7 ms·

A few years? They still repair the iPhone 6, a phone thats 6 years old now. If that gives you another 2 years of use, thats a total of 8 years.

by bb123 6y ago

cloogshicer 6y ago
That's fair if the device we're talking about is a phone. Those will of course become obsolete much sooner. But headphones don't get worse just by the passage of time. I'd love to still use them in 15+ years. Do you think Apple will still service them then? Also, why not make it so that they can be used passively? What's the downside?
- billiam 6y ago
  Stainless and aluminum headphones that weigh a pound are made to last a century, not a couple of years. I have a closet full of incredibly durable, beautiful Apple products that will show up in an archeological dig of our sad epoch but were only supported by Apple for five years max.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    From Apple's point of view you are their ideal customer (not even selling your stuff to the secondary market when you upgrade) and proof that their strategy works.
- duhi88 6y ago
  Same reason they put the charging port for their mouse on the underside. It's a wireless device, and for some reason, they think that if it supports a wired mode, it won't be as special (or whatever their idiotic reasoning is). And, why use the lightning port?! Aside from the price, choosing to not use USB-C for a charging port killed it for me. I like being able to charge all my devices off one power brick, and I'm not spending $600 on headphones if I need a stupid lightning port for the next 6+ years.
  - bfgoodrich 6y ago
    You know that it's only lightning on the headset side, right? That it's USB-C on the other side, though you're free to include any adapter cable you'd like.
    - horsawlarway 6y ago
      This misses the point. EVERY device I carry with me charges via USB-C right now. My laptop, my work laptop, my headphones, my phone, my tablet/e-reader (remarkable). It's insanely liberating to know that I can pretty much always find a charger for everything, and I only ever need to pack a single wall-wart. Flying? One charger. Road trip? One charger. Biking to work? One charger. Better yet - Leave a charger at work, keep a charger at home, don't need to carry 5lbs back and forth every day. Forgot my charger? Every person I hang out with has a usb-c charger floating around somewhere. ---- You know what I really don't want to have to carry around anymore? Fucking cable adapters. You know what no one will have if I forget my charger? Fucking cable adapters. Honestly - I probably wouldn't have bought these headphones yet because I'm quite happy with my current headphones. But I'm very, very close to no longer even considering devices that ship without a USB-C port. And that's a shame, because I otherwise really like the Max, and probably would have slotted it in when my current cans die. Getting over the hump to convert to USB-C initially was fairly expensive, but my job is good and I can splurge. I don't want to go back.
      - bfgoodrich 6y ago
        If your complaint is carrying a USB to lightning cable -- though you keep jumping to wall warts/chargers and not a 17 gram cable -- yeah, I guess that's a big burden. But your comment seems like it might be contrived to begin with. This headset only really makes sense for iPhone users. That is the target. Those people are already carrying using lightning cables in their life. Pretty much anyone in the Apple ecosystem has to charge a multitude of things with lightning still.
        rblatz 6y ago
- adamlett 6y ago
  Also, why not make it so that they can be used passively? What's the downside? If by passively you mean plugged into a headphone port, the answer is that they can’t because they need power. Their big selling point is supposed to be computational audio. That obviously doesn’t work without the compute part, which in turn requires power.
  - huffmsa 6y ago
    With $200 billion in the bank, I'm sure Apple could have figured out how to get power to them over a wired connection
    - rblatz 6y ago
      I’m sure the product team at Apple considered that use case, and it didn’t make sense to include it in this version due to time/weight/cost/complexity constraints.
- patja 6y ago
  Key features like the spatial effects only work with an iPad or mac. So now you have a dependency on Apple keeping that part going for years as well, if you want to keep using them as you would have expected to at launch.
  - FabHK 6y ago
    > Key features like the spatial effects only work with an iPad or mac iPad or iPhone only, apparently. Not with a Mac or Apple TV, or, of course, anything else. (source: article)
- Joeri 6y ago
  Noise canceling heaphones used passively often sound a lot worse, because they can’t soundshape their way out of a suboptimal earshell and speaker design. Apple probably felt that either they had to compromise too much on the shape, or on the way they sounded passively, so they chose to just not allow for it entirely. I expect other manufacturers to follow suit because it creates more freedom in design.
ssully 6y ago
Was going to say I just had a family member get a battery replaced for their iPhone 6 last month. With that said, I still wish their stuff was more user friendly for self repairs.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  The battery is actually really easy to replace as it and the screen are the most common replacement(s). Remove the screws at the bottom, break the glue down, and unfold. Access to the screen and battery connectors are right there on top of the logic board. It’s so the service techs at the store can do it quicker. Anything else, they just give you a new device and ship the old one back to Apple. Previously (think iPhone 4S and prior), the phone opened from the back. So a screen replacement necessitated deconstructing the entire device. Could it be more accessible? Most likely. They could put in removable batteries (like older phones had), but they’ve chosen not to (presumably for space reasons (internal batteries take up less space)), and it seems the entire industry followed. But just because they’re not easily replaceable, doesn’t mean they’re not easily serviceable. It takes a bit, but an experienced person can do it about 30 minutes or even less. iFixIt’s guides help a lot here.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
8note 6y ago
I've still got Sony monitor headphones that I've had for 20 odd years
ComputerGuru 6y ago
It doesn’t matter how old it is, it matters when it was last sold. The iPhone 6 was last sold in 2017.
- jdxcode 6y ago
  September 2018 actually
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    Thanks. That makes all the praise Apple gets for supporting “ancient phones like the iPhone 6” all the more laughable.
sudosysgen 6y ago
I've used and deeply enjoyed 25+ year old headphones. It's a different class of products.
kd913 6y ago
The iphone 6 has a certificate store from Dec 2018 with no updates in site to the root store. Sites/Apps were already breaking on my parent's iphone 6.

A few years? They still repair the iPhone 6, a phone thats 6 years old now. If that gives you another 2 years of use, thats a total of 8 years.

by bb123 6y ago

A few years? They still repair the iPhone 6, a phone thats 6 years old now. If that gives you another 2 years of use, thats a total of 8 years.

cloogshicer 6y ago

That's fair if the device we're talking about is a phone. Those will of course become obsolete much sooner. But headphones don't get worse just by the passage of time. I'd love to still use them in 15+ years. Do you think Apple will still service them then? Also, why not make it so that they can be used passively? What's the downside?

billiam 6y ago
Stainless and aluminum headphones that weigh a pound are made to last a century, not a couple of years. I have a closet full of incredibly durable, beautiful Apple products that will show up in an archeological dig of our sad epoch but were only supported by Apple for five years max.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  From Apple's point of view you are their ideal customer (not even selling your stuff to the secondary market when you upgrade) and proof that their strategy works.
duhi88 6y ago
Same reason they put the charging port for their mouse on the underside. It's a wireless device, and for some reason, they think that if it supports a wired mode, it won't be as special (or whatever their idiotic reasoning is). And, why use the lightning port?! Aside from the price, choosing to not use USB-C for a charging port killed it for me. I like being able to charge all my devices off one power brick, and I'm not spending $600 on headphones if I need a stupid lightning port for the next 6+ years.
- bfgoodrich 6y ago
  You know that it's only lightning on the headset side, right? That it's USB-C on the other side, though you're free to include any adapter cable you'd like.
  - horsawlarway 6y ago
    This misses the point. EVERY device I carry with me charges via USB-C right now. My laptop, my work laptop, my headphones, my phone, my tablet/e-reader (remarkable). It's insanely liberating to know that I can pretty much always find a charger for everything, and I only ever need to pack a single wall-wart. Flying? One charger. Road trip? One charger. Biking to work? One charger. Better yet - Leave a charger at work, keep a charger at home, don't need to carry 5lbs back and forth every day. Forgot my charger? Every person I hang out with has a usb-c charger floating around somewhere. ---- You know what I really don't want to have to carry around anymore? Fucking cable adapters. You know what no one will have if I forget my charger? Fucking cable adapters. Honestly - I probably wouldn't have bought these headphones yet because I'm quite happy with my current headphones. But I'm very, very close to no longer even considering devices that ship without a USB-C port. And that's a shame, because I otherwise really like the Max, and probably would have slotted it in when my current cans die. Getting over the hump to convert to USB-C initially was fairly expensive, but my job is good and I can splurge. I don't want to go back.
    - bfgoodrich 6y ago
      If your complaint is carrying a USB to lightning cable -- though you keep jumping to wall warts/chargers and not a 17 gram cable -- yeah, I guess that's a big burden. But your comment seems like it might be contrived to begin with. This headset only really makes sense for iPhone users. That is the target. Those people are already carrying using lightning cables in their life. Pretty much anyone in the Apple ecosystem has to charge a multitude of things with lightning still.
      - rblatz 6y ago
adamlett 6y ago
Also, why not make it so that they can be used passively? What's the downside? If by passively you mean plugged into a headphone port, the answer is that they can’t because they need power. Their big selling point is supposed to be computational audio. That obviously doesn’t work without the compute part, which in turn requires power.
- huffmsa 6y ago
  With $200 billion in the bank, I'm sure Apple could have figured out how to get power to them over a wired connection
  - rblatz 6y ago
    I’m sure the product team at Apple considered that use case, and it didn’t make sense to include it in this version due to time/weight/cost/complexity constraints.
patja 6y ago
Key features like the spatial effects only work with an iPad or mac. So now you have a dependency on Apple keeping that part going for years as well, if you want to keep using them as you would have expected to at launch.
- FabHK 6y ago
  > Key features like the spatial effects only work with an iPad or mac iPad or iPhone only, apparently. Not with a Mac or Apple TV, or, of course, anything else. (source: article)
Joeri 6y ago
Noise canceling heaphones used passively often sound a lot worse, because they can’t soundshape their way out of a suboptimal earshell and speaker design. Apple probably felt that either they had to compromise too much on the shape, or on the way they sounded passively, so they chose to just not allow for it entirely. I expect other manufacturers to follow suit because it creates more freedom in design.

ssully 6y ago

Was going to say I just had a family member get a battery replaced for their iPhone 6 last month. With that said, I still wish their stuff was more user friendly for self repairs.

colejohnson66 6y ago
The battery is actually really easy to replace as it and the screen are the most common replacement(s). Remove the screws at the bottom, break the glue down, and unfold. Access to the screen and battery connectors are right there on top of the logic board. It’s so the service techs at the store can do it quicker. Anything else, they just give you a new device and ship the old one back to Apple. Previously (think iPhone 4S and prior), the phone opened from the back. So a screen replacement necessitated deconstructing the entire device. Could it be more accessible? Most likely. They could put in removable batteries (like older phones had), but they’ve chosen not to (presumably for space reasons (internal batteries take up less space)), and it seems the entire industry followed. But just because they’re not easily replaceable, doesn’t mean they’re not easily serviceable. It takes a bit, but an experienced person can do it about 30 minutes or even less. iFixIt’s guides help a lot here.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

8note 6y ago

I've still got Sony monitor headphones that I've had for 20 odd years

ComputerGuru 6y ago

It doesn’t matter how old it is, it matters when it was last sold. The iPhone 6 was last sold in 2017.

jdxcode 6y ago
September 2018 actually
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  Thanks. That makes all the praise Apple gets for supporting “ancient phones like the iPhone 6” all the more laughable.

sudosysgen 6y ago

I've used and deeply enjoyed 25+ year old headphones. It's a different class of products.

kd913 6y ago

The iphone 6 has a certificate store from Dec 2018 with no updates in site to the root store. Sites/Apps were already breaking on my parent's iphone 6.