I'm more surprised that there's not a way to message the owner (or whomever has Find My registered for the airpods) without revealing their full information, but I guess that's a bridge too far, and they figure that Find My is good enough.
If I remember correctly, my airpods pro (an older model) only show the last location my phone saw them, which I think means, last time they were actually paired.
I believe newer ones can be found 'anywhere' like an airtag.
Only recent generation AirPods have an AirTag embedded in the case. Older models were limited to trying to play a loud sound from the bud if they were out of the case, and IIRC nothing useful for the case itself.
That was true for the initial model(s), but at least the ones I have now can be found (and audibly pinged!) in the case as well.
It even works for the case without the AirPods in it. That part is definitely new, since the original cases didn't have any wireless hardware in them (and depended on at least one AirPod being in it to report their battery level, for example); the new ones have their own Bluetooth/UWB chain.
I feel like you should've been more careful with your question, unlawful people might answer that they lost AirPods although they didn't.
Unless you have a way to verify they're truthful owners, I would ask something like "I have something that might belong to you, did you lose anything in the past few days?"
EDIT: I missed the part about verification, my bad.
I mean, he said right in the article that they verified they paired.
Also, despite all the press hysteria, "unlawful people" aren't so common that a bunch of 80 messages will automatically bring them out of the woodwork. Most people are decent.
I disagree. The suggested message is so generic, that it looks like spam, even to the person who lost the airpod. Also, the author said they verified that the airpods could pair with the owner's device
Totally good point. I wanted the question to be direct without coming off mysterious or creepy. I knew people might lie, but I took a chance and figured the amount of liars would be manageable.
If I hadn’t gotten lucky in finding them in <10 texts, I may have abandoned the idea. Only one other person tried to claim they were the owner.
> I feel like you should've been more careful with your question, unlawful people might answer that they lost AirPods although they didn't.
All it helps is remove a bit of spam. As the author writes, they checked pairing, but before that you can simply ask "Where do you think you lost them?"
thats over the course of like 5 years. maybe they get lost, or when I am jogging I am pouring sweat into them, so eventually they give out. they are cheap enough that I can stock up and then I dont have to go hunting for ones I like if I lose one
Ha, I can one-up you again! For $249, I can get over fifty pairs of the Xiaomi J18 bluetooth earphones. Quite apart from the mind-boggling economies of scale with modern electronics, I can genuinely recommend these. They haven't particularly good audio quality compared to over-ear headphones, but they are still remarkably good for in-ear headphones.
I just looked these up, and for sub-$5 you get two earphones containing a driver, wireless IC, battery, and a charging case with its own circuitry and battery. And presumably they're still making a profit on that. I don't expect they'll be tuned to sound better than the wired equivalents which are closer to $1, but the fact that they can even make a working product of that complexity at that price point is mind-boggling indeed.
Indeed - there's of course still plenty of exploitation in the world market that puts a damper on the awe for me, but it's starting to feel like science fiction such as Star Trek is becoming reality ahead of schedule. At this moment, I have around fifty distinct objects near me, each with at least one pin-prick-sized computer inside them, and I could probably purchase all of them again with no more than a days wage.
As for audio quality, should anyone be interested: I had also bought a pair of those wired, ~$1 ones, and I'd say that the Xioami J18 have slightly better audio quality, but that's cancelled out by the occasional bluetooth glitches, and the deafening "CONNECTED" message when you turn them on. They also have better audio quality than the ~$25 Sony on-ear headphones by a considerable margin, but that completely pales in comparison with my Audio-Technica ATH-M40x over-ear headphones, which are like having a hi-fi strapped to your head!
When you enter a number into the messages app, your phone needs to know whether to send an iMessage or SMS. They must have reverse-engineered that call and turned it into a paid service. I don't think it's something Apple provides.
I'm a little surprised you got lucky with the erroe code. For most people my age our area code seems to be tied to where we lived in about 2006, which is often not where we live now.
I found some AirPods on a remote trail awhile back, case and all. Batteries were completely dead. Once charged they paired to my iphone with no indication of a previous owner, besides the device name of John’s AirPods or whatever.
I tried briefly (not as hard as the author) to figure out who they belonged to but had no luck.
I called Apple support and gave the serial number, but they told me there wasn’t anything they could do if the owner did not mark them as lost via the Bluetooth settings page. Even though at that point Apple presumably had all the information necessary to contact the original owner…
So I cleaned the AirPods and have been using them since. Is there any way for me to find the owner if I have no info about the owners area code like the author did?
AirPods are a bit pricey but cheap enough that I wouldn’t even bother reporting them lost to the local park authority. I doubt there’s much you can do besides a sign at the trailheads.
Valuing your time at $20 an hour, that's 8 hours worth of time for them. If the remote hiking spot is ~2 hours away, and it takes roughly an hour to deal with the park authorities, that's already 5 hours, plus transport.
Add in the inconvenience of not having them for somewhere between a few days and forever, and I'd also say they aren't really cheap but still it probably isn't worth the effort in that situation.
On the other hand, if someone makes 15 $/hr, but 50% of that goes to rent and other essentials, and they save a little, say 20%, for retirement, that leaves 30% or about 5 $/hr for discressionary spending, so the airpods come closer to 32 hr or 4 days of pay.
If I was certain that I would find them when I went back to look for them I would do it. It’s worth the time, but if the chance of finding them is only like 50% not worth the time, new one’s are probably better and have better battery life anyway. sour grapes perhaps yes
Yeah but he said "cheap enough" and I agree. If the owner didn't bother to mark it as lost in the Find My app, there's nothing you or Apple can do about it.
I guess Apple didn’t bother to connect with the original owner since lot many people do not buy for themselves and as gifts or for parents. So unless AirPods were paired with a device, Apple wouldn’t like to get involved much.
They don’t get involved even if you find an iphone that has John doe still logged on. No clue why they wouldn’t at least send an email to the account owner. I tried to surrender the iphone at the store but they wouldn’t take it.
"Accidentally" leave it at the store, or say, "Hey, this was sitting on the bench in the mall outside your Apple Store" and set it down and walk away before they can say anything.
They're also impossible to register without an iOS device. I have a pair that I won, but have no iPhone or iPad. They work great with my Macs, and pretty well with Android, but there is no way for me to register them with Find My, which is pretty annoying. There's no logical reason they couldn't do this on a Mac.
I mean, even if Apple knows the address of the people who bought it, it might have been re-sold since then - so it makes sense they don’t give out any info.
Speaking of AirPods, do people have bad experience with their quality? I have an AirPods Pro 1st Gen for about 3 years and the noise cancellation function has degraded to the point of unusable. The Apple store technician said the audio hardware has failed diagnostic and it couldn't be repaired. For a $250 equipment failed after 3 years of moderate usage is pretty disappointing.
I had this issue and I «solved» it by cleaning the tiny microphone at the bottom with a toothprush. It’s a small slit that can get stuffed with dust etc and it impacts how well it can do noise cancellations.
One of my AirPods is weirdly quiet. I know it still has the potential to be loud, as I’ve gotten it to be at the same level of noise as the other, but it’s hardly consistent. I’ve tried cleaning it and it didn’t seem to help, but I may just try again. Definitely a shame, but I got them for free so I won’t complain too much though. (If they were fully repairable this wouldn’t be a problem though.)
Similar thing happened with my airpods too. To compensate for the obviously diminished volume I was cranking the volume up. And even with that podcasts were barely audible when in anything but absolute silence. To add insult to injury the os was constantly “warning” me that I was “damaging” my hearing by listening things too loud. Of course in reality no such thing was happening.
After that terrible experience i couldn’t justify the expense of buying an other apple airpod.
I own a pair of AirPods and AirPod Pros; I bought the former in 2019, and was gifted the latter in 2020. The microphone on the AirPods died after about 18 months of use, but they otherwise still work perfectly (perhaps with slightly degraded, but still quite serviceable, battery life), and have survived a wide range of abuse (multiple trips through the washing machine, repeated drops onto pavement, in some cases from a bicycle moving at decent speed, etc).
The Pros, on the other hand, in spite of me generally being quite careful with them (in contrast to the basic AirPods) had their noise canceling crap out at about the 2 year mark, and currently are slightly louder in one ear than the other (but the microphone still works, so they remain in service).
So, overall, I think I’ve had a similar experience to you with the Pros, but have been quite impressed with the non-Pro model.
I had the same thing happen to my Pros, with one being much louder than the other and the noise cancelling barely working, and it turns out they just needed cleaning. A couple years of gunk and dust getting in the vents and speaker grill and one of them was noticeably worse than the other. After cleaning it turns out both were quite degraded and are now much better with fully functioning noise cancellation. Worth a try if they're otherwise good and you want to keep using them.
Same AirPods, after a couple years the left one’s speaker sounds like it’s blown: any louder sounds played have a crackle and if I turn on the NC just brushing it with a finger makes it crackle like crazy.
My AidPods Pro became unusable after ~2 years. NC had some overcorrection issue I guess, created this loud crackling sound when it tried to cancel out a noise.
Yes, same thing happened to me. The hardware failed over time and now the noise-cancellation feature causes audio to be very scratchy, making them awful for listening to music. I think mine lasted a little over a year of occasional use.
I went to an Apple store to see if I could get them replaced since I knew there was a recall on one version. They refused since mine was the version that came out after the recalled version.
That soured me on AirPods. Luckily it was a work-issued pair, so they were free.
I wore mine while riding a hardtail XC mountain bike (on safeish trail segments) and the transparency mode failed after 7 months. After that, the non-ANCed speaker and microphone worked fine. Weirdly durable for nonathletic purposed hardware.
In Vietnam, you can find people to do repairs like this super cheap and easy. Just had the back glass on my iPhone 13 promax replaced cause I dropped it and it cracked, $40. In the US, it is $200+.
I’d be very surprised if repairs on AirPods circuitry were possible or cost effective. Just swapping the battery requires basically soldering iron surgery and permanent damage/removal of all adhesive that keeps it together.
You'd be surprised what they can do in Vietnam. Airpods are assembled there. If you have a local connection, You can find people who have worked in the factories.
Beyond that, the whole culture is to repair things because there isn't an official Apple store. They can also import parts from China and elsewhere.
Here is pricing to get parts from Singapore... most expensive repair is $100...
Some crazy stuff in these replies. I am coming up on 5 years and while I do get a slight crackle in one from wind sometimes running, they’re still going strong. Guess I finally ended up on the up side of a distribution
Embarrassing really when you consider the wider market. I have a 10 year old set of mdr v6. Still reference quality sound today albeit with a few ear foam replacements in the years since. I think they cost $70 at the time.
I remember some theories around 2021-2022 that Apple had modified the ANC in AirPods Pro/Max via a firmware update. If I recall, the thought was this was in response to some patent infringement.
Anecdotally, I think I noticed a difference, but I also chalked it up to prematurely-degrading hardware...
Same. I bought mine in 2021 and now have to use it with noise cancellation off because otherwise there's a very persistent crackling noise. Meanwhile my Bose QCs are still operating like new after like 11-12 years of regular use.
I have the Airpods Pro 2nd Gen, and after 2 years they are as good as useless. Both Noise control and Spatial sound are dead. There is a buzzing there. The battery is surprisingly good, though. They could still last 2/2.5 hours on a charge. But I don't think I'll be buying Apple pods again (even though when they functioned, they were actually pretty decent).
Yes, Airpods aren't very durable. I'm on my 4th pair of Airpod Pros. One pair I got replaced by Apple due to a known problem in the Pro 1st gen, the other two both failed right outside warranty.
The noise cancellation is the weak part. The microphone or related hardware breaks and then you get all kinds of plops and squeals unless you turn noise cancellation off. Somehow they tend to do that about 3 to 6 months after warranty...
So you scripted sending the message to 84 different numbers, was that from your own personal iMessage account?
I would be terrified of doing something like that, I imagine the account could get flagged for spam, and hearing the various tech horror stories, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could end up suspending your iCloud account with everything on it, blacklisting hardware devices linked to it, and who knows what else.
I'm not the author but my guess is that the API returns whether the number is registered with iMessage or not- like if you type in a number in a new text message it shows whether the message you're sending will be an iMessage or a text message. Don't think the author was spamming random numbers.
That’s after screening to see if the number was linked to iMessage —- ie a valid iPhone attached to the number. That’s what that lookup service did. Then they scripted messaging the numbers that worked.
I think more than sending 84 messages, getting reported on handful of them can be more concerning. While you’ll rarely get reported for a party invite.
Yeah, exactly. I’m not sure what happens after I click “Delete and Report Junk” on every spammy-looking sms and iMessage I get, but I imagine the iMessage reports go into some ML blackbox and hopefully contribute to banning the spammer.
I understand the op was trying to do a good deed, but if I saw an unexpected message like that I would definitely hit “Delete and Report Junk” instead of just “Delete”.
It's been a long while, but I scripted iMessage a bit, and Apple has a pretty casual slide into unworking.
They don't just block your account in one fell swoop, first indicators and messaging will stop working for a few hours. And you can hit that at least a few times without a ban. After a few times of that it was clear it wouldn't be worth running what I had, so I stopped before any sort of permanent banning.
This once happened to somebody I know! Their Apple ID somehow got banned from specifically, and only, iMessage and FaceTime; all other services like iCloud and the app store were working as usual.
No idea why it happened, but Apple support was able to reset it on a phone call.
My theory is that they'd kept a non-active SIM in their phone for a long time, and the phone had tried to repeatedly verify/link that phone number to their Apple ID (via challenge SMS, I believe), thereby exceeding some rate limit.
Gotta love that such rate limits exist and do occasionally hit legitimate users, but at the same time, there are paid lookup-as-a-service APIs out there as mentioned in TFA...
Well you're paying for it, the app store fees alone make it worth while for Apple. I do wonder, with the changes slowly trickling down the pipe, will Apple's fees over then next few years slowly diminish? And if so, what of their support quality (which is financed via funds from app store fees)?
I never had to give serial numbers or anything when calling, so I don't think they know/care?
Even at the Apple Store, they help with out-of-warranty items all the time. I recently gave away an iPhone 8 and they helped my friend setup.
A nice woman there gave me new rubber-thingies for my AirPods and it's been out of warranty for the longest time. I mean they never checked or anything.
Yep, you are paying for it. But with Google Android you pay with your privacy and time. And you get terrible support in return.
I've been trying to get a paid game the past days for my kids, a game where you try use bolts to remove wooden planks. It only exists with IAP and/or ads. The ads are terrible and not tailored to children. Nor are all the dark patterns. And you can get rid of the ads. By paying you get rid of them!!.. for 24 hours.
I'd rather pay via App Store or Google Play Store or Steam or whatever. Even a subscription for a month would've been better.
FWIW there is the Google Play Pass which gets you 1000+ games without any ads or the need for additional in-app purchases. It can be shared with 5 family members too.
Yep, we had to contact Apple support maybe three times since we switched to Apple products in 2007. It was easy to get hold of them every time and they were very pleasant.
The last time there was an issue with an Apple Care payment. I was forwarded to someone who I believe was actually in Apple’s Dutch accounting department (certainly not a help desk drone). They called me back to follow up and even after everything was sorted out to check if everything was looking good on my end.
must be location dependent. i've only ever had the standard 3rd world country script support employees, but they do tend to eventually transfer me to an irish guy who is allowed to speak freely after enough going around in circles.
I had to use support for some purchases on the iTunes music store, and if I remember correctly, the support options offered on the homepage varied depending on which language I had set. I think the "write a message describing your problem" option for example was only available in English, and you had to play around a little with the possible options of categorising your problem to get it to appear.
But past that hurdle, at least my actual problems got resolved satisfactorily.
iMessage has an AppleScript API that makes it easy. I ran a game in school with something like 50 teams and I had a script to generate different objectives for each team and send them out by text automatically.
I do believe apple’s e2e encryption promises on iMessage content, and don’t think it should interfere with their ability to control for spam / bad actors.
But I also expect them to know the sender/receiver, and I imagine if I click “Delete and Report Junk” button, that I would probably submit the unencrypted contents of that whole conversation to Apple. And they should have also have metrics of total sends vs reported sends.
The vast majority of iMessages (99%+), including normal/unreported ones, are readable by Apple because either the iMessages themselves or the iMessage cross-device sync keys are escrowed to Apple in the non-e2ee iCloud Backup. In the latter case the messages are readable in realtime.
This is documented (not the 99% figure, but the situation) by Apple in knowledge base articles on the apple.com website.
The e2ee in iMessage is effectively irrelevant, as for most people, most of the time, it functions just like Telegram (which is not e2ee).
Fair enough, though this is probably useful people for most non tech people, who might forget their passwords / lose keys, and don’t want to lose all access and data.
Personally, a few months ago I enabled Advanced Data Protection (ADP) which afaik does make iCloud backups (including messages), Photos, iCloud Drive and few other things inaccessible to Apple.
Whether you trust that Apple actually did throw away their keys after enabling the feature is a different story, but it’s good enough for me.
When enabling ADP there’s multiple warnings about how you’ll end up completely locked out if you lose all your devices / lose recovery keys / lose all hardware authenticators. Iirc I was also forced to register at least 2 yubikeys.
For anyone tech savvy you should enable ADP.
At some point, during a meetup the person offering the item would demand a ransom leading to violence. Creators of this tech would much rather you use it only by yourself or with police, not to interact with strangers.
I left my AirPods Pro at a school sports field an hour away, and I didn't realize until the next morning after it been raining heavily. I gave them up for lost and needed headphones for work – so ordered some from Apple with same day delivery.
A week later, I got a Find My notification that they had been spotted – at the same sports field. I figured what the hell, put on a podcast and drove the hour to see if I could find them. Worst case scenario, a couple of hours of driving.
Using Find My and the directional feature points you in the right direction to within feet, I found them in the tall grass.
The case had been perfectly watertight, and they'd barely lost a percent of power in a week. Remarkable really all round.
Something is wrong with them. I can use mine repeatedly over several days before finally needing to plug them in again. You should reach out to support.
Have you actually talked to Apple? They might just replace them. Is this the only pair that’s demonstrated this behavior, or has it been multiple units?
The left earbud dying is a frequent problem. Sometimes I sometimes hear about the right, but usually the left. Even more rarely, both die frequently, which isn’t the real issue…they drain the case, right? (if not ignore the rest of this)
Want me to blow your mind? The REASON for this is the case. Everyone always suggests cleaning, but that won’t help for the long term. I know because I have tried.
I took a pair of tweezers and bent the metal contacts in the case outward. That was a year ago. I have not had a single issue since. Not one. I am willing to bet Apple brushed a manufacturing defect under the rug. YMMV and if your airpods are under warranty, consider that first, but after having the issue with first gen and second gen, I wasn’t about to deal with nonsense.
The butterfly keyboard was a _design_ defect, and these are very different things. Apple went to great lengths (because telling Jony Ive 'no' was not an option) to try and tweak the design to function correctly in the real world, and failed.
But they came out of the box functioning perfectly, and stayed that way until tiny specks of dust inevitably entered the picture. The entire saga was extremely boneheaded and after I took mine in for a replacement (which, I must say, was out of warranty and only cost me time) I vowed to never buy another MacBook which had that absurd keyboard. Fortunately I didn't have to, they went back to the proven design which is a true beast and just keeps chugging along for years without a single missed or repeated keystroke.
But this is very different from shipping products with known _manufacturing_ defects, and then 'brushing it under the rug', presumably by not issuing a recall. I can't recall even the former happening with post-iPod era Apple products, let alone the latter.
In this particular case, the most likely culprit is pushing the AirPod into the charging slot with enough force to bend down the contact. There isn't a way to manufacture a spring contact which isn't vulnerable to this, and the fix is easy if you have thin enough tweezers. If Apple shipped an edition of AirPods cases with bad contacts, which didn't charge out of the box, it's a safe bet that there would be press about it. Maybe there was, but if so, I missed the 635 comment HN thread about it.
That definitely isn’t normal. My guess is you need to clean the contacts in the AirPods. They might be in the case but it’s still pairing or trying to pair. Shouldn’t drain that much, especially overnight.
If Person A loses 1% over a week in standby, and person B loses 20% overnight, it's probably not the battery..
Unless Person B also tells you that in general their air pods only last 30 minutes playing music.
As stated, their percentage of power level fall vs person A is 2000% more being generous (person A said a week, not a night). If it was because of the battery, the air pods would also last way way way less playing music.
Could be either/or. I long ago lost the brassiere that came with my AirPods Max (not really lost, I just can’t be arsed to dig it out of where I think it is) and they’ll drain themselves fairly quickly just trying to throw out stray connections to any of the five or so devices they can connect to unless I make a point of disconnecting them. AirPods Pro exhibit the same exact symptoms when the contact inside the case needs to be cleaned.
There’s a magnetic contact that the “bra” case engages that turns off the headphones so the battery doesn’t needlessly drain. Bunch of companies make after market cases/covers, you should get one of them at least.
I am aware of how it works, that's why I front-loaded the part about the brassiere being MIA at the moment. I just don't care, and I don't take it outside except on the airplane. Next flight I have, I'll probably dig out the brassiere.
Also in my experience, the brassiere was never perfect about guaranteeing the AirPods Max were put perfectly into a sleep state. The same exact issue could sometimes occur, maybe an alignment issue. The AirPods Max sound fantastic, but there's a lot of little details about them where Apple just kind of dropped the ball.
could you link the bugreport or sth pls. apple has such weird bugs. on my iphone if i set an alarm and late at night i decide to tell siri to put another alarm she deletes the first one. did miss some flights because of that. and sometimes it doesnt ring at all. have a analog alarm for that now.
My Apple Watch regularly gets burning hot and drains the battery. Sometimes overnight, sometimes during the day. Very annoying. Reset several times, Apple Care was of no help, no fix to this date either. Only way to alleviate is to reboot the Watch.
This is since the existence of software and is going to stay with us until most people is ok to have 1/3rd of the features for the same kind of money. This will never happen, so bugs are here to stay.
That wasn’t their point and I’m hesitating to believe you actually think it was.
This is like blaming people for not locking their door after they’ve been robbed. Yeah, they should have locked their door. But the person who actually did wrong is the person who robbed them.
Blaming somebody for not taking extra steps to reduce the chances of something happening to them that is ultimately the fault of another party is not right.
I don't agree with this at all. It is possible to both be in the wrong _and_ not be the villain. If I am dressed to the 9s, wearing expensive jewelry, carrying a lot of money.... and then I want down dark alleys.... and I get mugged; I am not the bad guy, the mugger is. But I'm also partially to blame, because I knowingly took actions that increased the likelihood of me being mugged.
Our society has elements that will harm us. It is up to us to take action to reduce the likelihood of that happening.
Pointing out that there are ways to reduce risk of something bad happening does not excuse the fault of a perpetrator. Neither is it victim blaming. This is particularly true when having a bad thing happen to you could occur without any individual acting intentionally, such as is the case with food poisoning.
It’s not the individuals fault on their own, but the market absolutely reflects societies tolerance of bugs and crashes. Microsoft started boiling that frog decades ago.
I love the airpods but ah... they dont play well with any kind of metal work. If you do metal work with a file the shavings get everywhere and once they stick to the magnet its almost impossible to get them out. I guess this is a very unusual edge case though but thought id post it. lmao.
I use tape, or bluetack. Bluetack is easiest for the external connectors, but a wodge of tape, properly manipulated, can get the internal ones. Can be a bit of a pain, but it's never not worked.
That is a lot, but I wonder if GP’s only decreased by 1% because their phone wasn’t close by. AirPods and their iPhones probably keep pinging each other to maintain the Bluetooth connection, which must have an effect on the battery.
Only when you pull them out of the case. Otherwise they just stay asleep. When I replaced my Powerbeats Pro (same fundamental tech as any AirPods) with AirPods Pro, I went about a year or so without touching the Powerbeats Pro and they just sat in one spot not too far from anything they could connect to since I never unpaired them from anything. I pulled them out a year later, and the Beats themselves were still fully charged and I think the case was still about 70%. Couldn’t tell you what I had left the case at though.
Mine sometimes don't charge in the case, and can either end up with the case fully charged and the airpods fully drained, or if they charge/discharge through the night with the airpods at a random charge and the case somewhat drained.
I seem to be the only person this happens to, but the won't-charge-in-the-case problem was so bad with my original airpods pro that Apple ended up replacing the case, then the airpods pro and the case, over a very frustrating several months of back and forth. My new airpods pro were fine for maybe eight months, but the problem has started again. So far it's only once every few weeks, which I can live with.
If you don’t know, make sure the light blinks when you drop each AirPod in. That will show it hit the contacts correctly. My APP 1s also had this issue way more often than my second gens.
Thanks! In my case (pun intended) the AirPods will sometimes just refuse to charge. I have spent several hours holding the case open and wedging one AirPod up… slightly… to get it to charge, and another several hours trying to replicate that delicate configuration with small shims of various design.
Just chiming in to say I had the same problem and found a solution.
For some reason, my AirPods silently connect to my iPhone while they're in their case and both devices are asleep. Why they do this, I have no clue. Just quality 2020s Apple programming.
Anyways, there's an easy solution: go into the settings app (not the drop down menu) and turn off Bluetooth on your phone/ipad when you don't need it. Your AirPods will no longer randomly drain at night. Neither will your Apple Pencil, if you have one of those.
You'll find a lot of comments on Apple support forums/reddit/etc saying it's impossible for it to be Bluetooth and that you should never turn it off for any reason because it's crazy. People for some reason are very assertive about that. But they're wrong. I now make a habit of only turning Bluetooth on precisely when I need it and immediately turn it off afterwards and now nothing gets drained needlessly.
Now the only AirPods bug that drives me insane is the volume randomly shooting up halfway to max randomly sometimes when I connect to my computer, but I made a script to somewhat fix it.
That doesn't turn Bluetooth off. It's deceptive. It simply "disconnects" it, but it'll still connect at a random point in the future. It also doesn't really disconnect it since it'll still detect devices and burn away your battery life. And I experimented with it countless times over a couple years.
That's why I said you need to do it through settings directly. Otherwise it won't do anything.
It absolutely does not. I've tried it countless times and my AirPods still drain overnight if I use the drop down disable. I've also disabled it that way and seen an "AirPods detected" message minutes later.
Same here, occasionally I find both the case and the ear pieces with empty batteries while they haven’t been nowhere near empty when I left them, usually previous day or evening.
I wonder what the difference is? One (admittedly uninformed) hypothesis is that there might have been more detergent, and the failure was caused by detergent residue. If this was true, they could be (possibly) repaired by rinsing with fresh water to remove said residue and leaving to dry. (Lots of other possible hypotheses and confounding factors)
The first few times were by accident, but once I realized they are durable enough I started wearing them sometimes while showering if I've got a good audiobook or YT video that I don't want to put down.
I think they're supposed to withstand some degree of moisture, but I don't believe they're designed specifically to be submerged. However, one of mine (gen 2 airpods) got fully submerged for maybe 3 seconds in the bathtub but it managed to start working again when I let it dry out.
I'm not saying I recommend others treat their AirPods as if they're water resistant but, in my experience, all the generations of AirPods can take a bit of a water beating. The only ones I've never done this with are any of the Pro models.
Heh. I wasn’t so lucky, and it was the morning of a flight. Never had more of a reason to pull the forget on the $15 2-hour delivery Apple offers in my area.
I probably haven't had hundreds yet, but probably more than one hundred.
So many things used to come with cheap earbuds or headphones. A pocket radio. A portable CD player. A cheap MP3 player. A laptop. I've even had some small TVs come with headphones out of the box. So there's like 40+ sets I didn't even ask for over the years. Pretty much all immediate trash.
Then there are the ones I bought in a pinch. Go on a trip, realize I didn't bring my headphones, swing by the store and get a cheap pair. Being a cheap pair, they often didn't last long. There's another dozen sets.
Now the ones I actually wanted. Not all have replaceable cups or pads, so they'd often wear out after a few years. Or they were USB, and the circuitry started freaking out after a few years. On top of that I probably have different sets for different use cases. A pair for on the go. A pair for the computer. A pair for the HiFi system. A pair for the office.
Same here. They sounded "off" for a while, but returned to normal after a day of drying outside of the case. (I'm guessing that perhaps some water was blocking the microphones used for noise cancellation.)
Slight chance of finding it if you notice it's missing fast enough.
FindMy only finds the charger, not the headphones out of charger, but you can make it play a sound.
You can buy a replacement for about 50% of the price of a new set (complete with charger case).
One night I dropped my case as I crossed the street to my building. I grabbed it off the ground without paying attention, both buds had fallen out.
In the morning, I picked up the case and noticed that it felt light. Find My reported both buds as having been seen outside on the sidewalk, one last seen four hours ago, the other six. I ran downstairs and outside to find them both smashed by car traffic.
Another time a bud popped out of the case while passing through the TSA X-rays (yes, I have lousy luck with these). I was able to pinpoint the direction with the app and make it plays sounds, but the agents were unable to dig under the rollers and get it out.
Wow 1 percent in a week. I use mine every couple of days but they drain much faster. Perhaps yours decided, he, see no iPhone for a couple of hours let’s do some deep sleep.
I’d love to have more control over then charge cycle like that.
I accidentally put mine through the washing machine. The aftermarket case I had them in died but the Airpods themselves survived just fine. That was 2 years ago and I still use them every day.
I lost two sets in the snow at my mom's house. Where she lives the snow sticks around for 4 or 5 months. They would have been near the top of a few feet of snow where we were making snow angels and generally frolicking, and then covered up by additional snowfall. We found them once it melted. They both work fine.
(in germany) Friend took multiple trains, Ubahn, Bus. 5 Seconds after leaving the bus, he realized he had forgotten his backpack with id, laptop, etc.
We were "hunting" busses for 2h but couldn't find it. He didn't have Find My set up on the mac. Filed police report etc.
A week later he got mail saying the bag was found in a train in Augsburg. Which was the 2nd of 4 legs of the trips or something, and he was completely off where he lost it :D
I saw someone on Twitter that left hers in a seatback on a flight. They'd show up on Find My every day for almost two months before they died. She talked to the airline multiple times about someone checking her seatback and several times they insisted they weren't there. Doubtful they ever checked at all but impressive battery life.
I used to bike from SF to Apple in Cupertino once a week. One week, I dropped my AirPods case on the ride and only when I got to work did I realize I was missing an AirPod. The next week, I stopped right around where I dropped the case and I found it, working just fine.
I love that when you drop the case, the AirPods scatter into the farthest reaches of wherever you are – favorite feature
Find my is really a killer feature. When AirTags were first released, there was a bunch of media on potential use by stalkers and it seems like Apple hasn’t advertised how airtags (and findmy with devices) work at all since then. Most people think they just work locally until I show them an AirTag halfway around the world that just updated its location.
I bought one for my luggage, and when boarding a train in Paris, I was informed that I left my luggage behind. Went back to grab my luggage, boarded my train and then bought more AirTags at the first opportunity. I’ve used them multiple times to prove my lost luggage is in the airport, countless times to track shipping of high-value goods and countless times to find my keys.
A while ago, I did something similar but with an AirTag. I found a few at a local thrift store, and whoever donated them still had them linked to their iCloud, so they were useless. But it was easier since the area code was known. I tried a few numbers, and luckily, one answered and removed them from their account.
My friend left them in a rental car. He spent more than a week seeing them coming on and offline in Find My and moving around in a university area. Assumed someone had stolen them. Finally called the rental company and got access to the car: they were in the glovebox.
This seems genuine to me, but I'm sure some unscrupulous people would love a story like this hitting the front page of HN.
Props to the author for helping the user find their missing AirPods! I believe your story. If I see another story similar to this I may find it harder to believe.
> I started with the assumption that the owner lived near me in the Portland metropolitan area. With that, I restricted the search to our local area code. Sure, they could be from out of town, but hey, let's give it a shot
They could also be local but with a non-Portland area code. Generally, at least if you are using a nationwide cell phone carrier, you can move to another area code and keep your number.
This part of the story is even more surprising to me, as I'd never considered the possibility that mobile phone numbers could have area codes. The Portland metropolitan area has a population of just under three million according to Wikipedia[1]; my country has a population of just under seventy million and has only a single block of phone numbers allocated for cellular use.
This is not the case in the U.S. (discussed elsewhere in this discussion). All phone numbers, landline or mobile, have an area code associated with a specific city/region. Since number portability became a thing in the early 2000s it’s much more common for cell phone users to just keep their number from decades ago, however, which will often not match the physical area they now live in.
The US is also somewhat unique (not the only country, but one of a few) in that we can port numbers between landline and mobile. Most places keep them separate.
I used this feature recently, after my mom passed. She had the same home number we grew up with, for fifty years. I ported it over as a second line on my mobile. Partly nostalgia (okay, mostly), partly because it was a pretty great number for memorization; it has an excellent number pattern.
Love the methodology, although they did get lucky that the number (in addition to being local) was not ported from an originally landline-specific block :)
I will never get over how apple figured out how to resell headphones someone already owns for $100+. Brilliant psychologists in their employ I am sure.
404 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadI think we take for granted how easily these things come to us as tech people.
I believe newer ones can be found 'anywhere' like an airtag.
It even works for the case without the AirPods in it. That part is definitely new, since the original cases didn't have any wireless hardware in them (and depended on at least one AirPod being in it to report their battery level, for example); the new ones have their own Bluetooth/UWB chain.
Unless you have a way to verify they're truthful owners, I would ask something like "I have something that might belong to you, did you lose anything in the past few days?"
EDIT: I missed the part about verification, my bad.
Also, despite all the press hysteria, "unlawful people" aren't so common that a bunch of 80 messages will automatically bring them out of the woodwork. Most people are decent.
If I hadn’t gotten lucky in finding them in <10 texts, I may have abandoned the idea. Only one other person tried to claim they were the owner.
I’m definitely not replying to it.
> We confirmed that the AirPods paired, which wouldn't be possible if they didn't belong to them.
All it helps is remove a bit of spam. As the author writes, they checked pairing, but before that you can simply ask "Where do you think you lost them?"
https://electronics.sony.com/audio/headphones/in-ear/p/mdrex...
have purchased 4 already, happy with my decision
As for audio quality, should anyone be interested: I had also bought a pair of those wired, ~$1 ones, and I'd say that the Xioami J18 have slightly better audio quality, but that's cancelled out by the occasional bluetooth glitches, and the deafening "CONNECTED" message when you turn them on. They also have better audio quality than the ~$25 Sony on-ear headphones by a considerable margin, but that completely pales in comparison with my Audio-Technica ATH-M40x over-ear headphones, which are like having a hi-fi strapped to your head!
I tried briefly (not as hard as the author) to figure out who they belonged to but had no luck.
I called Apple support and gave the serial number, but they told me there wasn’t anything they could do if the owner did not mark them as lost via the Bluetooth settings page. Even though at that point Apple presumably had all the information necessary to contact the original owner…
So I cleaned the AirPods and have been using them since. Is there any way for me to find the owner if I have no info about the owners area code like the author did?
Add in the inconvenience of not having them for somewhere between a few days and forever, and I'd also say they aren't really cheap but still it probably isn't worth the effort in that situation.
I spent a few days wondering if I had just lost hearing in that ear, but no.
After that terrible experience i couldn’t justify the expense of buying an other apple airpod.
The Pros, on the other hand, in spite of me generally being quite careful with them (in contrast to the basic AirPods) had their noise canceling crap out at about the 2 year mark, and currently are slightly louder in one ear than the other (but the microphone still works, so they remain in service).
So, overall, I think I’ve had a similar experience to you with the Pros, but have been quite impressed with the non-Pro model.
Use some blue tack to gently clean out the microphone grate(s) periodically. As it becomes obstructed noise cancellation suffers.
I went to an Apple store to see if I could get them replaced since I knew there was a recall on one version. They refused since mine was the version that came out after the recalled version.
That soured me on AirPods. Luckily it was a work-issued pair, so they were free.
AirPods are disappointing, but convenient. I guess that's why we buy them.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/AirPods+Pro+Battery+Replacement...
Beyond that, the whole culture is to repair things because there isn't an official Apple store. They can also import parts from China and elsewhere.
Here is pricing to get parts from Singapore... most expensive repair is $100...
https://cares.vn/en/dich-vu-airpods/
Anecdotally, I think I noticed a difference, but I also chalked it up to prematurely-degrading hardware...
I have one pair where the left bud doesn’t connect until I put it back in and take it out of the case a few times.
One where one bud doesn’t charge properly.
And one with declining noise cancellation.
They are great when they work properly, but I do think quality is slightly lacking for a relatively expensive product.
I was surprised at the quality, and they've lasted a couple years already at almost daily use.
The nice part is, if I lose them, no big deal. I bought a 2nd pair as a backup.
The noise cancellation is the weak part. The microphone or related hardware breaks and then you get all kinds of plops and squeals unless you turn noise cancellation off. Somehow they tend to do that about 3 to 6 months after warranty...
I would be terrified of doing something like that, I imagine the account could get flagged for spam, and hearing the various tech horror stories, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could end up suspending your iCloud account with everything on it, blacklisting hardware devices linked to it, and who knows what else.
I understand the op was trying to do a good deed, but if I saw an unexpected message like that I would definitely hit “Delete and Report Junk” instead of just “Delete”.
https://maxread.substack.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-all-those...
Discussion of above - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949731
They don't just block your account in one fell swoop, first indicators and messaging will stop working for a few hours. And you can hit that at least a few times without a ban. After a few times of that it was clear it wouldn't be worth running what I had, so I stopped before any sort of permanent banning.
No idea why it happened, but Apple support was able to reset it on a phone call.
My theory is that they'd kept a non-active SIM in their phone for a long time, and the phone had tried to repeatedly verify/link that phone number to their Apple ID (via challenge SMS, I believe), thereby exceeding some rate limit.
Gotta love that such rate limits exist and do occasionally hit legitimate users, but at the same time, there are paid lookup-as-a-service APIs out there as mentioned in TFA...
Google should take note.
That too.
High audio quality, no rush and no signs of them being an underpaid call center operator, always going the extra mile to help me.
Even at the Apple Store, they help with out-of-warranty items all the time. I recently gave away an iPhone 8 and they helped my friend setup.
A nice woman there gave me new rubber-thingies for my AirPods and it's been out of warranty for the longest time. I mean they never checked or anything.
I've been trying to get a paid game the past days for my kids, a game where you try use bolts to remove wooden planks. It only exists with IAP and/or ads. The ads are terrible and not tailored to children. Nor are all the dark patterns. And you can get rid of the ads. By paying you get rid of them!!.. for 24 hours.
I'd rather pay via App Store or Google Play Store or Steam or whatever. Even a subscription for a month would've been better.
The last time there was an issue with an Apple Care payment. I was forwarded to someone who I believe was actually in Apple’s Dutch accounting department (certainly not a help desk drone). They called me back to follow up and even after everything was sorted out to check if everything was looking good on my end.
But past that hurdle, at least my actual problems got resolved satisfactorily.
But I also expect them to know the sender/receiver, and I imagine if I click “Delete and Report Junk” button, that I would probably submit the unencrypted contents of that whole conversation to Apple. And they should have also have metrics of total sends vs reported sends.
This is documented (not the 99% figure, but the situation) by Apple in knowledge base articles on the apple.com website.
The e2ee in iMessage is effectively irrelevant, as for most people, most of the time, it functions just like Telegram (which is not e2ee).
Personally, a few months ago I enabled Advanced Data Protection (ADP) which afaik does make iCloud backups (including messages), Photos, iCloud Drive and few other things inaccessible to Apple.
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 - https://support.apple.com/guide/security/advanced-data-prote...
Whether you trust that Apple actually did throw away their keys after enabling the feature is a different story, but it’s good enough for me.
When enabling ADP there’s multiple warnings about how you’ll end up completely locked out if you lose all your devices / lose recovery keys / lose all hardware authenticators. Iirc I was also forced to register at least 2 yubikeys. For anyone tech savvy you should enable ADP.
A week later, I got a Find My notification that they had been spotted – at the same sports field. I figured what the hell, put on a podcast and drove the hour to see if I could find them. Worst case scenario, a couple of hours of driving.
Using Find My and the directional feature points you in the right direction to within feet, I found them in the tall grass.
The case had been perfectly watertight, and they'd barely lost a percent of power in a week. Remarkable really all round.
This is a frequent problem - only for some people.
Want me to blow your mind? The REASON for this is the case. Everyone always suggests cleaning, but that won’t help for the long term. I know because I have tried.
I took a pair of tweezers and bent the metal contacts in the case outward. That was a year ago. I have not had a single issue since. Not one. I am willing to bet Apple brushed a manufacturing defect under the rug. YMMV and if your airpods are under warranty, consider that first, but after having the issue with first gen and second gen, I wasn’t about to deal with nonsense.
What? that doesn't sound like Apple at all. They would never do that. I get butterflies just thinking that.
I see what you did there.
But they came out of the box functioning perfectly, and stayed that way until tiny specks of dust inevitably entered the picture. The entire saga was extremely boneheaded and after I took mine in for a replacement (which, I must say, was out of warranty and only cost me time) I vowed to never buy another MacBook which had that absurd keyboard. Fortunately I didn't have to, they went back to the proven design which is a true beast and just keeps chugging along for years without a single missed or repeated keystroke.
But this is very different from shipping products with known _manufacturing_ defects, and then 'brushing it under the rug', presumably by not issuing a recall. I can't recall even the former happening with post-iPod era Apple products, let alone the latter.
In this particular case, the most likely culprit is pushing the AirPod into the charging slot with enough force to bend down the contact. There isn't a way to manufacture a spring contact which isn't vulnerable to this, and the fix is easy if you have thin enough tweezers. If Apple shipped an edition of AirPods cases with bad contacts, which didn't charge out of the box, it's a safe bet that there would be press about it. Maybe there was, but if so, I missed the 635 comment HN thread about it.
Unless Person B also tells you that in general their air pods only last 30 minutes playing music.
As stated, their percentage of power level fall vs person A is 2000% more being generous (person A said a week, not a night). If it was because of the battery, the air pods would also last way way way less playing music.
https://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2021/05...
Also in my experience, the brassiere was never perfect about guaranteeing the AirPods Max were put perfectly into a sleep state. The same exact issue could sometimes occur, maybe an alignment issue. The AirPods Max sound fantastic, but there's a lot of little details about them where Apple just kind of dropped the ball.
http://www.openradar.me/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804545
This is like blaming people for not locking their door after they’ve been robbed. Yeah, they should have locked their door. But the person who actually did wrong is the person who robbed them.
Blaming somebody for not taking extra steps to reduce the chances of something happening to them that is ultimately the fault of another party is not right.
Our society has elements that will harm us. It is up to us to take action to reduce the likelihood of that happening.
How did you determine it's an iOS bug?
I seem to be the only person this happens to, but the won't-charge-in-the-case problem was so bad with my original airpods pro that Apple ended up replacing the case, then the airpods pro and the case, over a very frustrating several months of back and forth. My new airpods pro were fine for maybe eight months, but the problem has started again. So far it's only once every few weeks, which I can live with.
For some reason, my AirPods silently connect to my iPhone while they're in their case and both devices are asleep. Why they do this, I have no clue. Just quality 2020s Apple programming.
Anyways, there's an easy solution: go into the settings app (not the drop down menu) and turn off Bluetooth on your phone/ipad when you don't need it. Your AirPods will no longer randomly drain at night. Neither will your Apple Pencil, if you have one of those.
You'll find a lot of comments on Apple support forums/reddit/etc saying it's impossible for it to be Bluetooth and that you should never turn it off for any reason because it's crazy. People for some reason are very assertive about that. But they're wrong. I now make a habit of only turning Bluetooth on precisely when I need it and immediately turn it off afterwards and now nothing gets drained needlessly.
Now the only AirPods bug that drives me insane is the volume randomly shooting up halfway to max randomly sometimes when I connect to my computer, but I made a script to somewhat fix it.
That's why I said you need to do it through settings directly. Otherwise it won't do anything.
Apple themselves even says if you want to turn off Bluetooth, you need to do it through settings: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102412
Otherwise it's merely a temporary disconnect.
Maybe it was because it was quite a lengthy washing cycle?
I think they're supposed to withstand some degree of moisture, but I don't believe they're designed specifically to be submerged. However, one of mine (gen 2 airpods) got fully submerged for maybe 3 seconds in the bathtub but it managed to start working again when I let it dry out.
I'm not saying I recommend others treat their AirPods as if they're water resistant but, in my experience, all the generations of AirPods can take a bit of a water beating. The only ones I've never done this with are any of the Pro models.
I did not and will not complain. I have owned over a hundred pairs of headphones/earbuds in my lifetime and these things are the best, by FAR.
However, don’t wash them.
You realize that this is not a warranty issue, right?
https://www.apple.com/support/products/headphones/
So many things used to come with cheap earbuds or headphones. A pocket radio. A portable CD player. A cheap MP3 player. A laptop. I've even had some small TVs come with headphones out of the box. So there's like 40+ sets I didn't even ask for over the years. Pretty much all immediate trash.
Then there are the ones I bought in a pinch. Go on a trip, realize I didn't bring my headphones, swing by the store and get a cheap pair. Being a cheap pair, they often didn't last long. There's another dozen sets.
Now the ones I actually wanted. Not all have replaceable cups or pads, so they'd often wear out after a few years. Or they were USB, and the circuitry started freaking out after a few years. On top of that I probably have different sets for different use cases. A pair for on the go. A pair for the computer. A pair for the HiFi system. A pair for the office.
You can buy a replacement for about 50% of the price of a new set (complete with charger case).
One night I dropped my case as I crossed the street to my building. I grabbed it off the ground without paying attention, both buds had fallen out.
In the morning, I picked up the case and noticed that it felt light. Find My reported both buds as having been seen outside on the sidewalk, one last seen four hours ago, the other six. I ran downstairs and outside to find them both smashed by car traffic.
Another time a bud popped out of the case while passing through the TSA X-rays (yes, I have lousy luck with these). I was able to pinpoint the direction with the app and make it plays sounds, but the agents were unable to dig under the rollers and get it out.
I’d love to have more control over then charge cycle like that.
We were "hunting" busses for 2h but couldn't find it. He didn't have Find My set up on the mac. Filed police report etc. A week later he got mail saying the bag was found in a train in Augsburg. Which was the 2nd of 4 legs of the trips or something, and he was completely off where he lost it :D
I love that when you drop the case, the AirPods scatter into the farthest reaches of wherever you are – favorite feature
I bought one for my luggage, and when boarding a train in Paris, I was informed that I left my luggage behind. Went back to grab my luggage, boarded my train and then bought more AirTags at the first opportunity. I’ve used them multiple times to prove my lost luggage is in the airport, countless times to track shipping of high-value goods and countless times to find my keys.
Props to the author for helping the user find their missing AirPods! I believe your story. If I see another story similar to this I may find it harder to believe.
They could also be local but with a non-Portland area code. Generally, at least if you are using a nationwide cell phone carrier, you can move to another area code and keep your number.
I wonder what percent of people do that?
I would say a high percentage of people do that, but portland may not have as many transplants as other cities
Yeah it was a weird assumption and I’m glad it worked
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_metropolitan_area,_Or...
I used this feature recently, after my mom passed. She had the same home number we grew up with, for fifty years. I ported it over as a second line on my mobile. Partly nostalgia (okay, mostly), partly because it was a pretty great number for memorization; it has an excellent number pattern.