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Sidebar: Why has the AirPod design become so ubiquitous? I always thought they were the ugliest earbuds since earbuds became small. Is there some technical reas
by Semaphor 6y ago
Sidebar: Why has the AirPod design become so ubiquitous? I always thought they were the ugliest earbuds since earbuds became small. Is there some technical reason they have this design? Or do people actually like it? Or is it simply the Apple effect?
- skummetmaelk 6y agoApple is a design authority. If Apple says it looks good, then people believe it looks good.
- mr_toad 6y agoPeople believe it looks expensive.
- irjustin 6y agoThey are expensive - for a pair of wireless ear buds. Putting aside all subjective qualities. People know they are expensive and regardless of whether you agree w/ the decision, you know they cost $195, $249 or whatever. That's a signal of wealth like certain clothing, a super car, or a bloomberg terminal.
- colejohnson66 6y agoIt may be confirmation bias, but it seems people care more about someone else’s phone choice (Android and iOS fanboys) than some more wealthy person wearing a $50,000 watch. For example, Lifehacker posts some articles about how to do something on iOS every so often, and the comments always have those people saying, “iPhones suck; just throw it away and get an Android” with no mention of why.
- uranusjr 6y agoI thought they look funny (although not ugly) when they first came out. But other designs (e.g. round blob sticking out of earholes) are even worse, and convinience outweighs visibility.
- nl 6y agoI've owned a bunch of wireless headphones (not just Airpods). To generalise massively, the ones with the AirPod-like stalks do tend to have better voice quality for transmission (ie, I sound better) on calls.
- danellis 6y agoThey always make me think of Ben Stiller answering the door in a certain movie.
- Someone 6y agoI guess having the “stick” on it has to do with antenna quality. https://www.bluflux.com/bluetooth-antenna-design-guide-step-1/ https://www.bluflux.com/bluetooth-antenna-design-guide-step-...: “So 31mm is the desired length of a Bluetooth antenna without “dielectric loading” (see next section)” https://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-and-extend-the-range-of-a-USB-Bluetooth-d/ https://www.instructables.com/id/Increase-and-extend-the-ran...: “As Bluetooth devices work at frequencies of around 2450MHz, the formula will give you an antenna length of +/- 12cm. This figure then has to be divided by 4 to give us a quarter wave antenna, which will be 30mm in length” AirPods are 40.5mm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPods), so I guess they have such a 30-ish mm antenna (edit: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Teardown/75578 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Teardown/75578 agrees: “That hanging boom is for more than just balance—it's also to improve reception.“) Chances are hanging the antenna (a tiny bit) away from the bag of water called “skull” also helps reception quality. It also provides an easy handle to take them out of your ears.
- Semaphor 6y agoThanks, so it seems you need to have some kind long-ish antenna and I guess faking a cable was the best way to hide it.
- StavrosK 6y agoJust to be pedantic, because look where we are, the bag of water is called "head".
- xnyan 6y agoFunny story about antenna lengt , I got a new job and was excited that I could at last upgrade my airpods to airpods pro. After a very frustrating couple days, I learned that my head is too big/dense/whatever for the airpods pro to reliably sync across my head. They would only work if used one at a time, or if I really cranked them at an angle such that the tails were far off my head which was unwearable. I have long earlobes, I think the extra little bit of length of the non-pros gets it past my lobes and allows a connection that the pro's can't make.
- mrtksn 6y agoAlternative designs come with their own problems or ugliness. The ones that look like buttons give me the impression that it's a medical device and are simply too pronounced. I assume they are that beefy because they need to house the battery in the "head" but the "head and stick" design can have more elegant head since the battery is in the stick part. Since Apple was the first to have that design, they now pretty much own it. I also suspect that the microphones work better with the head&stick design since the orientation of the mic and the proximity to the mouth is better.
- cranekam 6y agoWhat in particular makes them ugly for you? I have a pair of second generation AirPods and find them neither ugly nor particularly beautiful. I like them because they work really well. They sound good, they’re compact, and the integration with my phone/laptop is close to seamless. My wife has some other wireless earphones and they’re much worse: bulky, heavy, and always causing some kind of pairing hassle.
- Semaphor 6y agoFor me, the fake cable makes them look dumb. But as Someone said, they seem to require a certain sized antenna. I couldn’t think of a better solution to hide one either. Note that I never said they suck, I was pretty certain that the $200 something is not all just the Apple tax ;)
- timcederman 6y agoYou've twice mentioned a "fake cable" - what are you referring to?
- raverbashing 6y agoI don't get it as well. Especially the "let's make it look like it has a wire but it hasn't" aspect (there might be some ergonomic aspect to it, but it definitely looks weird) But to be fair I don't think that I'm in their market as I think it goes too far into the ear to be comfortable to me
- zeveb 6y ago> I always thought they were the ugliest earbuds since earbuds became small. Ditto. Whenever I see someone wearing them I make a point of locking eyes, then smirking. AirPods and similar headphones are an upscale version of a face tattoo. They are like a South Park parody come to life. I firmly believe that in twenty years we will look back at them in chagrin, like bell bottoms and bowl haircuts.
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago> Whenever I see someone wearing them I make a point of locking eyes, then smirking. Some people on hacker news are so cringy... I promise you they don't even know why you're smirking, just think you're either autistic or an asshole. The answer is likely both so I guess they aren't wrong.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zymhan 6y agoAnything is better than the fully in-ear design that makes up 90% of earbuds on the market.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThe fully in ear design works very, very, very well once you figure out the proper tips for you. Otherwise, the around-the-ear IEM design works well too.
- madmax108 6y agoI agree so much with this. I bet that 2 decades down the line, kids will look at pics of people roaming around with alien-probe like dangling earrings and thinking they look "cool" and judge them the same way my generation judged people in the 80s for their fashion sense (or the wall street types in the 90s/early 2000s for their douchey bluetooth headsets: https://www.blueshoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Bluetooth_headset.jpg https://www.blueshoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Bluetoo... )
- tirpen 6y agoIt's a way to signal that you are rich to other people.
- perryizgr8 6y ago1. Apple removed the headphone jack. 2. Apple stopped giving out dongles in the box. 3. Apple limited others' ability to compete by including proprietary chips in iphone and airpods. 4. Apple marketed airpods as a status symbol. 5. People bought into the hype. Objectively, airpods are the worst wireless earbuds in the market on every single metric, but still command a premium price.
- Dylan16807 6y agoThey have good quality audio and low latency with Apple stuff.
- perryizgr8 6y agoThe audio quality is not good compared to other similarly priced buds. And the latency with Apple is exactly what I mentioned, it is an anti-competitive move by Apple.
- Dylan16807 6y agoI don't feel like arguing about audio quality, but the reason they're being anti-competitive about it is because they're leveraging the objectively better latency.
- perryizgr8 6y agoThere are standard ways of achieving low latency. Everybody else does it. Why did they choose to implement a proprietary solution that works only with their phone and their earmuffs?
- Dylan16807 6y ago> Everybody else does it. Hahaha I wish.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- holstvoogd 6y agoFor me it boils down to: - They fit my ear and don't hurt. Nothing else ever has expect apple buds, wired or not. - I find the design much more appealing than all the other products on the market. - They actually work properly. I have had bluetooth headphones etc before that either sound like crap or are just to buggy to use. Hell, even my 'premium' Bose BT speaker randomly gives up for weeks on-end and then decides it will work again. The latter two points hold for most apple products in my experience. Over the last year I've tried replacing my laptop and phone with non-apple products, and not the cheap crap either. It was fucking torture to me :P
- xnyan 6y ago>They fit my ear and don't hurt. Nothing else ever has expect apple buds, wired or not. Same for me. I'm lucky, for my partner they hurt minutes after wearing them. The only other in-ear besides Apple's "dagger tip" design that works for me without pain is a custom mold.