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>I want to put them on and they need to make noise. >I'm not dealing with connectivity issues, battery issues, etc. >Battery, I need to be able to easily and

• danShumway 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't want to get dragged into the whole debate about headphone jacks again, but as long as someone else is saying it... headphones worked! They always worked. You plugged them in and they reliably made sound, everywhere, with high-quality audio. This comment is surreal. And yes, I get that a lot of people do want to use wireless headphones. I'm not here to argue about that, there are legitimate reasons why people want to get rid of wires. And I also get that these headphones are filled with other features like auto-pausing, noise cancelation. There are reasons someone might look at those features and think they're worth the price. But still -- to see the primary reaction be that the important part is "just working" still feels kind of validating to all of the people who originally called out Bluetooth headphones as a step backwards from where we were. I remember getting a lot of pushback from people who were all telling me that wireless headphones were going to get really cheap, and most of the growing pains were already over, and we were all just being ludites. But what am I supposed to think when I look at your high-tech future world, and the most popular comment is someone saying that they'll drop 550 dollars on a pair of headphones before they've even heard them, even though they'll only last 3-5 years before the battery dies -- just because it's worth that much money to have a device that reliably plays sound? How am I supposed to look at that and not come to the conclusion that the wireless market is still wildly inferior to the cheap, reliable, high-quality audio devices that came before? It's been however many years since Apple's removal of the headphone jack and practically every high-end Android manufacturer has since copied them. And what we see is headphones that are specifically designed to work with one brand of phone/computer, that are outrageously expensive, and apparently that expense is justified to some people because the entire rest of the market is filled with options that have minor-to-major irritations during daily use.
  • sagichmal 6y ago
    High quality wired headphones cost $500+, too.
    • danShumway 6y ago
      By what definition of high quality? If what OP is saying is true, then a $50 over-ear pair of Koss headphones will be more reliable and have fewer daily annoyances than most bluetooth-only headphones. And while I'm sure plenty of people disagree about bluetooth reliability, enough people here do seem agree with them that their comment is the first one you see when you enter the discussion. I don't believe audio quality is perceptible enough that you need to spend $500 on a pair of wired headphones. But even if I did believe that audio quality was perceptible enough to require that kind of money, I also don't believe that the AirPods Max are going to match the raw specs or numbers of those $500 wired devices. And regardless, that's all kind of besides the point. The AirPods Max have plenty of exciting features tacked on, but those features aren't the primary reason why OP is excited -- they're excited because: > I want to put them on and they need to make noise. Well, you don't need to spend $500 to get that. Wired headphones were good at that. That was never a question or a concern that anybody had about them. Even with the awful low-quality $15-$20 solutions, you never doubted walking out of the store that when you plugged them into any audio device, sound was going to instantly come out of them as soon as you pressed the play button, even if it was a phone that your friend owned, even if it was a random ATM on a street corner, even if it was a 5 year old MP3 player or game console. They just worked.