This looks fantastic. Love my Airpods, but the 'tap for Siri' feature so rarely works for me, let alone language translation. Language translation is clearly an area Google is really pioneering too.
Shame about the cable though. The one (surprising) benefit of no cable is that the cable doesn't tug on the earphones, making them less likely to come out.
Give it 10 years and anyone walking around with cables running from their head is going to look plenty silly. If ever there was a look that defined the 2010s...
I think there’s an elegance to basically keeping the existing design and just chopping the cables off, even if it is showy. Certainly beats the alternative “black amorphous blob” design of some of the others.
Give it another 10 years and everyone with anything in their ears would look silly. HiFi music to your ears via vibrating bones or just "direct" to your brain.
Uh, the 1980s are calling for you. That was the decade of the sony walkman, and headphones. Everyone had one. Or a no-name version, like I had.
I have bluetooth headphones and I just get tired of the battery going out. Besides being cool and not looking dated, is there any conceivable reason why removing the headphone jack saves money, makes them last longer on battery, makes it thinner or anything else?
Sorry, I was barely around for the 80s ;) I am old enough to have had a knock-off portable CD player though...
> makes it thinner or anything else?
I think it's volume inside the device more than thinness, but I agree I don't think it's a fundamental design constraint. I'm sure they could find the room.
I think it's just that (now/soon) Bluetooth headphones are finally good enough. I have the Airpods, and I have almost no issue with batteries (they recharge while they're in the case, it's only a problem if I listen continuously for a whole evening, but even then they fast recharge in minutes), and they have great range. I'd tried Bluetooth headphones in the past and it was the pairing process that really turned me off, that's a non-issue now too. I would go as far as to say that the Airpods are the best/most game-changing product Apple has put out in maybe a decade. They just need to get a little cheaper, and included as standard (at least for the new top-of-line devices).
For people in the audio industry it sucks, but there are adapters. I don't resent them taking it out any more than I do an ethernet port in my MacBook (ethernet is much better than WiFi, but WiFi is 'good enough' now, and I have an adapter at my desk for when I need it).
Dozens of the "conjoined" BT headsets on Amazon - tried a couple of cheaper ones and the fit is an issue.
Could never run with those, but I've run/biked with AirPods with no problems (I thought I might lose one but it was really a non issue if they fit properly in the first place).
> (I thought I might lose one but it was really a non issue if they fit properly in the first place)
Exactly. If they don't fit you'll have issues, or will need silicone covers or something, but if they do fit it's great.
I've tried lots of earphones in the gym, including some cheap Bluetooth ones with a cable that goes behind the neck, and have always had problems until the Airpods. I've never had them fall out, ever. Embarrassingly, I do sometimes forget I have them in though...
I use the Bose SoundSport wireless headphones that have same design and never had a problem with tugging. I use them daily walking from a park and ride to work (~ 1 mile one way) and in the gym. The most I do is move the cord to the front of neck for squats.
I like having the cord as I can pull the buds from my ears and let them hang around my neck when I stop to talk to someone.
I originally got them because I kept yanking the cord of my wired ear buds when walking and found wired headphones really inconvenient in the gym.
I prefer it, because I bike with one ear in and the other tucked down the front of my shirt. If the bud in my ear falls out it's caught by the other instead of falling into gears or ground.
Can someone explain? Since everything is done on the cloud what is so special about these buds? Why can't you do the same with a regular headset (which also has a microphone) and Google Assistant running on any Android or iOS device?
From the article, Google already confirmed everything happens in the cloud. The only thing these headphones add is first-party integration with the Google Translate app so that you can launch the app directly from the headphones.
I think everyone by now has paid attention to the success of Apple and realized that people will pay much more for hardware than software. As long as Google maintains leadership in this area, there's a lot of benefit to them to tying their software to high-end hardware and not much downside.
I think this possibly understates what people are paying for. They’re paying for fully packaged solutions. You’re paying one price in the hardware that’s accounting for the good software. Apples not selling iPhones as a stalking horse for their ad-funded search & ads business, they’re selling software running on hardware that allows people to pay for content delivery through them. This is total mission / customer alignment, so google pursuing top quality hardware only recognizes a result and not a process.
I really think they could have come up with a better name. This whole presentation just felt awkward with headphones jack removal, AirPods clone, portrait mode for photos, Live Photo’s clone, AR demos...and on top of that these pixel buds with camera that will be forgotten and abandoned just like most of the stuff google does
I've got a great pair of wired-together IEMs (Jaybird X3) but have been considering buying AirPods just so I can listen to podcasts single-ear on my bike ride to work.
Balancing that out is my desire to not get run over, and to save $160.
So what I'm saying is, I'm pretty sure I'll end up with AirPods soon.
I occasionally bike with one earbud in with just normal wired earbuds and tuck the other one into my shirt. What am I missing out on with wireless earbuds?
But seriously, I've been so happy with my recent bluetooth purchases. I guess I could try the jaybirds in one ear, but they are noise isolating, which is less than ideal, and i think it would bother me more to have one ear blocked and the other not.
I definitely would NOT want to deal with wires to a phone somewhere in my pocket while cycling, seems potentially hazardous. Just a wire connecting them could be doable.
Honestly wireless earbuds, specifically the AirPods, have probably been the best purchase I've made in a while and probably my favorite Apple product since my MacBook Air (2013).
The problem is that all the reasons why I feel this way would not have meant much to me while I was still using wired headphones. It feels a bit like retina displays, or my first experience with a sleep mode that actually works (my first, white MacBook): the advantages don't seem all that obvious or amazing right until you're forced to go back to the 'old way'.
I would suggest you first make sure they fit your ears though. I was always confused about people complaining about the EarPods/AirPods falling out of their ears because that never happens to me or most people that I know. Then I actually met one of those mythical people and it became immediately obvious to me how unusable these things are for them (without foam or perhaps some superglue).
Just found out that the existing AirPod case doesn't support inductive charging.. I guess I'm waiting till it ships with the inductive case so I don't have to buy another.
I think you have to still use your phone give it to the person who you are talking with.A phone is the one actually sending the translated voice to the earphone.
I don't see what is so different in here.
Does this require an internet connection? The vast majority of the times I've needed something like this in my life it has either been in very rural places where there is no internet service or in a foreign country where I do not want to pay the exorbitant roaming data fees.
I can't speak for these, but I assume they are based on Google Translate, which does offline translation on-device when configured to do so. It needs to download a pre-trained kernel for each language, but once done, it can handle it offline.
The "translate conversations in real-time" part seems to have nothing to do with the Google Pixel Buds - it's already live in the Google Translate app.
In fact, you can try it right now. Open the Google Translate app on android, put on a pair of headphones with a mic, and tap the audio translation. As you hear spoken word in another language, it'll translate in realtime back to your non-google headphones.
*note - The trick is you need to press the button so it enables translation across both languages, as that seems to be the only way to keep translation on even after the first phrase.
Yes, the Google Translate app has a conversation mode which doesn't require a headset at all. I wouldn't recommend trying to use it with an unsupported headset, though. You won't be able to do push-to-talk, and the audio routing won't work as intended. (The intended UX is that one side of the conversation is routed to the phone, the other to Pixel Buds.)
That's cool. I still think the primary issue is the marketing makes it sound like the ear buds are bringing new tech to make this experience possible, when they're really bringing:
a) UX for "hold while talking"
b) Known quality of the headset
From the outside, it looks a bit shady, and a bit un-Googlelike just to compete with Apple.
I imagine a more Google-like approach would've been to release Translate as a local model (eg like https://developers.google.com/vision/). It's easy to imagine the community would quickly figure out a way to solve a) and make the experience work for most headsets.
"They’re wired behind the neck but they’re every bit a competitor to Apple’s AirPods"
Umm, no. The killer feature of AirPods is the form factor and not having an annoying cable connecting the buds. As other posters have noted, Amazon is full of cabled headphones. Language translation is certainly cool, but for most people that's not an everyday need.
> The killer feature of AirPods is the form factor and not having an annoying cable connecting the buds
Ehh, the ability to lose those things really easily is not what I'd call a killer feature. The cabled bluetooth headphones are easy to keep draped over your neck when not in use. Someone actually sells a $10 string that connects the Earpods so they too can have this convenient feature [0].
I'm not sure how a wire keeps you from losing them. If an airpod falls out of your ear it is immediately obvious. The only time I've actually had them fall out of my ear is when I'm doing something like hugging my dog or pulling a hoodie off over my head.
Everyone always says this but I feel like it's a non-starter. I haven't ever misplaced my earbuds and I've owned them for several months. House & car keys have a similar form factor and don't have a cable, yet most people don't seem to have problems keeping track of those.
Maybe you don't lose your car keys, but there are dozens of products that purport to help you find your lose keys, by attaching various detectors and buzzers to them. I personally never lose my keys unless my wife moves them while I'm looking the other way - I swear that's what's happening.
If only Apple invented some sort of device that held the headphones when they weren’t in your ears. I wanna say like a basket but that’s not it, this thing should fit in a pocket.
If they really went nuts I’d say it be cool if the thing also charged the headphones. But I mean, what a crazy world that would be.
Killer feature or not, it's the distinguishing feature that makes AirPods what they are, and it makes little sense to consider any product without it a "competitor". Unless we're going to play with language and stretch the meaning of competitor.
I used the AirPods for a week before returning them. It stayed in one ear, but kept falling out of the other ear. The thought to purchase a cord or ear hooks crossed my mind until I realized it would make charging them in the case painful by having to disconnect the attachment before charging them.
As such, the AirPods form factor is a killer feature if they fit your ear and stay through activity. If they do not stay, there is no point in trying to "extend" them.
I find it so weird that Apple keeps making the same ear pod shapes. I've never been able to keep them in my ears. The silicone plugs -- especially the "winged" kind -- that everyone other than Apple (Bose, Shure, Sony etc.) uses are functionally superior. Third parties to provide soft adapters so they can fit in people's ears, but it's so weird that Apple doesn't.
I suspect aesthetics is the only reason Apple doesn't use the soft silicon type. Maybe they found that the hard plugs fit 90% of people and that's good enough.
Before the AirPods came out I had a pair of Jaybird X2's. For me at least being able to hang them around my neck when not in use did not help keep from losing them, it's the REASON I lost them. I lost my Jaybirds in about a month and a half, after having them fall off my neck without me noticing multiple times. They fell off my neck on my walk to/from work at least 4-5 times before I finally didn't notice in time to get back to them before they'd be grabbed up.
My AirPods however I've had since January/February and I still have both. I have never gotten close to losing them the 4-5 times I did with the Jaybirds, because instead of dangling around my shirt/jacket, they go back in the case and into my pocket the second they come out of my ear. I've had some cases where I misplace them at home of course, but they're not just jumping out of my ears, and if they did I'd surely notice my music/podcast stop playing.
I also have found earbuds that are actually wireless(not wired bluetooth earbuds) has been a huge improvement. For example if I pull one out, I don't have a wire hanging and pulling on the other bud uncomfortably. If my buds are getting low, I can recharge one at a time without having to stop my podcast/music. They're also massively more comfortable, the Jaybird wire was kind of tacky and would catch and move jumpily on my neck, putting on a hoodie/jacket would pull on the cable or knock them out of my ears, and putting it in front of my neck was even more annoying. (Constantly having something moving and bumping against my chin was super annoying). Bluetooth wired earbuds are fine, but after having used what was widely regarded at the time as the best pair available, using wireless earbuds makes them feel like a cheap stopgap.
IMO the killer features of the airpods are the instant-on when you take them out of the case, the auto pause/play when you remove/insert them, and the in-case charging.
> I chatted with a member of the Pixel Buds team following the demonstration and she confirmed that the demo was done entirely over the internet, without downloading the languages directly to the device.
This guy is real excited to have all of his conversations stored in the cloud
I also think the situations where I'd find useful this kind of translations are when I'm not in my home country which most likely means my data plan does not work or is very expensive, which makes it less useful than it sounds at first.
Same thing applies for anyone using T-Mobile (which is the reason why GoogleFI offers this too). I'm not sure EDGE speeds would be great for this use case though!
Sometimes, your home country (or rather, the country where you live) has a different official language(s) than what you are most proficient in. That's the case for me living in Barcelona (catalan and spanish here, where I speak mostly english and swedish).
Also, being able to travel around in europe without any extra roaming charges, means that I can still use this, wherever I go in europe.
I'm very excited to try these as soon as I can get my hands on them.
Your comment is very valid, but in Europe, we can have some data free while travelling in another country. if we had data plan in our home (European) country. E.g. I recently went from Latvia to Finland, and received text from my operator, that my allowance was 3 or 4 gigabytes (vs. unlimited data at home in Latvia). It was plenty for my 4 days stay, for everything - maps, mail, IMs, browsing, and I did all my "voice" calls over Whatsapp. Spent less than 1GB. Translation would fit that package nicely.
I’m failing to see what these headphones do with translation, all they seem to do is launch Google Translate app on conversational mode by saying Help me speak... so technically they don’t really do anything you can’t already do right now, they certainly don’t help with fast network connection required
88 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadShame about the cable though. The one (surprising) benefit of no cable is that the cable doesn't tug on the earphones, making them less likely to come out.
I think there’s an elegance to basically keeping the existing design and just chopping the cables off, even if it is showy. Certainly beats the alternative “black amorphous blob” design of some of the others.
I have bluetooth headphones and I just get tired of the battery going out. Besides being cool and not looking dated, is there any conceivable reason why removing the headphone jack saves money, makes them last longer on battery, makes it thinner or anything else?
> makes it thinner or anything else?
I think it's volume inside the device more than thinness, but I agree I don't think it's a fundamental design constraint. I'm sure they could find the room.
I think it's just that (now/soon) Bluetooth headphones are finally good enough. I have the Airpods, and I have almost no issue with batteries (they recharge while they're in the case, it's only a problem if I listen continuously for a whole evening, but even then they fast recharge in minutes), and they have great range. I'd tried Bluetooth headphones in the past and it was the pairing process that really turned me off, that's a non-issue now too. I would go as far as to say that the Airpods are the best/most game-changing product Apple has put out in maybe a decade. They just need to get a little cheaper, and included as standard (at least for the new top-of-line devices).
For people in the audio industry it sucks, but there are adapters. I don't resent them taking it out any more than I do an ethernet port in my MacBook (ethernet is much better than WiFi, but WiFi is 'good enough' now, and I have an adapter at my desk for when I need it).
Could never run with those, but I've run/biked with AirPods with no problems (I thought I might lose one but it was really a non issue if they fit properly in the first place).
Exactly. If they don't fit you'll have issues, or will need silicone covers or something, but if they do fit it's great.
I've tried lots of earphones in the gym, including some cheap Bluetooth ones with a cable that goes behind the neck, and have always had problems until the Airpods. I've never had them fall out, ever. Embarrassingly, I do sometimes forget I have them in though...
I like having the cord as I can pull the buds from my ears and let them hang around my neck when I stop to talk to someone.
I originally got them because I kept yanking the cord of my wired ear buds when walking and found wired headphones really inconvenient in the gym.
Perhaps you'll be getting those "live" as in:
Your friend says: Let's go get a drink (in some other language)
You hear: let's go get a <drink by advertiser>
...
Balancing that out is my desire to not get run over, and to save $160.
So what I'm saying is, I'm pretty sure I'll end up with AirPods soon.
But seriously, I've been so happy with my recent bluetooth purchases. I guess I could try the jaybirds in one ear, but they are noise isolating, which is less than ideal, and i think it would bother me more to have one ear blocked and the other not.
I definitely would NOT want to deal with wires to a phone somewhere in my pocket while cycling, seems potentially hazardous. Just a wire connecting them could be doable.
The problem is that all the reasons why I feel this way would not have meant much to me while I was still using wired headphones. It feels a bit like retina displays, or my first experience with a sleep mode that actually works (my first, white MacBook): the advantages don't seem all that obvious or amazing right until you're forced to go back to the 'old way'.
I would suggest you first make sure they fit your ears though. I was always confused about people complaining about the EarPods/AirPods falling out of their ears because that never happens to me or most people that I know. Then I actually met one of those mythical people and it became immediately obvious to me how unusable these things are for them (without foam or perhaps some superglue).
It is likely incredible hard to do well by themselves from now, but there's a chance they could pay Google for an API.
The "translate conversations in real-time" part seems to have nothing to do with the Google Pixel Buds - it's already live in the Google Translate app.
In fact, you can try it right now. Open the Google Translate app on android, put on a pair of headphones with a mic, and tap the audio translation. As you hear spoken word in another language, it'll translate in realtime back to your non-google headphones.
*note - The trick is you need to press the button so it enables translation across both languages, as that seems to be the only way to keep translation on even after the first phrase.
Yes, the Google Translate app has a conversation mode which doesn't require a headset at all. I wouldn't recommend trying to use it with an unsupported headset, though. You won't be able to do push-to-talk, and the audio routing won't work as intended. (The intended UX is that one side of the conversation is routed to the phone, the other to Pixel Buds.)
I wrote about why we decided not to support third party headsets here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918
a) UX for "hold while talking"
b) Known quality of the headset
From the outside, it looks a bit shady, and a bit un-Googlelike just to compete with Apple.
I imagine a more Google-like approach would've been to release Translate as a local model (eg like https://developers.google.com/vision/). It's easy to imagine the community would quickly figure out a way to solve a) and make the experience work for most headsets.
Umm, no. The killer feature of AirPods is the form factor and not having an annoying cable connecting the buds. As other posters have noted, Amazon is full of cabled headphones. Language translation is certainly cool, but for most people that's not an everyday need.
Ehh, the ability to lose those things really easily is not what I'd call a killer feature. The cabled bluetooth headphones are easy to keep draped over your neck when not in use. Someone actually sells a $10 string that connects the Earpods so they too can have this convenient feature [0].
[0] http://promo.spigen.com/product/iphone-7-iphone-7-plus-airpo...
Oh Reghinold! I disagree!
If they really went nuts I’d say it be cool if the thing also charged the headphones. But I mean, what a crazy world that would be.
When not in use, your AirPods can double as earrings.
As such, the AirPods form factor is a killer feature if they fit your ear and stay through activity. If they do not stay, there is no point in trying to "extend" them.
I suspect aesthetics is the only reason Apple doesn't use the soft silicon type. Maybe they found that the hard plugs fit 90% of people and that's good enough.
My AirPods however I've had since January/February and I still have both. I have never gotten close to losing them the 4-5 times I did with the Jaybirds, because instead of dangling around my shirt/jacket, they go back in the case and into my pocket the second they come out of my ear. I've had some cases where I misplace them at home of course, but they're not just jumping out of my ears, and if they did I'd surely notice my music/podcast stop playing.
I also have found earbuds that are actually wireless(not wired bluetooth earbuds) has been a huge improvement. For example if I pull one out, I don't have a wire hanging and pulling on the other bud uncomfortably. If my buds are getting low, I can recharge one at a time without having to stop my podcast/music. They're also massively more comfortable, the Jaybird wire was kind of tacky and would catch and move jumpily on my neck, putting on a hoodie/jacket would pull on the cable or knock them out of my ears, and putting it in front of my neck was even more annoying. (Constantly having something moving and bumping against my chin was super annoying). Bluetooth wired earbuds are fine, but after having used what was widely regarded at the time as the best pair available, using wireless earbuds makes them feel like a cheap stopgap.
Also, Android uses SBC for Bluetooth streaming by default; until they fix that (by using AAC), BT audio will sound like shit
This guy is real excited to have all of his conversations stored in the cloud
Many people may not have Fi, which I get, but I get the feeling Google's ideal use case is these headphones paired with a Pixel 2 running on Fi.
Also, being able to travel around in europe without any extra roaming charges, means that I can still use this, wherever I go in europe.
I'm very excited to try these as soon as I can get my hands on them.
alexa, order more coffee filters.
I understand competition is a normal part of doing business, but blatant copying really rubs the wrong way.