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Counterpoint: My iPhone that was out of warranty and had the screen cracked after taking it in for third-party battery replacement. The official battery replace
by dougmwne 6y ago
Counterpoint: My iPhone that was out of warranty and had the screen cracked after taking it in for third-party battery replacement. The official battery replacement was more than the resale value of the phone. Unlike a phone, high-end headphones are not inherently disposable. They can last many decades of regular use. This is a disposable product in a product category that is not usually disposable.
- otterley 6y agoWe just don’t know that yet. They just started shipping, what, today?
- snypher 6y agoDon't know what? It's engineered trash from a trash company.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago$79 to replace the battery on an AirPod Max isn’t that bad if you just have to do it every few years. I’m sort of tired of my churn through AAA’s on my Bose QuietComforts.
- rglullis 6y agoHow much would you pay for replaceable AAA batteries? How long will they last? $79 is pretty bad.
- otterley 6y agoYou're implicitly assuming that the AirPods Max could also run on one or two AAA batteries -- an assumption that may well be false depending on the energy consumption and voltage required.
- rglullis 6y agoYou can run laptop cpus today on 1.2V, I doubt that would have too much of an issue powering over-ear headphones with 2.4V-3V of two AAAs in series. Plus, it doesn't really matter the type of battery. You can find pretty much any of rechargeable battery (3.7V, 7.4V, nickel, Li-ion) for less than $15, retail. It's mind boggling to think that people on Hacker News (of all places) think that is sensible to subject yourself to something as anti-consumer and as environment-unfriendly as what Apple offers.
- dragonwriter 6y agoAlkaline AAA batteries in Bose QCs old enough to have them have a claimed life of up to 35 hours. (Newer Bose QCs have glued-in rechargeable batteries just like the AirPods Max, because very few people actually prefer replacing batteries every “up to 35” hours to needing to plug in to recharge every “up to 20” hours)
- toast0 6y agoYou could use rechargable AAAs with an integrated charger, and when those wear out, swap them. I had some wireless headphones like that, and the charger was a nice stand to rest them on.
- ksec 6y agoWe will have to wait to see if they are really servicing ( replacing battery ) or just give you a new pair for $79.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoAAA aren't cheap. More importantly, they are annoying to replace all the time. $79 every few years on a $500 set of headphones sounds plausible, the battery alone would probably be $40-$50 retail anyways; I'm just getting someone at an Apple store to replace it for me. More concerning is that a set of new ear muffs costs $69. I've already replaced the ones on my QuietComforts two times ($20 using clones on Amazon), so that is going to add up a bit.
- rglullis 6y agoI said replaceable AAA batteries. I should've said rechargeable. You can buy a pack of 12 rechargeable AAA for less than $10. A charger is $5.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoYa, I tried going this route for toys. Frankly i gave up after a few months because they didn’t last as long as the real pain is battery replacement (which requires a screw driver these days because....rules).
- lkxijlewlf 6y agoAssuming they last 10 years (Apple stops selling them after 3 years and stops supporting 7 after that), you replace the battery ($79) and ear pads ($69) at the 5 year mark, that's (550+79+69)/120 months = ~$5.80/month or about $.20 per day.