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Why does the lossless playback need to be streaming though? This is the fundamental mistake in the analysis of why the AirPods max lack the ability to support t
by bredren 5y ago
Why does the lossless playback need to be streaming though? This is the fundamental mistake in the analysis of why the AirPods max lack the ability to support this service offering.
The headphones should have gigs of buffer and be able to manage lossless with a great UX to support this.
People are already used to buffer waits for streaming video and this is already a niche use case.
- jaywalk 5y agoI'm not sure how "wait a few minutes to hear the song you just hit play on" could possibly translate to "great UX"
- bredren 5y agoIt isn’t ideal but this isn’t for average playback. Assuming even mediocre speeds, an average album in ALAC is likely around 350 MB. That’s about 32 minutes at 1.4Mbps. They could start listening around the 17 minute mark and remain uninterrupted. I suspect most APM owners would happily load the music to the headphones in advance to perform this playback. This seems so obvious to me, that I suspect it is held back by licensing issues more than cost reasons. The playing device would need to do a good job with the interface but this is not a big ask—-people have been buffering for media they want since RealAudio.
- duskwuff 5y agoNo. Absolutely not. AirPods are headphones, not a music player. A device that you have to "load music" onto isn't a set of headphones anymore -- and the features you're describing would add significantly to the cost of an already expensive device.