope - the entire user experience, from opening to listening to putting away - as one unified product.
The process that most hardware teams typically take is more narrowly focused on the core product hardware, rather than the entire scope of its use. If Plantronics had designed their headset with a broader UX scope in mind, they probably would have designed the headset itself differently, because its awkwardly shaped and hard to store. Instead I imagine they optimized the headset design for solely when its on-ear, and then asked how they could make a case for that shape. Such are the little differences that distinguish between regular products and category-defining ones (see also: iPod with iTunes).
Indeed. The fact that the first use experience is (from what I've heard) the very best pairing experience for any bluetooth headset ever tells that story quite well (all thanks to Apple's proprietary W1 chip, of course).
I've got a pair of Bose QC 35s and though their pairing experience is standard annoying bluetooth pairing, their support of multiple devices/easily switching between them is the best I've seen in bluetooth headphones I've purchased. The AirPods are, apparently, comparable to the Bose in this regard, with a better onboarding experience.
"The fact that the first use experience is (from what I've heard) the very best pairing experience for any bluetooth headset ever tells that story quite well (all thanks to Apple's proprietary W1 chip, of course)."
From who? They're not available, not even any pre-release reviews around.
Beats headphones with the W1 chip in them have been available since the the iPhone 7 release. I am, admittedly, assuming that the AirPods will be as good at this as the Beats headphones with the chip, but I believe that's a reasonable assumption.
Do you actually have them in hand? How is the sound quality? What headphone did you use before the AirPods and are they better or worse in terms of sound quality?
I'm probably not switching soon because I love my Atomic Floyd's sound quality (don't get me started on their customer service) but I'm just curious how they did with the sound quality aspect, which feels like the most important thing to me.
Sorry, edited my post after I realized I said AirPods and not EarPods. I don't have a pair. I would imagine they will be the same. Which is my hope because the EarPods fit my ears perfectly... I have pretty big ears (not sure if that typically translates to ear holes), which caused more than a little fun poking back in school, but apparently they are a good size for Apple's design spec. Take that BILLY you little jerk!
I have nil fashion sense, but I think the single-ear Lt. Ohura look is much better than headphones with the wires hanging. But I only like them for voice conversations.
>• Smart switching between multiple devices logged into iCloud. You need only pair with one of your iCloud devices and the rest will auto pair.
Genuine feature, and a neat one at that. Previously I had to rely on stuff like NFC or saved pairs, which is still more than 1 pair.
>• Auto-pause when removed from ears.
Also a genuine feature. Takes some real thinking to make that a priority in the UX.
>• Auto-mono when only one is in your ear.
Is that really a feature? I mean I guess that's cool, but it seems like a play on the previous feature sensing if in use or not.
>• Carrying case that charges them rapidly and keeps them safe in your pocket.
This is a necessity rather than a feature per say.
Wired headphones don't need to be charged. Wireless headphones with a headphone port for backup also don't require a charge.
Most modern headphones are a single unit, so they don't need a case to be kept from getting lost.
That said, many have cases to keep them from getting tangled or damaged in transport, the latter which is true for the airpods, however if your case were damaged, so is your charger.
> If these turn out to have the same issues, I'll gladly report how inaccurate Apple's marketing was and how disappointed I am.
If they have the same issues as other Bluetooth devices, hopefully you find out about it before you spend your money on some expensive tech.
>Is that really a feature? I mean I guess that's cool, but it seems like a play on the previous feature sensing if in use or not.
I think the distinction is that its not just turning off one of the phones. Its switching from stereo to mono so you can still hear everything you previously required both sides of the stereo mix (left + right) for. Definitely not a big jump from the other feature, but still goes to show how they are thinking about the small details.
That's true, it shows some attention to detail in the UX of the device.
I don't think however people were having a "crippled" xp when using just one wired earbud in "mono" rather than "combined stereo"
I think the feature really should be "senses when individual pods are in use" and because of that feature, some automatic tasks can be applied like combining stereo or pausing the music.
I guess I am just complaining that it feels like they used one feature and got two marketing points out of it, which is fair game.
> A pair of headphones a month later than they should be that look exactly like their old headphones
??? Maybe we have different standards on what 'look different' should be, but these are functionally and design-wise worlds apart from their existing headphones.
I'm not sure if you have a bias against Apple or not but you're distilling your adjectives down to the simplest level in order to attack them. I do not believe that is a fair assessment.
The AirPods include some interesting UX changes not typically seen (open case to connect, etc) and while some abilities have been done before (the tiny ear buds, the recharging case, etc) it also has some interesting aspects with voice commands and gestures.
Yes I wouldn't necessarily call them world class but a "pair of fucking headphones" seems possibly even more inaccurate to me.
That's important to notice. Just adding "fucking" in front of what something is isn't a very good argument. You can do it to anything that people love or consider to be great. The Beatles is just a fucking band. Tesla just makes fucking electric cars. A cure for cancer is just a fucking medical discovery.
A lot of the time it seems like Apple just changes things on iOS just because, not because there's actually any tangible benefits to doing so. The UI changes for Messages iOS 10 is a perfect example - it feels cramped and complicated where it used to feel intuitive and easy to use.
In the past it may have been true. That's why a lot of people hated iOS7 just because it was different.
But Apple's recent updates are all bad because the root cause goes up to how Apple is trying to push their own agenda--they want to become the "Services" company, because the wall street thinks their device growth has stalled. For example their stickers is an attempt to monetize their user base with app purchases. They don't care that people would rather be able to take a photo and send with one tap, because they know users have no choice anyway.
But this is super short sighted, Apple's recent moves reminds me of how Windows lost significant size of their users with Vista and went downhill.
Messages is a terrible example of that. In fact what you are talking about makes absolutely no sense.
The reason the UI is designed this way is because they decided to cram 100 features in a space that simply can't accomodate it properly. Stickers, Apps, Photos, Animations etc all of that takes space.
Messages is an utterly perfect, textbook example of software bloat.
There are now so many garbage features, tangential to the core purpose of the app — self-deleting audio blips if you move the phone this way, internet GIF search if you swipe that way, weird drawing pad, stupid variable-location popup to add "HA HA HA" animation, recently-played music grid, full-screen-or-sometimes-not fingerpainting applet, image editor, heartbeat monitor, fucking kiss simulator (what the fuck), and I know from sorry experience (usually when trying to send a message with one hand while carrying something heavy and awkward) that there's more shit buried in here that I can't even figure out how to navigate to right now, like a signature editor — that I have had to help my dad, my wife, and my kids figure out how to get back to where send a fucking message with it, repeatedly.
You could use iOS 10 Messages to create a 6-episode TV miniseries called Software Design Gone Horribly Fucking Wrong and surely win an Emmy award for best documentary.
Yeah, I really wonder who's in charge of this mess.
Like I said somewhere else in this thread, all these new features are for Apple, not for users.
If they designed it for users, they would have NEVER made it so that they have to tap twice to take a photo before sending. Not to mention how they don't even allow you to open the camera as fullscreen.
Isn't it really ridiculous how nowadays when you want to take a quick picture and send it while messaging, you have to close the messages app, open the camera app, take the photo, and share it back to messages? Used to be: tap the camera button. Take the pic. Send.
Before iOS10, you could press the little camera button from the messages app and a camera would just launch. You take the pic, and send.
Now all you get is this tiny preview rectangle at the bottom. It doesn't launch a full camera so is useless for most cases. That's why I have to open the "real" camera app and take the picture and come back.
Next to the "tiny preview rectangle," there's a gray arrow indicator that suggests swiping right. If you do that, you'll find a button you can tap for the old functionality.
So now it's tap-swipe-tap instead of just tap, but in exchange the old functionality of sending an existing photo has changed from a long series of actions to just tap-tap-send.
Except you don't have to do that. If you need the full-screen camera, just swipe right from the smaller camera view. You'll get access to your full-screen camera and any previously taken photos/videos in your library.
Thanks for the tip. I guess this will make it slightly easier.
But my point is exactly this. How many taps did it used to take to quickly take a pic and send? One.
Now with iOS10, you tap the camera button, swipe to the right, and then tap the "real" camera button one more time. That's 3 times the number of gestures it used to take pre-iOS10.
p.s.
How did you even discover that swipe feature? I'm pretty sure most people have no idea that's how it works. I am an iOS developer so I'm not exactly a laggard, either.
It wasn't that difficult. There's an arrow on the left of the screen. The first time I tapped the arrow and nothing happened so I swiped and got the camera. People complain about discoverability but that's exactly the way discoverability works, I think.
In 1/10 cases, it takes me over 20 seconds to unlock my phone. The new "click twice to unlock" feature combined with apparently hard-to-detect fingerprints is really annoying.
I hate the control center. Its almost impossible to control the screen brightness. Whenever you try it, two-third of the time it takes me to the music control. It was something which was perfect in ios9.
Atleast they could have given an option to choose if you don't want the separate music tab in the control center.
Health: The iPhone 5s+ automatically counts my steps anyway, so I started entering my weight and blood pressure every few days. It felt really satisyfing to look at the Health dashboard every day.
I could probably buy (and trust!) third-party dashboards that use HealthKit. But instead I just stopped using Health. Chances of me getting an Apple Watch for health tracking: now zero, even if it was free.
Game Center: I'm aware that people hated the old and the new design, but Apple didn't kill it, they moved the invitations functionality into (gasp) a Messages mini-app. Syncing your game progress between iOS devices is a hodgepodge of Facebook, iCloud, Game Center, and most commonly, "not at all". That's not going to change if Apple cares so little about its own frameworks.
I'm not an Apple hater. I've always loved Apple and I will always stick with Apple. They have always come through for me and they are still the same wonderful company they have always been.
In fact, it is MORE of a fad these days to be an Apple hater than an Apple fanboy. Why do you have to be a follower and hate on Apple? Try thinking for yourself.
Well, the 1st and 3rd iPhones were revolutions. The Mac screens are stunning. It wasn't BS when Apple used to use it. Until they kept the same language and dropped innovation.
In the same fashion, I was in a company whose motto was "Be the change you seek", which is really entrepreneur-minded and active. They changed their motto to "Advance humanity". Most employees said "It's ok, it's the kind of marketing bullshit that no-one even listens to". It wasn't about building something awesome together. The motto was here, hanging in the hall, just saying "We're strongly delusional, we all speak bullshit now, and we know you won't even debate about it because no-one believes it anyway! Look at us, we're kings of the universe!"
"Our vision is to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere — every person, every organization, and every community around the globe. This motivates us — inspires us — to do what we do. To make what we make. To invent, and to reinvent. To engineer experiences that amaze. We won’t stop pushing ahead, because you won’t stop pushing ahead. You’re reinventing how you work. How you play. How you live. With our technology, you’ll reinvent your world."
Seventy-seven words…to say what? How does this pablum tell an engineer, a sales person, or an accountant what the company is about, what it does, why and how?
I'm pretty sure Apple's success is mainly due to building good products that people want and are willing to pay high prices for. Wacky marketing language may be part of their corporate culture but I don't think it's much responsible for their success.
Nice refinements? Sure. But it also likes to compare itself against a Bluetooth world that frankly, hasn't existed in several years... "poor audio quality that skips and cuts out", and "pairing that is constantly problematic, where users don't know whether they will re-pair the next time" (https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/12/apple-w1-chip-how-it-works/ )
That's great, but also not the same as Bluetooth earbuds. I don't have trouble either with any kind of receiver that doesn't sit within my actual ear - presumably it's something to do with either additional signal attenuation, or lack of space for a sizable antenna, or both, but whatever the reason, getting rock-solid reception in a truly wireless earbud seems to be a very difficult problem to solve.
(If you're not sure what kind of device I'm talking about here, the Rowkin Mini is a good example - note the complete lack of protrusion beyond the pinna. I suppose the AirPods themselves don't really qualify by this standard, since they seem to have their antennae in the microphone boom which protrudes below the ear; on the other hand, I'm willing to tolerate such a protrusion if it's the only reasonable way to get good signal, and improved microphone pickup is a pretty good bonus besides.)
The most profitable company in the world doesn't need us to carry their water for them. Let Gruber take care of that. You're literally trying to defend Apple for using the term "magical" to refer to a pair of pedestrian wireless headhones. Come on.
To someone that uses headphones for many hours on a daily basis, useful innovation in the space definitely feels magical to me considering how long I've been using the same old dumb wired headphones.
The point is, if you want to convince others why it is so, you have to play by their rules. Your opinion is simply your opinion.
I do like _some_ of Apple's products, but I would never spend 150 dollars on these headphones. I'm hoping that Apple cheerleaders will drive down the cost so I can get the version 2/3 for cheap when all the bugs have been ironed out.
Is colorful language in marketing new or unique to Apple? Are there people that actually mistake the term 'magical' in this context to mean, 'these headphones actually have supernatural forces working inside them!'
I agree with what you said, but like I said, the act of persuasion isn't merely stating facts.
Surely you can see that comments could have different moods. Some might simply be sarcastic, others cynical, or maybe people just venting at Apple for a bad experience they had with some other Apple product, etc, etc.
I'm genuinely curious to see how often Siri is used, and in what contexts.
Not to be cynical, but to re-calibrate my barometer. The only person I know who uses it is my partner's nine year old daughter, and even then not often.
I plan to use them as a remote interface to my iPhone, especially when at home (iPhone lives in a drawer while charging). Things like setting timers, creating reminders or let Siri read out received messages - basically what Echo does, but not bound to one room. "Hey Siri" does not really work for me, I stopped using it almost completely.
Sometimes I accidentally use it to search for directions, then switch to Google's voice interface when it (inevitably) fails and I realize what I've done.
I don't like the errors voice messaging causes (you can tell when someone's sending texts with it), so I never use that.
It's OK for setting alarms or timers but I've only done that a couple times because I always forget about it and do it manually instead, or (for timers) my phone's farther away than a microwave or something.
Tried using it to record notes by voice once. It was entirely terrible at that task.
My phone would be at most 1% worse if Siri were simply gone.
All the ones I've had have a timer mode that doesn't run the microwave itself. Handy when you need to time something in the oven and something on the stovetop.
I frequently use Siri to create reminders during my commute, because it's more convenient than pulling my phone out (especially in winter!) and I almost always have an earbud in anyway. If a quicker, lower-friction method exists of capturing stray thoughts before they get away, I haven't found it yet.
I also occasionally use it when I wake up in the middle of the night and don't want to abuse myself with a bright phone display in order to find out what time it is - I don't keep a clock on my bed table, but my phone always charges there. "Hey Siri, what time is it?" is handy in that circumstance, unless the "Hey Siri" part decides not to trigger, which happens often enough that I don't really find it reliable. (I think that must be because a half-asleep voice sounds different; this isn't a problem I generally have at other times, even when using a $15 Bluetooth earbud which can't possibly have a very high-quality microphone.)
I have an Apple Watch and I use Siri multiple times daily. Most frequently to set timers, but sending iMessages to friends and family is a close second. I also frequently use Siri to control music while I'm washing dishes or my hands are otherwise busy. If there's a faster way to skip a track when my hands are soapy, I don't know of it.
Also, FWIW, I've gotten pretty good at discreetly talking to my wrist in public. In any moderately loud area I don't think anyone even notices me doing it.
That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to AirPods. I can use Siri with the earbuds I have, but their microphones are crummy enough to require I do so somewhat loudly. While I don't always mind seeming like I'm talking to myself in public, and indeed there's the odd occasion when seeming unpredictable and potentially dangerous can be positively beneficial, having the option of greater discretion would be nice as well.
I and my parents use it all the time. setting timers, directions (Apple Maps is inferior to Google maps but is often good enough e.g. "take me home"), call folks, basic operations is often easier with Siri than unlocking the phone - esp. if you have a BT headset and the iPhone is in the bag or on your table.
There's enough skepticism in this thread and comments (and I concur a lot with what's been written), so I'll try to take a positive "here's what could be possible" spin with it:
I recently purchased a Bose QuietComfort 35 and I've noticed that the lack of chords + noise cancellation have made it so that I wear the headphones for the entirety of the day. The lack of fatigue while wearing the head phones is a big deal. Additionally, the lack of wires has changed my behavior in ways I did not expect pre-purchase. For example, I no longer need to take off my headphones to go to the bathroom. Or when I leave the desk to grab something, etc.
These AirPods seem like they could make this behavior even more extreme. I can imagine just keeping them on all day without taking them off. That would be enough of a behavioral change personally to warrant the superfluous marketing copy of "Magical" and "Not Possible Before".
Beyond that, if people really start walking around with AirPods in their ear all day, it could more of a fashion symbol success (new age earrings basically) than what Apple envisioned with the Watch.
But, at the price they're going for, I doubt this will happen, but you can see where the marketing enthusiasm is coming from.
>> lack of wires ... I no longer need to take off my headphones ... when I leave the desk to grab something
I usually use earphones, with the wire tucked under my shirt(it's not noise cancelling), and connected to my phone - that way the cable doesn't get stuck with things.
The cable is also long enough use the phone for surfing too.
And they're on me all day long, either in ear or on the shirt. And i prefer that arrangement to my long lasting(13 hours) bluetooth earphones.
There is remedial level Apple marketing babble on that page.
The biggest public facing change at Apple since the death of Steve Jobs is their move to terrible marketing copy and ads.
Under Jobs, that quote would be reduced to just a few words, whereas now it is a slog to get through. I've tried re-reading it a few times and still haven't made it to the end.
Pick up bluetooth device. It's dead. Press and hold buttons.
Wave phone around. Turn bluetooth off and on. Press and hold buttons again. Blue lights appear. Stare at empty pairing list. Wonder why it's not working. Curse at it.
If they can make wireless not-be-shitty, that will count for 'magical' and 'not possible before' afaiconcerned.
Except, Apple laptops are plagued with "wifi broken after sleep", so I have no hope that they can.
Not to mention that AirDrop has been a disaster since its inception, and I haven't heard a single good thing about unlocking Macs wirelessly with the Apple Watch.
Actually they do. What's "magical" and "reinvented" is the fact that the AirPods seamlessly switch to whatever device you're currently using, so you can switch between your desktop, laptop, iPhone, and iPad without having to actually do anything to trigger the switch. In addition, it automatically pauses your music when you take your AirPods out of your ears (and resumes it if you put them back in).
Is it actually seamless? As in zero seconds? I have headphones that "seamlessly" switch between multiple bluetooth connections. It has about a half of a second silence between switching which is a bit annoying though. That delay is what I thought a limitation of bluetooh, or are you talking about something different?
My Plantronics headset [1] has been doing most of this for years. I keep it connected to my work laptop and smartphone simultaneously and can take calls on either device with seamless switching. It also detects when it is on my ear or not.
It sounds like that's just taking calls on both devices, right? AirPods intelligently route all audio, not just calls, and it does it based on the notion of what your "current" device is rather than whatever device is emitting audio (e.g. if you're using your iPhone, AIUI it won't switch to your computer just because your computer started playing audio).
> The AirPods seamlessly switch to whatever device you're currently using, so you can switch between your desktop, laptop, iPhone, and iPad without having to actually do anything to trigger the switch.
Wait... Honest question: How?
Does it switch based on which input source is currently playing audio? What if more than one is playing at a time?
It's based on Handoff. Your devices already have a notion of which device you're currently using, which it uses to trigger Handoff (so you can resume an activity on your new device that you were just doing on a previous device). AirPods hook into that and switch input to the "current" device (but I believe only if it plays audio; that way picking up your iPhone won't disconnect you from your computer if you're not doing something audio-related. Of course, I don't have AirPods myself, so I can't verify, but I believe that's how it works).
It's almost as if it's marketing material and not an objective third party review. Sickening they'd put something like that on their own website. No other tech company would ever say good things about their own products.
This one is literally true though. They had a semi-custom chip designed to implement features/performance that don't exist with Bluetooth 4 yet.
I think Bluetooth 5 will catch up. In fact, I'm betting that what they have is basically a radio chip designed for Bluetooth 5 (it's basically just Bluetooth LE with higher bandwidth and range) with some extra features for their pairing tech, but since the spec wasn't finalized, and they couldn't wait, they just rolled it out as proprietary tech.
We're slowly moving into that future tech world that we saw in movies and dreamt up when we were kids. These are wireless earbuds. My first pair of wireless headphones used IR, took two AA batteries, were huge, heavy, and sounded horrible once you started losing sight of the transmitter!
Sure, it's a small step in mass-market technology, but that's the only way tech moves forward for most of the world. It's never really existed before, it's something new!
Some of us find advancements in tech exciting, whether it's some incremental advancement in AI, or an incremental advancement for silly earbuds.
If you think in terms of small increments, you'll never see, or be impressed with, the big changes that are happening around you.
Thank you. Not sure why people are acting so jaded when we're getting all of this cool stuff that was scifi even less than a decade before. The future is cool.
Well Jaybirds have been out for years, and are pretty much the same thing with a wire around the neck, but also rather popular.
And actually the Dash was a kickstarter from two years ago which is the same as the Airpods, where each pod is separate with no wire at all. Started shipping a year ago.
People who know Apple are getting sick of them jumping on bandwagons' years late and claiming to be first.
Apparently not. Which sucks, because I'd love better quality (dual drivers and all) earpod style headphones. I heard (kek) Amazon Premium has some decent ones, but they don't ship international.
Yes. I was actually fairly excited to see the Airpod announcement because it might inspire more companies to release wireless earbuds (that don't have to go inside your ear canal and block outside noise)...
> "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." -- Slashdot creator CmdrTaco/Rob Malda about the iPod in 2001.
I'm not saying these will have the impact of an iPod, but I am entertained by the amount of naysaying here.
For one thing, how often have you fiddled with the knots in your headphone cord? It's frustrating enough to prevent me from using them in situations where I otherwise would.
> If you're running and they fall out, you're screwed.
On the other hand, this is a silent failure mode in a good sense: if you lose them, then you'll know instantly (because of no music), so at least have a chance of looking for them nearby.
Where they will be discovered conveniently ensconced 15 yards below a subway grate. For those of us that live in cities and commute via public transit, having them fall out is probably 70% as problematic as vanishing entirely.
The reviews I've heard of these and the Beats Solo3 (which use the same chip) indicate that the wireless connection on these is absolutely rock solid. This includes a very picky friend of mine who got a set of Solo3 headphones; he's blown away. I'd like to see the AirPods in the wild for a month or so before I totally believe this, but early indications are good.
I have used cheapo sub-$20 SoundBot headphones for almost a year and a half now, and have literally never had an issue with wireless connectivity.
EDIT: Ah, throwanem (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170546) points out the crucial difference between headphones and earbuds. For me, earbuds are undesireable, so I didn't realise that the form factor was meant to be a selling point.
Headphones or earbuds? The former have considerably more space in which to put an antenna that extends past the side of the wearer's head; earbuds have a pretty strict limitation in this regard, and indeed all the ones I've tried (ranging in price from about $10 to about $60) have at least occasionally dropped signal with the phone in my front trouser pocket on the same side as the earbud. For AirPods never to do so would be a significant differentiator in my experience.
Until, of course, they start to produce some of the same little pops and interruptions I always get from Bluetooth earphones when I'm walking. I don't seem to get quite as many with the AirPods, but the skips and interruptions, when they happen, make me wish for something wired.
Did they stay connected?
Mostly, but I still heard audio pops from time to time. Not as many as I usually get with Bluetooth headphones, but they were still there.
I find it interesting that you use that quote as an example of naysaying. Within a few months of the iPod's introduction, they introduced higher storage options. Though the Classic line never got wireless, the HUGELY popular iPod touch had wireless. Both of his complaints were eventually rectified by Apple in the iPod line.
Yes, they introduced higher storage options, but not until component prices dropped low enough for Apple to maintain their margins at the same MSRP. The iPod had already became a gigantic hit in its own right during the 6 years between the introduction of the iPod 1st Gen and when the iPod Touch brought wireless to the iPod family.
So other than some non-sequitur facts, what's so interesting? CmdrTaco's take is the classic example of tech spec-naysaying by pundits completely misreading demand in the market. Meanwhile, AceJohnny says that it may very well apply here, which remains to be seen.
Was it an immediate success? If these graphs are true [0,1,2], it looks like it took several years for it to really take off. It didn't really become a huge success until the end of 2004, the same year they increased storage capacity (for the second time), moved iPods to the click-wheel, and added the iPod mini. Also the iTunes music store was released in 2003, and added Windows support in late 2002.
"Apple’s total iPod sales climb past 10 million, with 8.2 million units sold in 2004 alone" [0]
It was an immediate success with Mac users. Some PC users tried to use them, I remember companies making combos of a FireWire PCI card and special software to try to use it. I almost did it myself.
The sales explosion really happened when they released it for Windows. All of a sudden a HUGE market was there and it snapped them up as fast as they could.
The iPod touch doesn't really belong here. It came out long after the iPod enjoyed massive success, and despite the name it wasn't really an iPod, but rather an iPhone without the phone parts. It's still called "iPod" but in terms of its functionality it's completely different.
This quote is so overused it's basically a tech trope.
The point is that, at the time, the iPod was a niche product, with several huge flaws. Subsequent iterations of the iPod fixed those flaws, but that doesn't mean you should have bought a v1 iPod. It made much more sense to wait.
Exactly the same logic applies to the Airpods. Suggesting that people can't criticise them because at some point in the future the product line will become successful is asinine.
No, the iPod took what was a technically good-enough product category and slapped on a UI that didn't suck. UI is often the most important part of a product, and basically only Apple really got it when it came to MP3-players.
But the first device still had huge weaknesses. Firewire-only, Mac-only, and small storage compared to the competition. Not only that, the first iPod wasn't a success, it took a few iterations for Apple to get it right.
My point is that this initial criticism of the iPod was not wrong. It was a flawed device. It was eventually improved into a successful device, but using that logic to shut down any criticism of future products is just silly.
> The patent covers an interface that lets users navigate through a tree of expanding options, such as selecting an artist, then a particular album by that artist, then a specific song from that album, said Phil O'Shaughnessy, a Creative spokesman.
The software UI (especially as described by that spokesman) is somewhat obvious. That said, the hardware UI of the iPod (click-wheel) was miles ahead of what Creative and others were offering (D-pads).
> This quote is so overused it's basically a tech trope.
OK, how about "The only problem is that you have to install something. See, it's not the same as USB drive.", the top comment in response to the Dropbox announcement on HN, 9 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
It's a cliche because we techies are particularly bad at recognizing the mass-market appeal of products. What seems easy to us can be an unsurmountable hurdle for the target market, and what we may perceive as an unnecessary flourish can turn out to be an essential quality-of-life feature. It's a cliche because we keep doing it.
Knots occur in headphone cables because of how people wrap or store them. If you take each end of the cable and fold it in half a few times (I do it 3 times) then you're far less likely to get any tangles than if you wrap them around your fingers in a continuous loop.
Ordered, delivery in a week. I have a couple of Bluetooth earphones that are all pretty poor in UX department and not-so-horrible-but-still-subpar in the sound quality department. I am hoping these will prove to be much better in both.
You think Apple's going to include a pair of headphones they sell for $160 in the box, when they can provide the super-cheap lightning earpods instead to incentivize you to get so frustrated that you upgrade?
Hell, I know I ended up picking up a Jabra Halo Smart because I got so annoyed having to deal with the stupid dongle to use my $10 pair of Sony AS200's and the cheap Chinese Kinivo bluetooth headphones I had had substantially worse audio quality than even these cheap wired ones.
I thought about the AirPods, but I'd lose them in a heartbeat. I'm constantly forgetting where the hell I put my headphones as is, at least my Halo Smart is big enough that I can find it easily - if I lost one of the little AirPod's I would end up tearing my house apart looking for the dumb thing.
Yes they do work alone, iPhone will even switch to mono. About the replacement, don't know yet, but I think Apple support will let ppl buy them individually.
Not that people will do it all the time (I certainly wouldn't) but the charging case thing is there for a reason. Most likely the idea is you keep it somewhere handy (desk, backpack, laptop bag, etc.) and so you put the AirPods in it while not using them.
As far as them falling out, like on the subway or something, that'll be the problem.
Since no one has production units in hand, you'll have to take Apple's word for it:
"a charging case that holds multiple additional charges for more than 24 hours of listening time.(3) Need a quick charge? Just 15 minutes in the case gives you 3 hours of listening time.(4)"
Also, will Apple include these within iPhone box to replace the clunky new lightning things?
Most of the reviews of the preproduction units said Apple's 5 hour claim was about right. That's about 1-2 hours more than I get from my current earbuds, and they can't charge one-at-a-time or give me 3 hours of use in a 15 minute charge.
Why is Apple so obsessed with calling everything "magical". If anyone believes this is magic, they also need to believe Apple employs wizards & witches.
Because for the less informed customer that is descriptive, and allows those customers to enter the reality distortion field.
It is the same with "Air", "Pod", iSomething", and "Pro". Meaningless buzzwords. Then again, every company has their set ("Surface", "ThinkPad", "Yoga", "Zen"). Trust me, it has nothing to do with real yoga or zen. I'll refrain to make a comment on "Pro".
Just ignore the buzzwords, insofar that they don't tell you anything about the quality of the product and instead look at price/feature/quality comparisons and make up your own mind.
There already is a plethora of wireless earbuds/headphones on the market... and has been that way for years. No need to buy these overpriced ones to get wireless.
Your comment would be more useful had you answered his question instead of expressing your dislike for the product in question. There are plenty of dissenting comments that you could latch onto to express the latter.
I will not buy a phone without a 3.5" jack period. I'm not buying ridiculously expensive wireless headphones that are objectively worse (worse quality than wired alternatives, added hassle of charging them plus much more expensive).
I will not buy a computer without a 5" floppy drive.
I will not buy a computer without a 3.5" floppy drive.
I will not buy a computer without a CD drive
etc.
Seems Apple is just always ahead of the crowd in getting rid of things.
this is a false analogy. the CD drive was an improvement on the 3.5" floppy. the 3.5" floppy was an improvement on the 5" floppy. bluetooth is an improvement in form (no more wires), but a downgrade in function as the audio quality is diminished.
I hear people saying this a lot, but I'd be willing to bet that at least 90% of consumers would be incapable of telling the difference between Bluetooth and wired audio in a blind test.
Also, given that the vast majority of earbuds people use are sub-$20, I bet the audio quality isn't that great to begin with.
if 90% of consumers are incapable of telling the difference then why would apple use such an expensive DAC in their phone? I can't speak for everyone, but it's a pretty noticeable difference to me especially considering my hearing isn't very good to begin with.
Please explain to me how having to use a dongle that is inconvenient and will probably break or be lost an advantage over just having my good headphones plugged into a headphone jack?
Anyway, I won't be buying a phone without a headphone jack, or these airpods.
In a few short years you're probably going to find it hard to buy any phones then; Samsung is reportedly already planning to remove the headphone jack from their flagship phones.
I'm very curious how this product will sell. Considering that I routinely lose or break ear phones and occasionally put them through the clothes washer, I'm very unlikely to invest $150 in a pocket sized pair (I do have some high end cans that i use now and then which are too large to be easily lost or accidentally submerged).
As the owner of an iPhone 7, I have encountered some frustration from not being able to charge and listen to headphones at the same time. I realized that if lightning cables were USB, I could just use some sort of hub.
But it seems that Apple has declined to offer a splitter, leading to many shoddy attempts for sale on Amazon, most with fewer than three star average ratings.
Viewed as an independent gizmo, these are a great idea and will appeal to some people. But viewed as an alternative to the convenience of the 1/8th inch jack on the back of the phone, a lot is left to be desired.
The picture of the futuristic woman wearing them evokes the single-ear bluetooth headset, only worn over both ears.
I love wireless headphones. But the main downside to these for me is that it doesn't look like they will improve upon sound quality and sound isolation (or lack thereof) in the traditional wired Apple Ear Pods.
Removing the audio jack also removes a whole market of products that were taking advantage of the audio jack for non-audio purposes (e.g. the Square dongle). Now that the audio jack is gone, companies like Square will have to pay Apple a licensing fee to use the only available port on the iPhone, and even companies that want to attract consumers of their audio products to be used with iPhones will have to get licensing from Apple as well.
> Removing the audio jack also removes a whole market of products that were taking advantage of the audio jack for non-audio purposes (e.g. the Square dongle).
Except that it doesn't. Yes, you have to use an adapter now, and that's slightly (but only slightly) more clumsy than before, but "Square readers don't work any more!" is a particularly tired piece of FUD, which it would be nice not to see spread around any more by people such as HN participants who really should know better.
OK, how about things like the Apogee Jam[1] and MIDI adaptors? As far as I can tell, there aren't any MFi-certified Lightning splitters that support both data IO and audio out. (Usually it's just audio out + charge — and poor audio at that.)
Well, how about them? That's a reasonable concern, and a major problem for people who want to use such devices with an iPhone 7. They aren't Square readers, though, or any other kind of device that uses the headphone jack for data, and it's inaccurate, disingenuous, and unhelpful to claim that such devices no longer work.
The use case that I'm interested in is being able to have just one bud in my ear (to be able to hear what's going on around me) without the other one dangling. To me, that's worth the money.
"Optical sensors and motion accelerometers work with the W1 chip to automatically control the audio and engage the microphone, giving you the ability to use one or both AirPods."
These look extraordinarily uncomfortable, especially if I'm supposed to have them in my ears more than usual headphones - or even as long as my current model. If Apple is trying to make an in-ear controller ala Her, I do not see these as something I'll pick up.
Curious. Will there be third-party headphones that work here?
Third party headphones should work just fine, I don't see Apple breaking A2DP just to push their own product.
The fancypants features like iCloud sync and inserted ear detection though, I suspect that'll take some manufacturers some reverse engineering or exchanges of money for details.
For someone who listens to mainly podcasts, I found them to be really really convenient. And the wire between the two pods makes it seem a bit harder to lose compared to AirPods.
I feel like a lot of this mess with needing a different dongle and special wire for each product would have been less of a big deal if everything they did just moved to USB C all at the same time. Now if you want to charge your air pods with a macbook pro you need a cable to go from usb C to thunderbolt (not included) or an adapter to use the previous-gen-usb to lightening cable it does come with.
It feels to me like the different product development teams at Apple didn't communicate with each other at all w.r.t. what ports to use.
Nevertheless, the phone these are designed to be used with (the same one you mention on the 2nd to last line of your post) still charges via a Lightning port. They may be merciless about the whole planned obsolescence thing, but they aren't stupid.
The dock connector lived for 13 years, ADB lived for about as long, and both were obsolete and replaced by better ports.
I don't doubt that one day iPhones may use USB-C or whatever replaces it, but the lightning port is going to be around for a long time - it was designed to last at least a decade, and I don't doubt that it will.
All of Apple's "accessories" (things that will request charge from a host over their cable: phones, tablets, keyboards and touchpads, and now headphones) have a Lightning port.
All of Apple's "computers" (things that won't: computers that are wired for power, and devices that are wired for power like the Apple TV) have, or will have, USB-C ports.
The vague middle case is laptops, like the new MBP: they do charge over their USB-C cables. But they'll only do this from a wall-socket power adapter; they won't attempt to drain the battery of a peer device they're connected to.
Besides that HCI hint of charging semantics, though, Lightning is just physically different in a few important ways that Apple relies on: for one, the connectors are solid metal, so an upward-pointed male connector can be used as a freestanding dock. That's not true of USB-C. Apple isn't going to converge them.
I believe the switching from charging a device and charging your laptop is done in software. The spec allows any USB C device to charge any other in either direction AFAIK.
Any battery with USB-A and USB-C ports (or just USB-C ports if you go out and get the USB-C to Lightning cable) that also supports USB-PD should be able to charge both your USB-C laptop and phone.
I ended up getting this battery [0] from Anker, and it's done a great job with my 2016 skinny Macbook and iPhone.
I've been wondering this for quite some time. Thanks for the clearly explained response. Is this documented somewhere or just something you've observed?
590 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] threadSo yes, not quite yet, but also not necessarily a full month away.
"AirPods will be shipping in limited quantities at launch and customers are encouraged to check online for updates on availability and estimated delivery dates."
That's like "We look like fools. At least get -something- out there".
Now, in the gym, I can throw my phone in my gym bag and not worry about it while working out. I'll never go back to wired.
Exactly, doing anything active with wired headphones on isn't fun. They keep getting snagged in things and get pulled off your ears.
If your ears are ill-shaped for this style of earphone, then they might fall out.
I do active things with wired headphones all the time, and they rarely get snagged on anything or pulled from my ear.
That said, not having to carry the device that provides the sound source is a convenience that's worth something (though nowhere near the additional cost of these over wired earbuds.)
Granted, now you have to cary a hard plastic case in your pocket.
It's a pet peeve of mine. Wireless is a good thing.
I don't need more than 2 hours tops when running, so the 5+ hour battery life is great.
I never had any problems with the current earphones slipping out of my ears while running - rain, wind, or shine. Airpods seem to follow a similar model, so I don't anticipate issues there either.
Try putting your smartphone in a safe place, and have wired or wireless headset, and use some kind of smartwatch to control your phone and receive feedback on your performance. I use a Pebble 2 for that, but there's other alternatives available.
Bonus points is my phone is stored safely without saying to random strangers "rob me".
I don't come across too many even semi-consistent runners who take their phone with them. Most can't stand a big iPhone 6/7 or Samsung strapped to their arm like a piece of armor. I don't think these AirPods will improve the running-music duo at all. The technology doesn't quite cater to us yet. Lightweight, sturdier earbuds (check out yurbuds) with a cord under the shirt down to the waist isn't noticeable and is hard to beat.
Your risk of losing your headphones is really that high?
If I did need to re-pair, it's as simple as picking the phone from the phone or laptop's recently-used devices list. I usually only have to do that if the phone has decided it wants to keep talking to my headphones while I'm in the car. Pairing from scratch with the phone is as simple as holding the phone to one of the ear cups, but I've only had to do that once and I can't remember which one now.
I'm also enjoying auto-pause when I take the headphones off -- no more fiddling for the pause button when someone wants to talk to me.
Quality sounds fine to me as well. Are there any blind tests that show people can notice differences with Bluetooth? Even if the difference is slightly noticeable I doubt you would notice wearing headphones on the move, at the gym, in the office etc.
> How many times have you really found yourself genuinely bothered by wires on your headphones?
Multiple times a day. Any time you're doing anything active besides just walking (e.g. reaching for things, carrying something) or putting on a jacket the wire gets in the way. Getting them caught on a door handle and having in-ear headphones ripped out of your ears is really unpleasant.
In the end it seems more of a question of which bothers you more:
1. degraded sound quality and drastically shorter (since one is unlimited) battery life or
2. having a wire from your headphones to your audio source.
For me, there's no question that 1. is more of an issue, for others, 2. is a bigger problem. I consider bluetooth an alternative to wired headphones but absolutely not a replacement since both have tradeoffs
That said, I've personally tried a half-dozen wireless headphones over the past few months. I strongly feel that the technology has progressed to where the tradeoffs of battery life and sound quality are minimal for the general consumer.
Right now, price is probably the limiting factor in adoption. However, as the price decreases over the next 3 years, I think you'll find that wireless will become the primary means of audio consumption for the average Joe.
I would happily bet any amount of money that I can tell the difference between my nice pair of IEMs and the stock apple ones every time. It's not the bluetooth transmission that's the problem, it's the actual sound producing hardware. Customers like you dwarf customers like me, so Apple and Beats don't bother to produce great sounding phones beyond a certain point--it even appears AirPods have basically stock earphone sound quality.
I would love the convenience of AirPods, just upgraded with nicer drivers, and would be willing to pay $400 for them. There just isn't a big enough market, so I'm left feeling the pain of people that fall outside of Apple's inner circle.
This is even more perplexing to me because Apple consistently puts screen quality as a very high priority. I'm just flabbergasted at how much they could be dropping the ball for audio.
So IOW, you just don't like wireless headphones, whether Apple makes them or not. Thanks for sharing.
Still 1) is a good question. I thought they came with a tiny casket, so they wouldn't fall out of your pocket like that. Still subtle when you remove them from your skull.
I'm not sure what I expect with regard to staying in ears, though. They appear to be closely modeled on the wired EarPods, which in my experience don't reliably stay in the ear on their own, to the point where they are best worn with the cable wound around the crease of the pinna - both for strain relief, and so that they're easier to recover and less likely to be damaged when they do inevitably pop out.
Right now I have some cheap headphones I bought at Ross and even if they're wireless, the little rubber headband is uncomfortable when I'm bench pressing.
These things are going to be magic!!!
Please someone tell em if this is not the case. I really want it to not be true.
I cannot overstate how angry this makes me. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. It can literally ruin an hour. I'd rather be randomly slapped by a stranger.
Second place: the corners of my desk (or maybe doorknobs). Basically, any protruding object in a tight space.
It's pretty unlikely to happen if you're sitting still, but it's routine if you wear them while moving around inside.
2) I don't lose things.
This is like a guy leaving a negative review of feminine hygiene products. When a product designed for people with different needs and desires than yours, it’s not necessarily “stupid.”
Wireless headphones are about as stupid as wireless Internet.
Just like wired Internet, wired headphones will continue to have a place for people who need certain capabilities or ruggedness or etc., but for most people, wireless headphones are the way to go. Let me walk you through some of the advantages:
1. Working out. Wired headphones constantly get caught on things and sometimes get violently ripped from your ears. 2. Related to point one, any activity or job where you could risk a loose wire being caught is perfect for wireless headphones. It very well may be significantly safer. 3. Wireless headphones have bigger range than wires. You don't have to place your phone in your pants pockets, for instance, to use wireless headphones. You could even have your phone in your bag, and everything will still work. Much of women's fashion either has no pockets or pockets of little value. This is a major reason women carry around purses. But you can't use headphones with a phone in your purse, hence why women are often physically carrying their phones in your hands. With wireless headphones, they can keep their phone in their purse or jacket and still listen to music or respond to calls. 5. Or if you are doing something around the house, you don't always have to have your headphones on you at all times. This could be particularly useful if you are doing something like washing a car where you might get your pants wet and don't want to have your phone on you. 6. With this new class of wireless earbuds that are small and lightweight, you could keep one of two of them in much of your day to answer phone calls or ask Siri or Google questions.
If you cared about watching beautiful movies, would you downgrade to a wireless display with grainy definition, because "no wires"? That's how I feel about audio quality, and why I'm not an apple or beats customer (and why I lament the iPhone7 headphone jack changes).
Of course time will help, and in a few years the sound quality streamed over wireless should be transparent, at which point I'd gladly convert.
Or are you correlating your one experience with half a decade old BT headphones to current top of the line wireless? That's like saying all Wifi is shit because your PCMCI 802.11a Wifi card in 2005 had shit speeds and range.
"AirPods introduce an effortless wireless listening experience packed with high-quality audio and long battery life. These magical wireless headphones use advanced technology to reinvent how we listen to music, make phone calls, enjoy TV shows and movies, play games and interact with Siri, providing a wireless audio experience not possible before."
Magical. Reinvent. Not possible before.
None of these words applies.
[Of course, I say this as someone who has been happily using wireless Jaybird earbuds with a variety of iOS and macOS devices for the past three years without many complaints. I won't be buying the AirPods since pairing problems have not been an issue for me.]
https://www.bose.com/en_us/support/article/pairing-a-bluetoo...
"Touch the devices and they will pair".
That's what makes the pairing more than just NFC (you're right, that's been around for years).
Hopefully it's implemented well. My Text Message Forwarding still lists:
- iPhone
- iPhone (2)
- iPhone (3)
- iPhone (4)
- iPad
- iPad (2)
etc, et al. Note that I don't own four iPhones, I've just upgraded over time. I have to play a guessing game as to "Which MacBook Pro is the one sitting in front of me?"
As much as I've also become an apple hater recently because of what they've done to iOS10 and the new macbook pro, I think criticizing a marketing copy for being a marketing copy is not fair.
I guess people don't like changes to the things they've grown accustomed to.
I'm not in love with "click to unlock" either, although the 7 makes it bearable with raise-to-wake (it's just stupid on my 6, though).
However, more and more I'm running into things that are just stupid or buggy or both.
The TV app is the latest annoyance. All our purchases are under my wife's account, and there seems to be no way to view family sharing purchases with the app.
I'm using a beta of iOS and I keep hoping it'll be added, but this is the seventh beta I think, and I've pretty much given up.
Trust me I used to be one of those people who would say the same thing you're saying. I was like "What's the big deal? These people just don't like change. They'll get used to it."
Except that you don't anymore.
The reason I hate these changes is because things just don't work smoothly and disrupt your workflow, not to mention the UI being messy design-wise (I have NEVER complained about Apple's design changes ever since the first iPhone).
And this is all because of the new features they introduced they're trying to shove down user's throats. Most of these features are built to satisfy Apple's agenda instead of making it easier for users to use. Just read what others have already said, these are features built for Apple, not for users.
You're assuming all changes are progress. They are not.
Ridiculous, right?
I'm now seeing the 10.2 update available, but it hasn't (yet) been downloaded; if a day goes by and it still isn't, then I'd have to say I owe you a beer, or several, for pointing me at a way to relieve what was getting to be a real pain in the neck. (Although why I failed to find this clue for myself is a curious question in its own right - it's certainly not for want of looking! In any case, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to point it out.)
So yes, ridiculous..
On the other hand, I'm increasingly sure I have never had automatic updates enabled on this device, yet I had the iOS 10 update downloaded regardless. Perhaps I forgot having done that by hand, or perhaps the setting doesn't apply to OS updates; in any case, time will tell.
Thanks again! That was really getting on my nerves.
What does that have to do with his statement? He never said that he wanted them to stop making progress. He wants them to stop making changes THAT AREN'T PROGRESS.
And yes, sometimes you DO have to update for current versions of software to work.
1) Unlock process: When the fingerprint reader fails it now takes several presses on the home key to get a keypad to pop up so I can input my code. With previous versions I could just swipe when I knew the fingerprint reader would fail (e.g. wet hands).
2) App updates: When apps are updating on my phone it decides it really wants to stay on the home screen. I can swipe to get to the other screens, but it goes back before I can tap any apps. Also, when I can get into an app they tend to lag and crash more when updates are happening in the background.
3) Control Center (bottom menu): Trying to slide the brightness or volume controls on the control center menus usually gets interpreted as a swipe to the next control menu. I have to be very precise when touching them for the sliders to actually work.
4) Safari: Auto-hide of the control buttons does help page visibility, but showing them seems to be glitchy as hell. They appear and then disappear before I can move my finger to tap them.
5) Crashes: At least daily now the whole phone crashes to a black screen and then comes back to the lock screen a few seconds later. Seems to involve location services.
Also, not exactly iOS 10, but the new Watch OS completely broke the usability of the Weather app for me. Something that was fairly intuitive and useful is now cumbersome and basically useless to me.
3 was allegedly fixed in iOS 10.2, which just came out.
And then there's this idiotic calendar defect: http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2016/03/apples-idiotic-time-z...
And they've done stupid things like REMOVING the analog-display option from the clock app. WTF? Now you have no display of seconds to set your watch with (except the puny, puny icon on the home screen).
Jony Ive is an incompetent hack who is degrading Apple's product line into oblivion: http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2016/08/why-consumers-and-sha...
A friend has a 16gb iPhone and has managed to deal with that little space until just recently. She'd run out of space completely, I'd hand-update apps one-at-a-time trying to free up temp download space. Deleted her local music. A few weeks later deleted her local photos. iMessage claimed 1gb of space, it's a little opaque and manual to clean delete things. I finally convinced her to delete all messages older than 1 year. She got 500mb back. The next day her phone was full again without an obvious reason. Backed up her phone and restored. Everything seems to be there and now she has 5+gb free.
I was having the battery issue they're fixing the 6s for. Because I knew they'd ask I restored my phone (and grabbed yesterdays update because that had a fix related to this, too). It seems to be fixed as well by restoring.
...but all of this is souring me on Apple. I wish I was more confident about other options.
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/out-of-space-on-your-iphone-try-...
However, in my case had I tried this and it didn't work.
Also I've found that apple music CONSTANTLY loses my place if I pause my music for more than a couple minutes. This never used to happen with the old music app.
They are pushing this new notification thing which is pretty out of touch with how people actually use the phone--they think interacting directly from the notification is how people want to use it, when most people feel claustrophobic and would rather see the whole thing before making any action--and because of this, it introduces another step for people who just want to open the app and do the damn work
I like interacting with the notification instead of losing context to respond to some message.
the current version supposedly fixes the battery drain (not sure about the shutdown bug) but introduced a bug into another app that i use and don't want to risk upgrading for either.
and this is the problem. apple charges premium prices but their software has gotten sloppy. macos and ios10 included. i upgraded to the latest macos version, sierra, and my escape key would not work for some reason (i was using vim and ended up doing ctrl-c? to activate) then i find out that killing siri on mac would fix the problem. then i found out a couple days later that their new macbook pro would not have an escape key. gee i wonder why they never caught this bug in testing?
Check here: https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/
I checked there and my phone is eligible for the battery replacement.
my original's lcd screen had the touch disease, since it was just inside warranty they "replaced" it by just giving me a new phone.
the replacement died within a week. serious wtf. so i went in and got yet another one.
this one has been fine, mostly. but i'm probably not going to get a iphone for my next device. not saying no other devices do this but that touch disease should be fixed even if you're outside warranty and not be charged with the $329 it cost. my original phone was susceptible to it and only by sheer "luck" did it happen within my warranty.
Brand new mbp on 10.11.6. Opening new tabs in safari then cmd-L to put focus in the location bar would beachball safari for multiple seconds.
The solution after much debugging was to disable com.apple.imklaunchagent
These lazy engineers really should be ashamed of themselves. This was an out of box install on a brand new laptop on their browser with minimal 3rd party software installed (chrome, brew, intellij, but nothing that should interfere with the os.) I wasted 5 free hours trying to make the damn browser work.
- Photos. Wtf is the distinction between 'photos' and 'albums'. Why does Photos pretend to be a chronological hierarchy of Year -> Month -> Day but then drop to Tumblr style 'related' links, while Memories contain your grouped photos in any order, but so does Albums. Albums also try to dynamically group things by 'location' and 'selfies' and 'video' and 'camera roll'. Oh, they're all showing the same thing - the last thing I recorded? Useful. It's a complete mess and super frustrating to use.
- The changes to take and send photos in iMessage. Used to be that taking a photo meant pressing and holding the photo button, sliding up to take a video. Now it's more steps, and the camera shutter button is awkwardly at the bottom of the screen, then there's another slider to the left to reveal another camera button, to switch to the camera app, to take a video. More steps for everything, which also displaces 'insert a previously taken photo'. Who benefits?
- Video editing (trim) was glitchy in iOS9 and still is in iOS 10. Seriously, take photo, play with trim, randomly the video stops changing with the slider position, then the screen goes black, have to task-end the Photos app and try again. Video playback in Safari, also glitchy - pause somewhere, or skip forwards, get it playing from the start at 10x framerate (or more) with no audio, to 'catch up' to the new seek location. Seeking is still fiddly and often doesn't work well.
- Still need to care about WiFi vs. Cellular because "we changed our App icon to a Christmas one" still means tens or hundreds of download.
...though I cringe to think of the pressure at this time of year to release a product whose quality is not yet vetted by early adopters.
A pair of headphones a month later than they should be that look exactly like their old headphones
Because it IS an entry into a nascent market. Apple sees this as a new IO device, not a "pair of fucking headphones".
Take a look at the specs
There are not many wireless earbuds in this form-factor / category.
The AirPods honestly do seem like a somewhat unique entry into the market to me, but it's such a crowded market that I could have easily missed a competitor somewhere.
That said, the lack of any sort of wiring is actually a negative to me, because that's primarily what makes it seem like these will be so easy to lose.
https://www.amazon.com/Bragi-Truly-Wireless-Smart-Earphones/...
And eh, I realize that Apple almost never goes below MSRP/list, but don't act like the "after $50 off" is some special promotion. It's not a rebate, even an instant one, just 'cheaper than list'.
In reality, the only thing close costs markedly more, not at MSRP but at real selling price.
There's a reality distortion field, but it's inverted.
Not hilarious, just tedious.
Motorola VerveOnes - $150
SmartOmi Boots Mini - $75
Rowkin Bit Stereo - $110
Rowkin Mini Plus - $60
Sol Republic Amps Air - $150
Your lack of awareness of the market does not mean that it does not exist. It is not helpful to pretend that your unwillingness to do simple research on the matter makes you an expert.
I will now predict your next objections:
"I don't like these companies"
"These are not exactly the same product"
"The colors are off"
"The Apple Store doesn't carry them"
Even Reddit finds more plausible comps:
- Samsung Gear IconX ($200) 4GB of on-board storage+, fitness tracking+ -- 1.6 Hours
- Motorola VerveOnes ($200) Can look up last connected location if lost+ -- 2-3 Hours
- Bragi Dash ($300) Fitness tracking+, gesture control+, 4GB storage+, Audio passthrough+ -- 4 Hours
- Bragi Headphone ($150) Hardware buttons+, no case charging or BLE -- 6 Hours
- Earin M-1 ($200) claims good sound quality+, no mics- -- 3 Hours
- Jabra Elite Sport ($250) Fitness tracking+, waterproof+ -- 3 Hours
- Apple Airpods ($160) W1 Chip to quickly switch devices+, Can use either headphone independently+, 24 add hrs of charge in case, only comes in one size- -- 5 Hours
I'm not sure your list is made of nice things:
- "Sol Republic Amps Air Are Truly Wireless Earbuds That Kind of Suck" http://gizmodo.com/sol-republic-amps-air-are-truly-wireless-...
- "Review: Apple AirPods Are Pretty F--king Cool" http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/review-apple-airpods-are...
But it's irrelevant. You can say "apple's product is better." You can say "these other products are terrible." You can even say "I hate everything that is not from Cupertino." But the claim here is that these things are some kind of revolution. The claim we are trying to rebut is not "apple airpods suck and are not worth buying." I, and many others, are merely explaining that there is nothing magical or even particularly new about airpods. They are an iteration on an existing product segment.
You, so far, have done nothing to demonstrate otherwise.
Apple might have executed particularly well, but I see his point.
The problem with the MBP is its 10 hours of a 'light workload'. And it meets that. But a HEAVY workload may be 4 hours and they don't advertise that.
I don't remember reviewers saying anything bad about battery life on the AirPods back in October.
Let's wait to see what real world use looks like. I mean, if you take the emoji touch bar at face value it's the coolest thing since sliced bread. However, real world use indicates that it might not be as useful as Apple wants it to be.
The problem here is that Apple hasn't given numbers about what it's like under heavy load. Or really any load it all. If you stick to doing the kind of things Apple does in their battery life test you WILL get what they say.
Unfortunately as we seem to be finding out if you go outside of that you're screwed. Obviously harder workloads always hit the computer more, but this year the delta seems much much higher. They are cherry picking tests that make their battery life look reasonable.
I should also note that this is not the first time Apple did this. The quoted battery life on the iPhone 7 is basically the same as before, but they made a slight change to the wording. This year there tests are all with wireless headphones. This is likely because it's always been down that using the speaker on an iPhone to listen to music will lower your battery life pretty significantly, and now that the new iPhone 7 has a double speaker arrangement it's likely an even bigger effect than before.
Apples not lying like so many PC makers used to do, they're playing lawyer games and choosing their words incredibly carefully.
This is not a good turn. Apple giving real life accurate battery estimates used to be one of the things that put them above PC makers in my mind. If they're going to start redefining the workload to doing nothing on your computer... why bother?
Wireless headphones that "work well" don't cost $20. And especially in this form factor (separate).
They could absolutely be better, if for example, the charge lasted two weeks, or the sound was higher quality (I'm no audiophile but I'm sure if I was I'd find they could be better) but they're Good Enough.
> Because it IS an entry into a nascent market. Apple sees this as a new IO device, not a "pair of fucking headphones".
It really is just a pair of headphones. This isn't a new market.
Hope this answers your question.
I've had a set of $25 Motorola wireless (Bluetooth) headphones that I use on my daily walking commute to and from work for many years. They work and sound great. They double as a wireless microphone and playback controls. I charge them every day via a USB cable. Woohoo.
I can't see anything specs-wise with the Apple headphones that is interesting. Auto-pause? Okay, cool, but I can press the pause button on my Bluetooth headphones from 2010. Switching between devices? I can enable or disable Bluetooth on my devices, I guess, if I had wanted to use the headphones with more than my phone (though I do not want that).
These new features seem incremental at best. The clamor for these—and the fact that their availability is a high-ranking news item on HN—seems to suggest I am missing something very fundamental. And yet, it feels that I am not. These are wireless headphones with a couple incremental features and an Apple logo.
Auto-mono: I guess I see some people listening in only one ear sometimes, but that's not my way of listening to music or podcasts. The cheap Motorola headphones I use are traditional "headphones" and not earbuds. I prefer headphones over earbuds. But even if I used earbuds, I'm not interested in single-ear listening.
Carrying case: This is a big deal? On my walks, I "carry" my headphones on my ears. When I get home, I charge via a USB cable.
Whatever; I suppose I don't begrudge anyone for being excited by Apple headphones. I just find the hype level amusing and silly.
They're from ~2009 or thereabouts. Traditional headphone form factor. Works great for my use case (pedestrian commutes to and from the office).
That said, I'm not a fan of earbuds, wired or otherwise. So whether removing the bridge wire is a revolution is lost on me since I'm not interested either way.
The whole point of the brand is that you're getting a quality, consistent product.
But I understand you. If you've not previously used wireless headphones and you're satisfied with Apple quality, this new offering is a known quantity. I'm still not really feeling the innovation. Except of course, as someone pointed out, this is a subtle redefinition of "wireless" to mean not just removing the wire to the device, but also any bridge between the two ears. For me, that bridge isn't something I care to remove. But okay, that's cool.
They're tiny, they pair to multiple devices trivially, and are well designed. They're one of the big reasons Apple is supposed to have removed the headphone jack off the iPhone 7. "You don't need it, let us show you why" kind of thing.
The other reason is that this is releasing MONTHS LATE. It was supposed to be released at the end of October, now it's coming out end of December. That's HUGE.
When was the last time Apple screwed up the launch of something big like this? The biggest one people can recall is the white iPhone 4 which basically released 9 months late. At that point most people just waited the extra 4-5 months for the iPhone 4s.
Ignoring that they're neat little headphones, this is big news today because APPLE SHIPPED LATE. That just doesn't happen. Maybe quantities are low (Apple watch), but not a flat out delay on a major product after announcing a release date.
It's months late, it's still not here yet, AND there's a "big" warning on the page that even when it is here it will only be in limited quantities and that prospective buyers are "advised" to check online for stocking levels... very un-Apple.
I believe modern Bluetooth headphones are indistinguishable from equivalent non-Bluetooth headphones. If you can tell whether headphones are Bluetooth or not—the other components being equal—then you have particularly acute hearing. And if that's you, then you are probably a FLAC aficionado.
For what it's worth, I listen to MP3s on Bluetooth headphones and they sound great.
(Though to be clear, I've not actually researched the bit rate of Bluetooth, though I suspect it's high enough for 44 KHz stereo. To my ears, Bluetooth is indistinguishable from an analog 3.5mm connection.)
Again, that's my point. Bluetooth has a undeserved/outdated bad reputation for adversely affecting audio. I contend that, all else being equal, I could not distinguish a modern Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired headphone.
Yes, as you point out, they also need a DAC. So I will clarify my contention: all else being equal, I could not distinguish a Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired USB headphone that uses the same DAC.
The effective remaining bandwidth fell far short of what the default Bluetooth codec, SBC, required. SBC was already pretty low end, more like MPEG Layer-1 audio. Even so, for point to point streaming if the devices cooperated well there was enough bandwidth for fairly good audio quality. It's just that it was a crapshoot what any pair of devices would get you.
The other big issue is that there wasn't, at least at the time, any standardized method for synchronizing the audio sampling rates of the source and sink. This could have been achieved by slaving the audio PLL to the connection master's frequency hopping clock, which the slave has to follow to even maintain a connection, but there wasn't any requirement to do so. Plus it'd be a massive layer violation in the Bluetooth stack. We basically ran a software PLL on the sink side to try to match what the source was giving us, but packet retransmissions due to loss could gum up the timing. You could get a pitch-bending effect as a connection was starting up, or had just suffered a lot of loss.
I imagine they've sorted most of that out by now.
I think they have. Giving some leeway to my bluetooth Motorola headphones since they are super-aural, to my ears—and I feel I am fairly picky—they are not significantly worse than my circumaural Sennheiser HD 380 pros on my workstation. I suspect the principal reason I feel my circumaural headphones sound a bit better is simply that they are circumaural.
Just go grab a pair of BT headphones with aptX support and you should be fine. Unless you are a tube amp and $1.5k headphone kind of person - then you most definitely aren't in the target segment.
A few features that make them new/innovative:
• Smart switching between multiple devices logged into iCloud. You need only pair with one of your iCloud devices and the rest will auto pair.
• Auto-pause when removed from ears.
• Auto-mono when only one is in your ear.
• Carrying case that charges them rapidly and keeps them safe in your pocket.
Edit: I said AirPods when I meant EarPods (the current wired ones). I don't currently have the AirPods.
Edit 2: Another reason I'm excited about these: I absolutely abhor talking on the phone (like holding the phone up to my ear) and find single ear bluetooth devices to be lame in both function and appearance. I might be a smidge hard of hearing, so I much prefer to have both ears in on the action. I've tried a handful of Bluetooth headsets in the past, and they've all left me seriously wanting. Connectivity isn't consistent. Audio quality isn't great. If something doesn't just work like my wired headphones, I'm not going to switch. If these turn out to have the same issues, I'll gladly report how inaccurate Apple's marketing was and how disappointed I am.
http://www.plantronics.com/us/product/voyager-legend-case
(I know that this product is not specifically music-oriented, but the operation principle is there still).
This Plantronics case isn't that great. You have to open it with two hands in front of you, and carefully place the awkwardly shaped headset in. You probably have to look at it while doing so. It's rather large, and the clear plastic cover looks like it can break pretty easily. It's also only one ear, and it's a $30 accessory.
The AirPods can be opened one-handed while in your pocket, and you can place them in without looking. They're also smaller, the case looks quite a bit more durable, and they work with the charger you already have as an iPhone user (lightning). The AirPods and case were designed with a broader UX scope - the entire user experience, from opening to listening to putting away - as one unified product.
The process that most hardware teams typically take is more narrowly focused on the core product hardware, rather than the entire scope of its use. If Plantronics had designed their headset with a broader UX scope in mind, they probably would have designed the headset itself differently, because its awkwardly shaped and hard to store. Instead I imagine they optimized the headset design for solely when its on-ear, and then asked how they could make a case for that shape. Such are the little differences that distinguish between regular products and category-defining ones (see also: iPod with iTunes).
I've got a pair of Bose QC 35s and though their pairing experience is standard annoying bluetooth pairing, their support of multiple devices/easily switching between them is the best I've seen in bluetooth headphones I've purchased. The AirPods are, apparently, comparable to the Bose in this regard, with a better onboarding experience.
From who? They're not available, not even any pre-release reviews around.
I'm probably not switching soon because I love my Atomic Floyd's sound quality (don't get me started on their customer service) but I'm just curious how they did with the sound quality aspect, which feels like the most important thing to me.
I've never been able to use the traditional wired Apple earbuds because my ear is too small and they start hurting after 5-10 mins of use.
Then at some point the design of the earphone changed and I had the same problem as you ever since:-( I was quite disappointed at the time
Genuine feature, and a neat one at that. Previously I had to rely on stuff like NFC or saved pairs, which is still more than 1 pair.
>• Auto-pause when removed from ears.
Also a genuine feature. Takes some real thinking to make that a priority in the UX.
>• Auto-mono when only one is in your ear.
Is that really a feature? I mean I guess that's cool, but it seems like a play on the previous feature sensing if in use or not.
>• Carrying case that charges them rapidly and keeps them safe in your pocket.
This is a necessity rather than a feature per say.
Wired headphones don't need to be charged. Wireless headphones with a headphone port for backup also don't require a charge.
Most modern headphones are a single unit, so they don't need a case to be kept from getting lost.
That said, many have cases to keep them from getting tangled or damaged in transport, the latter which is true for the airpods, however if your case were damaged, so is your charger.
> If these turn out to have the same issues, I'll gladly report how inaccurate Apple's marketing was and how disappointed I am.
If they have the same issues as other Bluetooth devices, hopefully you find out about it before you spend your money on some expensive tech.
I think the distinction is that its not just turning off one of the phones. Its switching from stereo to mono so you can still hear everything you previously required both sides of the stereo mix (left + right) for. Definitely not a big jump from the other feature, but still goes to show how they are thinking about the small details.
I don't think however people were having a "crippled" xp when using just one wired earbud in "mono" rather than "combined stereo"
I think the feature really should be "senses when individual pods are in use" and because of that feature, some automatic tasks can be applied like combining stereo or pausing the music.
I guess I am just complaining that it feels like they used one feature and got two marketing points out of it, which is fair game.
??? Maybe we have different standards on what 'look different' should be, but these are functionally and design-wise worlds apart from their existing headphones.
I'm not sure if you have a bias against Apple or not but you're distilling your adjectives down to the simplest level in order to attack them. I do not believe that is a fair assessment.
The AirPods include some interesting UX changes not typically seen (open case to connect, etc) and while some abilities have been done before (the tiny ear buds, the recharging case, etc) it also has some interesting aspects with voice commands and gestures.
Yes I wouldn't necessarily call them world class but a "pair of fucking headphones" seems possibly even more inaccurate to me.
I rise to the level of my competition.
But I do agree it's kind of corny...
In the past it may have been true. That's why a lot of people hated iOS7 just because it was different.
But Apple's recent updates are all bad because the root cause goes up to how Apple is trying to push their own agenda--they want to become the "Services" company, because the wall street thinks their device growth has stalled. For example their stickers is an attempt to monetize their user base with app purchases. They don't care that people would rather be able to take a photo and send with one tap, because they know users have no choice anyway.
But this is super short sighted, Apple's recent moves reminds me of how Windows lost significant size of their users with Vista and went downhill.
The reason the UI is designed this way is because they decided to cram 100 features in a space that simply can't accomodate it properly. Stickers, Apps, Photos, Animations etc all of that takes space.
It seems like you're saying the same thing, so please, don't come at me with this "makes absolutely no sense" hyperbole.
There are now so many garbage features, tangential to the core purpose of the app — self-deleting audio blips if you move the phone this way, internet GIF search if you swipe that way, weird drawing pad, stupid variable-location popup to add "HA HA HA" animation, recently-played music grid, full-screen-or-sometimes-not fingerpainting applet, image editor, heartbeat monitor, fucking kiss simulator (what the fuck), and I know from sorry experience (usually when trying to send a message with one hand while carrying something heavy and awkward) that there's more shit buried in here that I can't even figure out how to navigate to right now, like a signature editor — that I have had to help my dad, my wife, and my kids figure out how to get back to where send a fucking message with it, repeatedly.
You could use iOS 10 Messages to create a 6-episode TV miniseries called Software Design Gone Horribly Fucking Wrong and surely win an Emmy award for best documentary.
Like I said somewhere else in this thread, all these new features are for Apple, not for users.
If they designed it for users, they would have NEVER made it so that they have to tap twice to take a photo before sending. Not to mention how they don't even allow you to open the camera as fullscreen.
Isn't it really ridiculous how nowadays when you want to take a quick picture and send it while messaging, you have to close the messages app, open the camera app, take the photo, and share it back to messages? Used to be: tap the camera button. Take the pic. Send.
Now all you get is this tiny preview rectangle at the bottom. It doesn't launch a full camera so is useless for most cases. That's why I have to open the "real" camera app and take the picture and come back.
So now it's tap-swipe-tap instead of just tap, but in exchange the old functionality of sending an existing photo has changed from a long series of actions to just tap-tap-send.
But my point is exactly this. How many taps did it used to take to quickly take a pic and send? One.
Now with iOS10, you tap the camera button, swipe to the right, and then tap the "real" camera button one more time. That's 3 times the number of gestures it used to take pre-iOS10.
p.s.
How did you even discover that swipe feature? I'm pretty sure most people have no idea that's how it works. I am an iOS developer so I'm not exactly a laggard, either.
https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/14/ios-10-how-to-hate-pressing-t...
https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/ios8-he...
In iOS 10, they've replaced the dashboard with huge colourful video thumbnails. It feels like a bad onboarding screen that just won't go away:
https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/xlarge/pu...
I could probably buy (and trust!) third-party dashboards that use HealthKit. But instead I just stopped using Health. Chances of me getting an Apple Watch for health tracking: now zero, even if it was free.
Game Center: I'm aware that people hated the old and the new design, but Apple didn't kill it, they moved the invitations functionality into (gasp) a Messages mini-app. Syncing your game progress between iOS devices is a hodgepodge of Facebook, iCloud, Game Center, and most commonly, "not at all". That's not going to change if Apple cares so little about its own frameworks.
In fact, it is MORE of a fad these days to be an Apple hater than an Apple fanboy. Why do you have to be a follower and hate on Apple? Try thinking for yourself.
In the same fashion, I was in a company whose motto was "Be the change you seek", which is really entrepreneur-minded and active. They changed their motto to "Advance humanity". Most employees said "It's ok, it's the kind of marketing bullshit that no-one even listens to". It wasn't about building something awesome together. The motto was here, hanging in the hall, just saying "We're strongly delusional, we all speak bullshit now, and we know you won't even debate about it because no-one believes it anyway! Look at us, we're kings of the universe!"
As you say, it is insulting to the audience.
"Our vision is to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere — every person, every organization, and every community around the globe. This motivates us — inspires us — to do what we do. To make what we make. To invent, and to reinvent. To engineer experiences that amaze. We won’t stop pushing ahead, because you won’t stop pushing ahead. You’re reinventing how you work. How you play. How you live. With our technology, you’ll reinvent your world."
Seventy-seven words…to say what? How does this pablum tell an engineer, a sales person, or an accountant what the company is about, what it does, why and how?
I found this “vision statement” on HP’s website.
Reinvent - well it certainly seems like a reinvention of the wireless headphone. What else would it be?
Not possible before - without W1 it wasn't possible to jump between audio coming from multiple sources transparently
Not possible before - without W1 it wasn't possible to jump between audio coming from multiple sources transparently
Uhh, I have a desk-based headset that can switch audio streams automatically.
In any case, this: http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12829190/apple-w1-chip-ipho... seems to suggest that it's a refinement on Bluetooth with the NFC pairing that, well, already exists in numerous products out there.
Nice refinements? Sure. But it also likes to compare itself against a Bluetooth world that frankly, hasn't existed in several years... "poor audio quality that skips and cuts out", and "pairing that is constantly problematic, where users don't know whether they will re-pair the next time" (https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/12/apple-w1-chip-how-it-works/ )
That's every day for me! What earbuds, stereo or mono, are you using that never have this problem?
Pretty much never had a problem with skipping or quality for any of those supporting apt-x.
This is true even when i'm also wearing a bluetooth watch, etc.
(If you're not sure what kind of device I'm talking about here, the Rowkin Mini is a good example - note the complete lack of protrusion beyond the pinna. I suppose the AirPods themselves don't really qualify by this standard, since they seem to have their antennae in the microphone boom which protrudes below the ear; on the other hand, I'm willing to tolerate such a protrusion if it's the only reasonable way to get good signal, and improved microphone pickup is a pretty good bonus besides.)
I do like _some_ of Apple's products, but I would never spend 150 dollars on these headphones. I'm hoping that Apple cheerleaders will drive down the cost so I can get the version 2/3 for cheap when all the bugs have been ironed out.
Surely you can see that comments could have different moods. Some might simply be sarcastic, others cynical, or maybe people just venting at Apple for a bad experience they had with some other Apple product, etc, etc.
I would argue it's a reimplementation of Kanoa's reinvention of the wireless headphone, similar to Bragi, Earin, Nextear, Freewavz, and samsung Iconx.
I would even trace this earbud revolution back to the Moto Hint (2014)
Not to be cynical, but to re-calibrate my barometer. The only person I know who uses it is my partner's nine year old daughter, and even then not often.
I don't like the errors voice messaging causes (you can tell when someone's sending texts with it), so I never use that.
It's OK for setting alarms or timers but I've only done that a couple times because I always forget about it and do it manually instead, or (for timers) my phone's farther away than a microwave or something.
Tried using it to record notes by voice once. It was entirely terrible at that task.
My phone would be at most 1% worse if Siri were simply gone.
I also occasionally use it when I wake up in the middle of the night and don't want to abuse myself with a bright phone display in order to find out what time it is - I don't keep a clock on my bed table, but my phone always charges there. "Hey Siri, what time is it?" is handy in that circumstance, unless the "Hey Siri" part decides not to trigger, which happens often enough that I don't really find it reliable. (I think that must be because a half-asleep voice sounds different; this isn't a problem I generally have at other times, even when using a $15 Bluetooth earbud which can't possibly have a very high-quality microphone.)
Also, FWIW, I've gotten pretty good at discreetly talking to my wrist in public. In any moderately loud area I don't think anyone even notices me doing it.
"Set an timer for 5 minutes" is very handy.
"Open auto lock settings" etc gets you to nested prefs screens quickly.
"Remind me to..." for adding things to my OmniFocus inbox.
I recently purchased a Bose QuietComfort 35 and I've noticed that the lack of chords + noise cancellation have made it so that I wear the headphones for the entirety of the day. The lack of fatigue while wearing the head phones is a big deal. Additionally, the lack of wires has changed my behavior in ways I did not expect pre-purchase. For example, I no longer need to take off my headphones to go to the bathroom. Or when I leave the desk to grab something, etc.
These AirPods seem like they could make this behavior even more extreme. I can imagine just keeping them on all day without taking them off. That would be enough of a behavioral change personally to warrant the superfluous marketing copy of "Magical" and "Not Possible Before".
Beyond that, if people really start walking around with AirPods in their ear all day, it could more of a fashion symbol success (new age earrings basically) than what Apple envisioned with the Watch.
But, at the price they're going for, I doubt this will happen, but you can see where the marketing enthusiasm is coming from.
I usually use earphones, with the wire tucked under my shirt(it's not noise cancelling), and connected to my phone - that way the cable doesn't get stuck with things.
The cable is also long enough use the phone for surfing too.
And they're on me all day long, either in ear or on the shirt. And i prefer that arrangement to my long lasting(13 hours) bluetooth earphones.
The biggest public facing change at Apple since the death of Steve Jobs is their move to terrible marketing copy and ads.
Under Jobs, that quote would be reduced to just a few words, whereas now it is a slog to get through. I've tried re-reading it a few times and still haven't made it to the end.
If they can make wireless not-be-shitty, that will count for 'magical' and 'not possible before' afaiconcerned.
Except, Apple laptops are plagued with "wifi broken after sleep", so I have no hope that they can.
Do we still have to use ears?
[1]: https://www.plantronics.com/us/product/voyager-legend-uc
Wait... Honest question: How?
Does it switch based on which input source is currently playing audio? What if more than one is playing at a time?
Maybe you're not primitive enough to understand the page as-is.
This one is literally true though. They had a semi-custom chip designed to implement features/performance that don't exist with Bluetooth 4 yet.
I think Bluetooth 5 will catch up. In fact, I'm betting that what they have is basically a radio chip designed for Bluetooth 5 (it's basically just Bluetooth LE with higher bandwidth and range) with some extra features for their pairing tech, but since the spec wasn't finalized, and they couldn't wait, they just rolled it out as proprietary tech.
Idiots, if it were Microsoft writing things on The Verge, it would be ok.
That's probably jsatk's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169976) point: Apple seems to be trying very hard to generate hype, but there isn't any.
We're slowly moving into that future tech world that we saw in movies and dreamt up when we were kids. These are wireless earbuds. My first pair of wireless headphones used IR, took two AA batteries, were huge, heavy, and sounded horrible once you started losing sight of the transmitter!
Sure, it's a small step in mass-market technology, but that's the only way tech moves forward for most of the world. It's never really existed before, it's something new!
Some of us find advancements in tech exciting, whether it's some incremental advancement in AI, or an incremental advancement for silly earbuds.
If you think in terms of small increments, you'll never see, or be impressed with, the big changes that are happening around you.
And actually the Dash was a kickstarter from two years ago which is the same as the Airpods, where each pod is separate with no wire at all. Started shipping a year ago.
People who know Apple are getting sick of them jumping on bandwagons' years late and claiming to be first.
There are plenty of cheap, great sounding earbuds out there (Head-Fi has a whole 1000+ page thread discussing them: http://www.head-fi.org/t/441400/earbuds-round-up), but literally none of them are wireless. Right now I'm resorting to hacks like using earbuds with removable cables and bluetooth cable replacements like these: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-Custom-Made-Wireless-Blu...
I'm not saying these will have the impact of an iPod, but I am entertained by the amount of naysaying here.
For one thing, how often have you fiddled with the knots in your headphone cord? It's frustrating enough to prevent me from using them in situations where I otherwise would.
AirPods look to be perfectly fine (and extremely expensive for what they bring) if your usage of them is while sitting at your desk.
On the other hand, this is a silent failure mode in a good sense: if you lose them, then you'll know instantly (because of no music), so at least have a chance of looking for them nearby.
EDIT: Ah, throwanem (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170546) points out the crucial difference between headphones and earbuds. For me, earbuds are undesireable, so I didn't realise that the form factor was meant to be a selling point.
Until, of course, they start to produce some of the same little pops and interruptions I always get from Bluetooth earphones when I'm walking. I don't seem to get quite as many with the AirPods, but the skips and interruptions, when they happen, make me wish for something wired.
Did they stay connected?
Mostly, but I still heard audio pops from time to time. Not as many as I usually get with Bluetooth headphones, but they were still there.
If AirPods have this issue, they're clearly inferior to 8-year old tech.
(NOTE: I have had skips when leaving my phone and walking into another room, or stuff like that, but that's just because I walked out of range).
So other than some non-sequitur facts, what's so interesting? CmdrTaco's take is the classic example of tech spec-naysaying by pundits completely misreading demand in the market. Meanwhile, AceJohnny says that it may very well apply here, which remains to be seen.
Apple seems to be good at figuring out which drawbacks are deal breakers and which ones are not.
"Apple’s total iPod sales climb past 10 million, with 8.2 million units sold in 2004 alone" [0]
[0] http://www.macworld.com/article/1053499/home-tech/ipodtimeli...
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/ipod-sales_n_468000...
[2] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/01/29/apple-stops-divulgin...
The sales explosion really happened when they released it for Windows. All of a sudden a HUGE market was there and it snapped them up as fast as they could.
The point is that, at the time, the iPod was a niche product, with several huge flaws. Subsequent iterations of the iPod fixed those flaws, but that doesn't mean you should have bought a v1 iPod. It made much more sense to wait.
Exactly the same logic applies to the Airpods. Suggesting that people can't criticise them because at some point in the future the product line will become successful is asinine.
My point is that this initial criticism of the iPod was not wrong. It was a flawed device. It was eventually improved into a successful device, but using that logic to shut down any criticism of future products is just silly.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-settles-with-creative-for-10...
The software UI (especially as described by that spokesman) is somewhat obvious. That said, the hardware UI of the iPod (click-wheel) was miles ahead of what Creative and others were offering (D-pads).
OK, how about "The only problem is that you have to install something. See, it's not the same as USB drive.", the top comment in response to the Dropbox announcement on HN, 9 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
It's a cliche because we techies are particularly bad at recognizing the mass-market appeal of products. What seems easy to us can be an unsurmountable hurdle for the target market, and what we may perceive as an unnecessary flourish can turn out to be an essential quality-of-life feature. It's a cliche because we keep doing it.
Knots occur in headphone cables because of how people wrap or store them. If you take each end of the cable and fold it in half a few times (I do it 3 times) then you're far less likely to get any tangles than if you wrap them around your fingers in a continuous loop.
*beginning next week.....
Also, will Apple include these within iPhone box to replace the clunky new lightning things?
Hell, I know I ended up picking up a Jabra Halo Smart because I got so annoyed having to deal with the stupid dongle to use my $10 pair of Sony AS200's and the cheap Chinese Kinivo bluetooth headphones I had had substantially worse audio quality than even these cheap wired ones.
I thought about the AirPods, but I'd lose them in a heartbeat. I'm constantly forgetting where the hell I put my headphones as is, at least my Halo Smart is big enough that I can find it easily - if I lost one of the little AirPod's I would end up tearing my house apart looking for the dumb thing.
As far as them falling out, like on the subway or something, that'll be the problem.
Since no one has production units in hand, you'll have to take Apple's word for it: "a charging case that holds multiple additional charges for more than 24 hours of listening time.(3) Need a quick charge? Just 15 minutes in the case gives you 3 hours of listening time.(4)"
Also, will Apple include these within iPhone box to replace the clunky new lightning things?
A rhetorical question, I assume.
Most of the reviews of the preproduction units said Apple's 5 hour claim was about right. That's about 1-2 hours more than I get from my current earbuds, and they can't charge one-at-a-time or give me 3 hours of use in a 15 minute charge.
2 beautiful or delightful in such a way as to seem removed from everyday life: it was a magical evening of pure nostalgia.
It is the same with "Air", "Pod", iSomething", and "Pro". Meaningless buzzwords. Then again, every company has their set ("Surface", "ThinkPad", "Yoga", "Zen"). Trust me, it has nothing to do with real yoga or zen. I'll refrain to make a comment on "Pro".
Just ignore the buzzwords, insofar that they don't tell you anything about the quality of the product and instead look at price/feature/quality comparisons and make up your own mind.
Seems Apple is just always ahead of the crowd in getting rid of things.
Also, given that the vast majority of earbuds people use are sub-$20, I bet the audio quality isn't that great to begin with.
Some people even use quality headphones, and also don't want another device to charge.
Anyway, I won't be buying a phone without a headphone jack, or these airpods.
As the owner of an iPhone 7, I have encountered some frustration from not being able to charge and listen to headphones at the same time. I realized that if lightning cables were USB, I could just use some sort of hub.
But it seems that Apple has declined to offer a splitter, leading to many shoddy attempts for sale on Amazon, most with fewer than three star average ratings.
Viewed as an independent gizmo, these are a great idea and will appeal to some people. But viewed as an alternative to the convenience of the 1/8th inch jack on the back of the phone, a lot is left to be desired.
The picture of the futuristic woman wearing them evokes the single-ear bluetooth headset, only worn over both ears.
$150 doesn't seem so bad to me but: - Not in ear - No lanyard
http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...
Seriously, I have very little to add to this. It's overly expensive wireless earbuds to go alongside a failure of 3.5mm jack.
:)
Except that it doesn't. Yes, you have to use an adapter now, and that's slightly (but only slightly) more clumsy than before, but "Square readers don't work any more!" is a particularly tired piece of FUD, which it would be nice not to see spread around any more by people such as HN participants who really should know better.
[1]: http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/jam
"Optical sensors and motion accelerometers work with the W1 chip to automatically control the audio and engage the microphone, giving you the ability to use one or both AirPods."
Curious. Will there be third-party headphones that work here?
The fancypants features like iCloud sync and inserted ear detection though, I suspect that'll take some manufacturers some reverse engineering or exchanges of money for details.
3rd party headphones have always worked with the iPhone - what exactly are you asking?
For someone who listens to mainly podcasts, I found them to be really really convenient. And the wire between the two pods makes it seem a bit harder to lose compared to AirPods.
I feel like a lot of this mess with needing a different dongle and special wire for each product would have been less of a big deal if everything they did just moved to USB C all at the same time. Now if you want to charge your air pods with a macbook pro you need a cable to go from usb C to thunderbolt (not included) or an adapter to use the previous-gen-usb to lightening cable it does come with.
It feels to me like the different product development teams at Apple didn't communicate with each other at all w.r.t. what ports to use.
Because there are about half a billion potential customers out there who already have phones that charge via lightning?
There was the dock connector -> lightning connector switch.
There's the ADB -> USB switch back in the day.
And now there headphone jack -> wireless thing switch.
Apple cares not one whit for obsoleting the stuff you have.
I don't doubt that one day iPhones may use USB-C or whatever replaces it, but the lightning port is going to be around for a long time - it was designed to last at least a decade, and I don't doubt that it will.
All of Apple's "accessories" (things that will request charge from a host over their cable: phones, tablets, keyboards and touchpads, and now headphones) have a Lightning port.
All of Apple's "computers" (things that won't: computers that are wired for power, and devices that are wired for power like the Apple TV) have, or will have, USB-C ports.
The vague middle case is laptops, like the new MBP: they do charge over their USB-C cables. But they'll only do this from a wall-socket power adapter; they won't attempt to drain the battery of a peer device they're connected to.
Besides that HCI hint of charging semantics, though, Lightning is just physically different in a few important ways that Apple relies on: for one, the connectors are solid metal, so an upward-pointed male connector can be used as a freestanding dock. That's not true of USB-C. Apple isn't going to converge them.
I ended up getting this battery [0] from Anker, and it's done a great job with my 2016 skinny Macbook and iPhone.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015FMV3JE/ref=oh_aui_deta...