27 ms·

CT scans of AirPods evolution

1094 points by vitruvius 5y ago

baybal2 5y ago
My former coworker worked on airpods. Most of RnD for them was made in Apple's Shenzhen RnD centre which existence Apple for long time tried to hide.
- fnord77 5y ago
  the first airpods were released in Dec 2016, roughly the same time apple opened the Shenzhen r&d center, so I don't see how r&d for this product was done there.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Apple had it running since much earlier than 2016. The earliest I heard of Apple running something like a permanent engineering centre in the city was in 2013. I was saying them trying to hide its existence because for long Apple demanded its employees in China to even refrain from publishing the fact of their employment with them like on LinkedIn But the industry is too small, everybody knew about it for years. So 2016, was more like an official inauguration, when Apple admitted its existence, moved all their offices in the city to Kerry plaza, and put a nameplate on it.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Most of RnD for them was made in Apple's Shenzhen RnD centre which existence Apple for long time tried to hide. I keep hearing online about this famous R&D center, where apparently they work on absolutely cutting edge stuff. Except Apple employees I know never mentioned it. Wonder why people would push that narrative that engineering is switching to China.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Nobody needs to push it, for a reason that's been the case for the last 20 years. I simply cannot find a single place in US doing many engineering services I can get in China. Amazon, Google, Square, Facebook, Microsoft, Roblox, Snapchat all other silicon valley cool kids have since setup themselves suspiciously close to Apple's offices in Kerry plaza. And most of them did so long after China-US relations went really sour After Trump. All equally so tried to keep their presence there very low key. > Except Apple employees I know never mentioned it. Maybe they don't work on the hardware side? US side of the company simply barely sees much of the "fieldwork" part.
rx_tx 5y ago
Amazing scans, the packaging of components internally is amazing. Interesting how they switched from prox-based in-ear detection to capacitive skin contact sensor in the latest airpods.
- qeternity 5y ago
  I find it super interesting how they have gone back and forth on different approaches. I wonder how much user data they collect from the wild (not even sure how one would go about it).
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Telemetry logs can be sniffed, with a good firewall and as long as you're on your wifi with a wifi only device you can learn a lot. I jailbreak to use this: http://cydia.saurik.com/package/ca.btraas.appfirewall/ http://cydia.saurik.com/package/ca.btraas.appfirewall/ Amazing how much analytics I block from every app.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      If you drill down far enough in the settings, most Apple products are happy to show you the telemetry that's sent back to Cupertino. I've seen the HomePod data while poking around in the Home app.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        They don’t tell you their own telemetry as far as I know.
        colejohnson66 5y ago
        No. They do. I can see crash logs for assetsd, awdd, com.apple.mobilemail, DifferentialPrivacy, and much more. Just open up Settings and search “analytics”
snazz 5y ago
Super cool scans and captions! I wonder if there were any substantial internal changes between the first and second generation AirPods (besides changing the chip). The article unfortunately does not include a scan of the 2nd generation.
t-writescode 5y ago
I wonder if this explains / clarifies some of the difficulty in getting repair tech for the earbuds. They seem to change in major ways each time.
- walrus01 5y ago
  even if you could get repair parts they're assembled with strong glue (search youtube for airpod teardown), making it pretty much impossible to disassemble without destroying it.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  Much of the repair problems has to do with how small they are and the components are tiny and must be assembled so carefully that humans with fingers are just not at the right scale.
  - passivate 5y ago
    But we've made tools to overcome human limitations, so that is not really the issue. Apple just doesn't want their products repaired - or at the very least it is not a priority for them. Its just not a good look when they pretend to be "green" while not contributing towards the elephant in the garbage bin - e-waste.
roody15 5y ago
But somehow they cannot figure out how to make a replaceable battery. hmm
- guidedlight 5y ago
  PodSwap seem to have worked it out. https://www.thepodswap.com/ https://www.thepodswap.com/
  - ncann 5y ago
    I'm curious how they did it. Is there a video out there on how that's possible?
    - gruez 5y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE9aB5aPbMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE9aB5aPbMM
  - spicybright 5y ago
    How? This seems only for people with good batteries that want to upgrade. There's no new pods with good batteries being added if it's just swapping.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >How? This seems only for people with good batteries that want to upgrade No? The "Here's How it Works" section specifically implies they're replacing the batteries. >we'll send you a pair of genuine AirPod buds with restored battery life that have been cleaned and sanitized.
    - somethingabo 5y ago
      You don't need a good battery to swap. The point of the service is to swap yours with poor battery life. They send you a refurb from a previous customer, replace the battery in yours, and then send that to a future customer.
    - 5y ago
ProfessorLayton 5y ago
Not an audio expert, but I really wonder why they need a microphone for their adaptive EQ. I understand home speakers/theatre systems need to compensate for a room's shape and contents, but do human ear canals vary that much to need a mic? I think it's pretty neat how sophisticated this adaptive EQ system is, but tbh, I haven't noticed much difference between this mic system and the "dumb" adaptive EQ that companies like bose/ikea etc do (Basically turn up base at low volumes, down at high volume to not clip). Very cool stuff!
- aidenn0 5y ago
  Low frequencies are heavily affected by both how well the canal is sealed, and the volume of air that is in the (partially) sealed area. The adaptive EQ does seem slightly over-engineered; given that people tend to be forgiving of a fairly large amount of bass emphasis, you can just tune for the worst-case. However people don't generally buy Apple products to get something under engineered...
- snthd 5y ago
  Might be more important for noise cancellation.
- whiddershins 5y ago
  Ears do vary quite a bit. If you try in ears molded to your ears they can be mind blowing. In some cases a microphone will also help adapt to background noise.
- shard 5y ago
  > do human ear canals vary that much to need a mic? Not an expert in human ear canals, but over the years I've learned that if I am looking into a field that I am not familiar with, it's always more complicated than I expected/imagined. > "dumb" adaptive EQ that companies like bose/ikea etc do (Basically turn up base at low volumes, down at high volume to not clip) Sounds like a compander for the lower frequencies. That's technically "adaptive" to the input audio, but not adaptive to the acoustics of the output environment. I expect that to for the second type of adaption, you'd need to measure it, which would necessitate some sort of input, such s a mic.
rootusrootus 5y ago
I'm curious how the newest airpods compare to the pros when it comes to bass. I had first gen airpods, then I bought a set of pros, but the bass was so weak I thought they had to be broken. Turns out it's just an artifact of how they were designed. Some people are okay, but a lot of people feel the same way I do. I ended up returning them and now I'd like to know if the g3 airpods are comparable to the pros, or comparable to the g1/g2 airpods.
- e40 5y ago
  I bought the gen3 and returned them for gen2. Two reasons, but the main one was comfort. I forget the gen2's are in my ears. The gen3's were painful. Second reason: gen3's require Monterey for macOS integration. A painful week-long exchange with Apple support brought this out.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- skavi 5y ago
  You need a seal to get significant bass from earbuds. the non pro airpods do not make a seal (by design).
  - Talanes 5y ago
    If they experienced better bass on the G1/G2 Airbuds, it's not a seal issue.
    - skavi 5y ago
      The G1/G2 emphasize the high-bass to make up for the complete lack of sub-bass. Maybe that's the tuning they are looking for?
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        I primarily listen to rock. Airpods are great for that. I don't listen to much music that has significant sub bass.
elliottinvent 5y ago
Wow, it’s the first time I’ve seen this site and format but what a great way to explain electronics and design.
- smeyer 5y ago
  >it's the first time I've seen this site I think this might only be its second month so don't be hard on yourself for first seeing it now. https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  I'm really surprised about the (thus-far) universal acclaim of the design. There's usually a lot of knee-jerk reaction against fancy browser effects like parallax and scroll-jacking in this crowd. I think this implementation is mostly excellent, but as a web craftsmen, it would have been a fun/entertaining challenge to make a good non-javascript implementation underneath.
  - notatoad 5y ago
    most of the reaction against scrolljacking is because when the content of the site is text, we have expectations about how it should behave and we know how we want to interact with it, so we get angry when we can't. when the content is 3D renders, most people have no strong expectations about how the controls should work and aren't going to have a negative reaction as long as the implementation works well.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
veb 5y ago
This was SUPER interesting to see! I actually (for once) signed up for their next newsletter/scan. It asked me what they should scan next and I suggested cochlear implant processors. It'd be pretty cool to see! The tech on those processors are pretty insane - and remember, Apple did partner up with Cochlear for the Nucleus 7 I believe for wireless streaming from the processor to an iPhone.
fnord77 5y ago
wow, this is amazing. I assume these are their first set of scans? I was trying to find scans of other products and the home page only has airpods
- arecurrence 5y ago
  Last month they did LEGO. Interestingly, they seem to remove the scan but you can still see parts of it at https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com
1f60c 5y ago
From a Google search[0], it looks like they've put two LEGO sets under the scanner before, but I can't find them. It would have been cool to see an archive... [0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ascanofthemonth.com https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ascanofthemonth.com
- adamrmcd 5y ago
  I cannot fathom why they would they remove previous scans/links. Maybe to enable a paywall archive? It's super slick how they showcase the object as you scroll down, but flattening it into a single URL and only making one scan available per month restricts your audience appeal. I only first heard of this site when they did the lego minifigs last month. Did they publish any other scans prior to that?
  - Starmina 5y ago
    So you have actually a reason put your email in their newsletter input box because you wouldn't want to 'miss' anything you can't go back to.
    - d110af5ccf 5y ago
      Except the only thing it did was cause me to wonder if they were a new site. And then when I saw this my opinion of them dropped dramatically. It's a dark pattern and I don't want to support that.
      - veb 5y ago
        I mean, you're right - but honestly it's really fucking cool. I never sign up to newsletters but this made me do it because it's really fucking cool. Though - I'd be keen to pay $5/m for premium access to what they do, their previous scans. Charge people $10/m so they have voting rights on what to do next. Possibilities are endless! I have a couple of Patreons for people writing federated apps/code, and it's always nice to support them. Would do the same here because I get enormous value from it and it's really fucking cool
Lammy 5y ago
Does anyone have a canonical URL to the previous month's scan of the LEGO mini-figure? I didn't see any navigation on the site unless there's a magic spot I missed or am inadvertently adblocking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253441 This month's entry comes off way too much like advertising for my taste, with the flowery language like "magic features" instead of just "features", or the seemingly-unnecessary sales statistics in lieu of a technical description of the Airpods Pro: "In 2020, Apple sold 110,000,000 AirPod products. Talk about mass manufacturing." Maybe it's just an unconscious tic when talking about Apple products. Even I have a hard time not saying "Boom" when showing off something cool :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw
- aembleton 5y ago
  They don't seem to keep the old pages around. Here is the Lego one from the web archive https://web.archive.org/web/20211122210134/https://www.scanofthemonth.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211122210134/https://www.scano...
  - hoten 5y ago
    This is oddly infuriating. Such cool content, using the web medium in a novel way, yet they purposefully make it transient? Only way it makes sense is they plan to offer a paid service where you can view a catalog of work. But the site is low on meta information, so that's just a wild guess.
    - notinty 5y ago
      I like it, personally.
- dave_aiello 5y ago
  That was my first thought when I saw the CT scans of the AirPods: where is the canonical URL for this, and where is the archive of previous analyses?
- KarlKemp 5y ago
93po 5y ago
I think this might be the first and only instance I've ever seen of a non-traditional scrolling experience actually being a benefit to a website
- bmeski 5y ago
  I agree. I was able to scroll back up easily to see specific parts without some acceleration taking over.
- girvo 5y ago
  And the implementation of it was brilliant. Didn't mess with the scrolling feel very much at all.
- austinjp 5y ago
  Completely agree. First and only, in my experience. Genuinely impressive on mobile.
- mandeepj 5y ago
  Apple's own website has used same design pattern on many pages. Similarly, Xiaomi also
- superkuh 5y ago
  The bleeding edge $whatever functions required to create it meant that even a browser from a couple years ago only displays a white blankness. It is not a good design for a website.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Faaak 5y ago
I didn't know CT scans could be that accurate. Impressive really when you see the size of the (moving) machine !
- habi 5y ago
  There are also (desktoptop) microCT machines, which can work with much smaller samples and produce images with much higher resolution. I have the pleasure to work with three such machines, and we routinely scan samples with a size smaller than a centimeter and with a voxel size well below 10 µm. Here's a small (500 kb) movie of a staircase snail which I recently scanned: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/73241/download/suppl/31/ https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/73241/download/suppl/31/ This specimen is only 2.6 mm small.
vlunkr 5y ago
So do airpods actually sound better than the standard wired headphones? If they don't, this is a lot of fancy engineering for some pretty bad headphones. Maybe they just didn't fit my ears or something, but I've always hated them.
- drc500free 5y ago
  The sound is fine, the active noise cancellation is phenomenal. Transparency mode is also nice at times when you need to be aware of your surroundings.
- iszomer 5y ago
  So much packaged sophistication yet can't match high fidelity audio. I picked up a KZ-ZSN with a pair of dynamic and balanced armature drivers and haven't looked back in terms of sound quality. Imagine my surprise when I purchased another pair with 4BA + 1DD.. Both were under $30. To each their own I guess.
- tw600040 5y ago
  It does. But it's not about that. It's about being able to get rid of wires and associated mess.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    Are wires a mess? Looking at the Zoom calls I've been on, I've never heard "oh sorry I'm all tangled up in my wires", but have seen "my batteries are dead" or "my headphones won't pair with my computer", etc. (I say "seen" because you don't hear much from people debugging their "magic" wireless headphones.) This has added up to many person-hours of delays, while the wires just keep working.
    - Tagbert 5y ago
      If you go outside and try to do anything with wired headphones, the wires are a constant struggle. When my left AirPods Pro had to be replaced, I had to use some wired EarPods on my commute. The cable was always catching on something. I was so relieved to get the replacement and be able to get rid of the wires again.
AshamedCaptain 5y ago
> Apple was not the first company to develop wireless earbuds, but they’ve defined the category since introducing AirPods in 2016. Sigh.
- post-it 5y ago
  It's true. If unconnected wireless earbuds existed before AirPods, I certainly never saw any.
  - desiarnezjr 5y ago
    There were many. They just weren't particularly good UX wise. Some of them were great / good / fine soundwise, but the UX typically sucked.
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    Most definitely they existed (even the quote admits to that), but unlike other areas, I do not see other manufacturers following Apple in either functionality or aesthetics (compare what happened with slate smartphones); and I most definitely do not even see Apple leading in any metric, specially not in 2016.
  - jccalhoun 5y ago
    According to this the first kickstarter for a pair of wireless earbuds with a charging case was in 2014 https://www.androidcentral.com/history-true-wireless-earbuds https://www.androidcentral.com/history-true-wireless-earbuds
- stillblue 5y ago
  Sigh all you want. Truth doesn't change.
- severak_cz 5y ago
  I think Apple brought wireless earbuds to masses.
errantspark 5y ago
This is such cool content but the way it's presented is so fucking frustrating to me. I wish the narrative wasn't so intrinsically tied to the actual data. I hate that I can't blow up and rotate the models side by side, the whole thing feels so shallow. Now to be clear in an absolute sense this is a good article, this is cool content and the scrolling as something other than scrolling works better than in most instances. My criticism is that the format does a disservice to the data, it's not the best way to present something this cool.
- vultour 5y ago
  I think what's missing is a 3D viewer at the bottom where you could play around with the models yourself.
jmpeax 5y ago
Terrible scrolljacking interface.
- jakeinspace 5y ago
  This is easily the best use of "scrolljacking" I've ever seen. How, exactly, would you like to interact with the 3d CT scans? A video? An embedded 3d viewer to let you control the orientation?
  - jmpeax 5y ago
    An embedded 3d viewer to let you control the orientation
elzbardico 5y ago
This is still the strongest apple advantage: design, engineering and build quality. Recently I wanted to buy a second notebook so I could leave my MBPro at home in trips where I didn't want to work, but still had a machine that run linux and windows for some quick idea or even some light gaming. Decided for a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro. Expensive machine, but slightly cheaper than a MacBook Air. good i7 11gen processor, excellent battery life, very light but with surprisingly good thermals, 1tb SSD, but unfortunately no option to have it with more than 16GB RAM. Anyway, was very satisfied with it, and it was so light that I was even booting it with linux and doing some programming on it. But, one day I just opened the lid by the sides, heard a crack, and the gorgeous OLED screen had cracked. Of course I didnt abuse it, I just opened it, without excessive force or speed. But the screen is very fragile, the lid is paper thin, but not rigid enough, it seems, to avoid this problem. And of course, Samsung says it was my fault, and I will have to pay the fix. And yes, I know people have plenty of complaints about apple, but I never had encountered such an obvious problem with an Apple product. Have they not stress-tested this stuff?
- NalNezumi 5y ago
  I don't remember which iPhone it was, but didn't one launch with the problem that the entire phone could be "bent" by having it in the back pocket and sitting down? (or similarly putting some force) And their reactions to it was "its your own damn fault"?
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    iPhone 6 (Plus).
- sangnoir 5y ago
  I guess you didn't purchase the iPhone 6, or perhaps you had very large pockets. A phone that bends semi-/permanently when placed in pockets was a ridiculous oversight.
  - dereg 5y ago
    Apple replaced the bent iPhones on the spot for free. That said, the iPhone 6 represented peak Jony Ive. I'm glad he's gone. Apple has walked back their obsession with thinness in favor of maximizing utility, all to the benefit of the user.
sQL_inject 5y ago
Some small but important details about the product architecture that's changed over time somewhat: - The antenna is sticking out of the ear, while the densest components are deeper in the ear, making them more stable. Now the battery is in the ear and PCB is out of the ear. - They've added large external mesh over the world-facing mic to reduce windnoise during phone calls. This creates a sort of turbulence that prevents acoustic howling. The air is channeled into a secondary chamber before reaching the mic. - The airpods had two Infrared Detectors to prevent being spoofed when resting on the table. - the cases moved from a resistive magnetic hinge to an over-center spring hinge, that's why the newer cases feel less satisfying and fidgety.
- Tildey 5y ago
  As much as I like the fun factor of my magnetic 2nd gen case, it is inherently flawed. The magnets attract magnetic particles, and as the lid is repeatedly closed they're slowly beaten into the plastic and I've never been able to get those marks out. I imagine with a manget-free hinge this would be severely minimised, as everywhere outside of the magnets there is basically no staining.
  - sQL_inject 5y ago
    well the magnet you're referring to are closure magnets, not the hinge magnet. You can see them on iFixit's teardown as black rectangles. Those magnets attract gnarly metallic bits which, yes, permanently make marks on the surfaces of the interior. Airpods OG vs. Pro for comparison. Both have closure magnets, I think the primary reason to move away from them was space, based on the internals. https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/f3k1ysoFjvJ5xoF5.large https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/f3k1ysoFjvJ5xoF5.lar... https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/DSCA4bK5SAlTVGtn.large https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/DSCA4bK5SAlTVGtn.lar...
- patentatt 5y ago
  > The airpods had two Infrared Detectors to prevent being spoofed when resting on the table. Can you elaborate on this?
nunez 5y ago
I think the AirPods Pro were a regression from the OG AirPods for four reasons: - Idle life took a huge dive from the originals. My OGs haven't been charged in something like six months, and the case is still at something like 20%. Meanwhile, the case holding the APPs would die in less than a week and the buds inside of them a week after that. My wife's APPs have been lost for a while because of this. - Noise cancellation performs worse than the original firmware. They have actually been outclassed by other offerings, such as the Sony WF1000XM4. - The buds themselves have a design flaw wherein earwax will accumulate in its inner grille severely enough to significantly compromise bass response. There's a thread in MacRumors that's something like 36 pages long acknowledging this. Apple quietly fixed this in version 2 of the APPs (with the MagSafe case). - The mic isn't as good. The original APs performed extremely well in wind and loud surroundings. I think the downward beam-forming mics were a big part of this. The mic on the APPs perform worse in these scenarios IMO. I'm glad that Apple went back to beam-forming mics. Regardless, I'm thankful for Apple for lighting up the true wireless headphone industry. The APs were a dream come true when they came out; nothing before it compared (and I had $600 custom IEMs that were waterproof and had a control scheme controlled by head nods). The APPs accelerated the creation of noise cancelling true wireless. I'm excited for the next iteration of these products.
- throwanem 5y ago
  > The buds themselves have a design flaw wherein earwax will accumulate in its inner grille severely enough to significantly compromise bass response Not to be glib, but maybe clean your ears more often? You can also take the tips off (invert, then pull) and blow them out from the back with canned air to clear the outer grilles which are integral with the eartip. As fine as those outer grilles are, you'd really have to have wax packed in there for it to extrude through to the inner grille. I do this with mine, but only very occasionally, because my ear hygiene is such that wax very rarely even appears on the outer part of the tip, and almost never in the sound channel. I listen to a lot of podcasts and often run down one or the other bud by 60-80% in a single go, so it seems very reasonable to suggest that if serious wax problems were really that hard to avoid, I would run into them too. (Of course, if you're using third-party tips without integral grilles - well, I suppose now we know why the original engineers saw fit to include them, you know?)
p2t2p 5y ago
That's the missing piece for that Designed By Apple 300 dollar book.
emmanueloga_ 5y ago
I imagine it may be hard and they don't have incentives to "fix it", but I think the single most important disadvantage of airpods is the battery life... no matter how long it lasts, there's no way to replace it, so they became essentially discardable items. [1]? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
- hk__2 5y ago
  This has nothing to do with some evil planned obsolescence, it’s just that you can’t make a device that small while retaining (easy) battery replacement capability. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/your-wireless-earbuds-are-trash-eventually/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/your-wireless-earbud...
  - MaKey 5y ago
    Turns out you can: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Teardown/135908 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Tea...
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      Those are huge, though. There's a trade-off.
    - hk__2 5y ago
      They have a 10-steps guide of "moderate" difficulty to replace the battery, and it may damage the water resistance of the buds. That’s definitely not what I’d call "easy" battery replacement. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Battery+Replacement/144851 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Batter...
  - truculent 5y ago
    Well they had a choice to make it less small and repairable. But ultimately, they chose small and disposable. It may not be planned obsolescence, but it's still a choice made with a certain level of disregard for consumers.
jtdev 5y ago
I actually really don’t like my AirPods… constantly dropping the Bluetooth connection during calls, poor battery life, expensive. I’m now back to using my corded earpods.
kapildev 5y ago
Anybody knows how they create such a website? I have seen such websites built for showcases of several tech products.
- malshe 5y ago
  I don’t know if this website used it but scrollama.js can do it. https://pudding.cool/process/introducing-scrollama/ https://pudding.cool/process/introducing-scrollama/
asiachick 5y ago
My self, my best friend, and an apple employee I know, all bought the new Airpods 3rd gen and all returned them. Of course that's just my small circle but 3 for 3. I guess any friend that bought them and was happy with them probably didn't say anything. The 3 of us that did have issues went back to 2nd gen. For me, I hate pinch to control, I love tap to control. Tapping takes 1 free finger. Pinching takes 2. Another friend said they wouldn't stay in her ears, kept falling out. The 3rd friend just said they didn't fit as well. Didn't go into details. Just returned them.
megamix 5y ago
id like to see a ct scan of the brain using these devices
coatta 5y ago
Is there any information about the type of CT scanning equipment and methods they use?
maille 5y ago
Sounds like a weird PR stunt. I'm really curious who is behind those CT scans, is it a CT manufacturer, a metrology lab or a 3d viz software company?
micheljansen 5y ago
I wish they also did the second generation AirPods (also from 2019). Would love to see how they compare to the gen 1 and gen 3.
varjag 5y ago
but we wonder if voice pickup would have been better with the microphones pointed out of the bottom of the stems. Wonder no more, it would not. This arrangement (aka beamforming array) is common for improved noise reduction. The downward-facing microphone has made its return [...] could the downward-facing mic deliver better audio quality? The 3rd gen AirPods have no active noise canceling, hence one mic arrangement. So, nope.
raffraffraff 5y ago
I don't really care about AirPods, but that webpage fucking rocked. Rotating the scans as I scroll? Nice. I'd look at scans of anything on that website.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  Agreed. I only wish that they had two images rotating side by side - one the transparent scan and one the opaque image so I had both the transparent and opaque views simultaneously for all rotation angles.
tcpekin 5y ago
Does anyone know who is behind this site? I couldn't find anything poking around, and for such a cool website to (in my mind) blow up so suddenly is very surprising, with very cool content as well. I'd be interested in following anyone who is doing this.
cloudengineer94 5y ago
Absolutely love the AirPods family of devices I have own every single one of them but sadly the AirPods Pro are not compatible with me because of the tips which hurt my ears. Currently using the new Gen 3 and they are amazing! I do have a full life inside Apple ecosystem besides my Gaming Rig and Gaming Laptop.

1094 points by vitruvius 5y ago

My former coworker worked on airpods. Most of RnD for them was made in Apple's Shenzhen RnD centre which existence Apple for long time tried to hide.

fnord77 5y ago
the first airpods were released in Dec 2016, roughly the same time apple opened the Shenzhen r&d center, so I don't see how r&d for this product was done there.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Apple had it running since much earlier than 2016. The earliest I heard of Apple running something like a permanent engineering centre in the city was in 2013. I was saying them trying to hide its existence because for long Apple demanded its employees in China to even refrain from publishing the fact of their employment with them like on LinkedIn But the industry is too small, everybody knew about it for years. So 2016, was more like an official inauguration, when Apple admitted its existence, moved all their offices in the city to Kerry plaza, and put a nameplate on it.
908B64B197 5y ago
> Most of RnD for them was made in Apple's Shenzhen RnD centre which existence Apple for long time tried to hide. I keep hearing online about this famous R&D center, where apparently they work on absolutely cutting edge stuff. Except Apple employees I know never mentioned it. Wonder why people would push that narrative that engineering is switching to China.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Nobody needs to push it, for a reason that's been the case for the last 20 years. I simply cannot find a single place in US doing many engineering services I can get in China. Amazon, Google, Square, Facebook, Microsoft, Roblox, Snapchat all other silicon valley cool kids have since setup themselves suspiciously close to Apple's offices in Kerry plaza. And most of them did so long after China-US relations went really sour After Trump. All equally so tried to keep their presence there very low key. > Except Apple employees I know never mentioned it. Maybe they don't work on the hardware side? US side of the company simply barely sees much of the "fieldwork" part.

rx_tx 5y ago

Amazing scans, the packaging of components internally is amazing. Interesting how they switched from prox-based in-ear detection to capacitive skin contact sensor in the latest airpods.

qeternity 5y ago
I find it super interesting how they have gone back and forth on different approaches. I wonder how much user data they collect from the wild (not even sure how one would go about it).
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Telemetry logs can be sniffed, with a good firewall and as long as you're on your wifi with a wifi only device you can learn a lot. I jailbreak to use this: http://cydia.saurik.com/package/ca.btraas.appfirewall/ http://cydia.saurik.com/package/ca.btraas.appfirewall/ Amazing how much analytics I block from every app.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    If you drill down far enough in the settings, most Apple products are happy to show you the telemetry that's sent back to Cupertino. I've seen the HomePod data while poking around in the Home app.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      They don’t tell you their own telemetry as far as I know.
      - colejohnson66 5y ago
        No. They do. I can see crash logs for assetsd, awdd, com.apple.mobilemail, DifferentialPrivacy, and much more. Just open up Settings and search “analytics”

snazz 5y ago

Super cool scans and captions! I wonder if there were any substantial internal changes between the first and second generation AirPods (besides changing the chip). The article unfortunately does not include a scan of the 2nd generation.

t-writescode 5y ago

I wonder if this explains / clarifies some of the difficulty in getting repair tech for the earbuds. They seem to change in major ways each time.

walrus01 5y ago
even if you could get repair parts they're assembled with strong glue (search youtube for airpod teardown), making it pretty much impossible to disassemble without destroying it.
Tagbert 5y ago
Much of the repair problems has to do with how small they are and the components are tiny and must be assembled so carefully that humans with fingers are just not at the right scale.
- passivate 5y ago
  But we've made tools to overcome human limitations, so that is not really the issue. Apple just doesn't want their products repaired - or at the very least it is not a priority for them. Its just not a good look when they pretend to be "green" while not contributing towards the elephant in the garbage bin - e-waste.

roody15 5y ago

But somehow they cannot figure out how to make a replaceable battery. hmm

guidedlight 5y ago
PodSwap seem to have worked it out. https://www.thepodswap.com/ https://www.thepodswap.com/
- ncann 5y ago
  I'm curious how they did it. Is there a video out there on how that's possible?
  - gruez 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE9aB5aPbMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE9aB5aPbMM
- spicybright 5y ago
  How? This seems only for people with good batteries that want to upgrade. There's no new pods with good batteries being added if it's just swapping.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >How? This seems only for people with good batteries that want to upgrade No? The "Here's How it Works" section specifically implies they're replacing the batteries. >we'll send you a pair of genuine AirPod buds with restored battery life that have been cleaned and sanitized.
  - somethingabo 5y ago
    You don't need a good battery to swap. The point of the service is to swap yours with poor battery life. They send you a refurb from a previous customer, replace the battery in yours, and then send that to a future customer.
  - 5y ago

ProfessorLayton 5y ago

Not an audio expert, but I really wonder why they need a microphone for their adaptive EQ. I understand home speakers/theatre systems need to compensate for a room's shape and contents, but do human ear canals vary that much to need a mic? I think it's pretty neat how sophisticated this adaptive EQ system is, but tbh, I haven't noticed much difference between this mic system and the "dumb" adaptive EQ that companies like bose/ikea etc do (Basically turn up base at low volumes, down at high volume to not clip). Very cool stuff!

aidenn0 5y ago
Low frequencies are heavily affected by both how well the canal is sealed, and the volume of air that is in the (partially) sealed area. The adaptive EQ does seem slightly over-engineered; given that people tend to be forgiving of a fairly large amount of bass emphasis, you can just tune for the worst-case. However people don't generally buy Apple products to get something under engineered...
snthd 5y ago
Might be more important for noise cancellation.
whiddershins 5y ago
Ears do vary quite a bit. If you try in ears molded to your ears they can be mind blowing. In some cases a microphone will also help adapt to background noise.
shard 5y ago
> do human ear canals vary that much to need a mic? Not an expert in human ear canals, but over the years I've learned that if I am looking into a field that I am not familiar with, it's always more complicated than I expected/imagined. > "dumb" adaptive EQ that companies like bose/ikea etc do (Basically turn up base at low volumes, down at high volume to not clip) Sounds like a compander for the lower frequencies. That's technically "adaptive" to the input audio, but not adaptive to the acoustics of the output environment. I expect that to for the second type of adaption, you'd need to measure it, which would necessitate some sort of input, such s a mic.

rootusrootus 5y ago

I'm curious how the newest airpods compare to the pros when it comes to bass. I had first gen airpods, then I bought a set of pros, but the bass was so weak I thought they had to be broken. Turns out it's just an artifact of how they were designed. Some people are okay, but a lot of people feel the same way I do. I ended up returning them and now I'd like to know if the g3 airpods are comparable to the pros, or comparable to the g1/g2 airpods.

e40 5y ago
I bought the gen3 and returned them for gen2. Two reasons, but the main one was comfort. I forget the gen2's are in my ears. The gen3's were painful. Second reason: gen3's require Monterey for macOS integration. A painful week-long exchange with Apple support brought this out.
deleted 5y ago
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skavi 5y ago
You need a seal to get significant bass from earbuds. the non pro airpods do not make a seal (by design).
- Talanes 5y ago
  If they experienced better bass on the G1/G2 Airbuds, it's not a seal issue.
  - skavi 5y ago
    The G1/G2 emphasize the high-bass to make up for the complete lack of sub-bass. Maybe that's the tuning they are looking for?
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      I primarily listen to rock. Airpods are great for that. I don't listen to much music that has significant sub bass.

elliottinvent 5y ago

Wow, it’s the first time I’ve seen this site and format but what a great way to explain electronics and design.

smeyer 5y ago
>it's the first time I've seen this site I think this might only be its second month so don't be hard on yourself for first seeing it now. https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
I'm really surprised about the (thus-far) universal acclaim of the design. There's usually a lot of knee-jerk reaction against fancy browser effects like parallax and scroll-jacking in this crowd. I think this implementation is mostly excellent, but as a web craftsmen, it would have been a fun/entertaining challenge to make a good non-javascript implementation underneath.
- notatoad 5y ago
  most of the reaction against scrolljacking is because when the content of the site is text, we have expectations about how it should behave and we know how we want to interact with it, so we get angry when we can't. when the content is 3D renders, most people have no strong expectations about how the controls should work and aren't going to have a negative reaction as long as the implementation works well.

deleted 5y ago

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veb 5y ago

This was SUPER interesting to see! I actually (for once) signed up for their next newsletter/scan. It asked me what they should scan next and I suggested cochlear implant processors. It'd be pretty cool to see! The tech on those processors are pretty insane - and remember, Apple did partner up with Cochlear for the Nucleus 7 I believe for wireless streaming from the processor to an iPhone.

fnord77 5y ago

wow, this is amazing. I assume these are their first set of scans? I was trying to find scans of other products and the home page only has airpods

arecurrence 5y ago
Last month they did LEGO. Interestingly, they seem to remove the scan but you can still see parts of it at https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com

1f60c 5y ago

From a Google search[0], it looks like they've put two LEGO sets under the scanner before, but I can't find them. It would have been cool to see an archive... [0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ascanofthemonth.com https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ascanofthemonth.com

adamrmcd 5y ago
I cannot fathom why they would they remove previous scans/links. Maybe to enable a paywall archive? It's super slick how they showcase the object as you scroll down, but flattening it into a single URL and only making one scan available per month restricts your audience appeal. I only first heard of this site when they did the lego minifigs last month. Did they publish any other scans prior to that?
- Starmina 5y ago
  So you have actually a reason put your email in their newsletter input box because you wouldn't want to 'miss' anything you can't go back to.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    Except the only thing it did was cause me to wonder if they were a new site. And then when I saw this my opinion of them dropped dramatically. It's a dark pattern and I don't want to support that.
    - veb 5y ago
      I mean, you're right - but honestly it's really fucking cool. I never sign up to newsletters but this made me do it because it's really fucking cool. Though - I'd be keen to pay $5/m for premium access to what they do, their previous scans. Charge people $10/m so they have voting rights on what to do next. Possibilities are endless! I have a couple of Patreons for people writing federated apps/code, and it's always nice to support them. Would do the same here because I get enormous value from it and it's really fucking cool

Lammy 5y ago

Does anyone have a canonical URL to the previous month's scan of the LEGO mini-figure? I didn't see any navigation on the site unless there's a magic spot I missed or am inadvertently adblocking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253441 This month's entry comes off way too much like advertising for my taste, with the flowery language like "magic features" instead of just "features", or the seemingly-unnecessary sales statistics in lieu of a technical description of the Airpods Pro: "In 2020, Apple sold 110,000,000 AirPod products. Talk about mass manufacturing." Maybe it's just an unconscious tic when talking about Apple products. Even I have a hard time not saying "Boom" when showing off something cool :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw

aembleton 5y ago
They don't seem to keep the old pages around. Here is the Lego one from the web archive https://web.archive.org/web/20211122210134/https://www.scanofthemonth.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211122210134/https://www.scano...
- hoten 5y ago
  This is oddly infuriating. Such cool content, using the web medium in a novel way, yet they purposefully make it transient? Only way it makes sense is they plan to offer a paid service where you can view a catalog of work. But the site is low on meta information, so that's just a wild guess.
  - notinty 5y ago
    I like it, personally.
dave_aiello 5y ago
That was my first thought when I saw the CT scans of the AirPods: where is the canonical URL for this, and where is the archive of previous analyses?
KarlKemp 5y ago

93po 5y ago

I think this might be the first and only instance I've ever seen of a non-traditional scrolling experience actually being a benefit to a website

bmeski 5y ago
I agree. I was able to scroll back up easily to see specific parts without some acceleration taking over.
girvo 5y ago
And the implementation of it was brilliant. Didn't mess with the scrolling feel very much at all.
austinjp 5y ago
Completely agree. First and only, in my experience. Genuinely impressive on mobile.
mandeepj 5y ago
Apple's own website has used same design pattern on many pages. Similarly, Xiaomi also
superkuh 5y ago
The bleeding edge $whatever functions required to create it meant that even a browser from a couple years ago only displays a white blankness. It is not a good design for a website.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Faaak 5y ago

I didn't know CT scans could be that accurate. Impressive really when you see the size of the (moving) machine !

habi 5y ago
There are also (desktoptop) microCT machines, which can work with much smaller samples and produce images with much higher resolution. I have the pleasure to work with three such machines, and we routinely scan samples with a size smaller than a centimeter and with a voxel size well below 10 µm. Here's a small (500 kb) movie of a staircase snail which I recently scanned: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/73241/download/suppl/31/ https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/73241/download/suppl/31/ This specimen is only 2.6 mm small.

vlunkr 5y ago

So do airpods actually sound better than the standard wired headphones? If they don't, this is a lot of fancy engineering for some pretty bad headphones. Maybe they just didn't fit my ears or something, but I've always hated them.

drc500free 5y ago
The sound is fine, the active noise cancellation is phenomenal. Transparency mode is also nice at times when you need to be aware of your surroundings.
iszomer 5y ago
So much packaged sophistication yet can't match high fidelity audio. I picked up a KZ-ZSN with a pair of dynamic and balanced armature drivers and haven't looked back in terms of sound quality. Imagine my surprise when I purchased another pair with 4BA + 1DD.. Both were under $30. To each their own I guess.
tw600040 5y ago
It does. But it's not about that. It's about being able to get rid of wires and associated mess.
- jrockway 5y ago
  Are wires a mess? Looking at the Zoom calls I've been on, I've never heard "oh sorry I'm all tangled up in my wires", but have seen "my batteries are dead" or "my headphones won't pair with my computer", etc. (I say "seen" because you don't hear much from people debugging their "magic" wireless headphones.) This has added up to many person-hours of delays, while the wires just keep working.
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    If you go outside and try to do anything with wired headphones, the wires are a constant struggle. When my left AirPods Pro had to be replaced, I had to use some wired EarPods on my commute. The cable was always catching on something. I was so relieved to get the replacement and be able to get rid of the wires again.

AshamedCaptain 5y ago

> Apple was not the first company to develop wireless earbuds, but they’ve defined the category since introducing AirPods in 2016. Sigh.

post-it 5y ago
It's true. If unconnected wireless earbuds existed before AirPods, I certainly never saw any.
- desiarnezjr 5y ago
  There were many. They just weren't particularly good UX wise. Some of them were great / good / fine soundwise, but the UX typically sucked.
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  Most definitely they existed (even the quote admits to that), but unlike other areas, I do not see other manufacturers following Apple in either functionality or aesthetics (compare what happened with slate smartphones); and I most definitely do not even see Apple leading in any metric, specially not in 2016.
- jccalhoun 5y ago
  According to this the first kickstarter for a pair of wireless earbuds with a charging case was in 2014 https://www.androidcentral.com/history-true-wireless-earbuds https://www.androidcentral.com/history-true-wireless-earbuds
stillblue 5y ago
Sigh all you want. Truth doesn't change.
severak_cz 5y ago
I think Apple brought wireless earbuds to masses.

errantspark 5y ago

This is such cool content but the way it's presented is so fucking frustrating to me. I wish the narrative wasn't so intrinsically tied to the actual data. I hate that I can't blow up and rotate the models side by side, the whole thing feels so shallow. Now to be clear in an absolute sense this is a good article, this is cool content and the scrolling as something other than scrolling works better than in most instances. My criticism is that the format does a disservice to the data, it's not the best way to present something this cool.

vultour 5y ago
I think what's missing is a 3D viewer at the bottom where you could play around with the models yourself.

jmpeax 5y ago

Terrible scrolljacking interface.

jakeinspace 5y ago
This is easily the best use of "scrolljacking" I've ever seen. How, exactly, would you like to interact with the 3d CT scans? A video? An embedded 3d viewer to let you control the orientation?
- jmpeax 5y ago
  An embedded 3d viewer to let you control the orientation

elzbardico 5y ago

This is still the strongest apple advantage: design, engineering and build quality. Recently I wanted to buy a second notebook so I could leave my MBPro at home in trips where I didn't want to work, but still had a machine that run linux and windows for some quick idea or even some light gaming. Decided for a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro. Expensive machine, but slightly cheaper than a MacBook Air. good i7 11gen processor, excellent battery life, very light but with surprisingly good thermals, 1tb SSD, but unfortunately no option to have it with more than 16GB RAM. Anyway, was very satisfied with it, and it was so light that I was even booting it with linux and doing some programming on it. But, one day I just opened the lid by the sides, heard a crack, and the gorgeous OLED screen had cracked. Of course I didnt abuse it, I just opened it, without excessive force or speed. But the screen is very fragile, the lid is paper thin, but not rigid enough, it seems, to avoid this problem. And of course, Samsung says it was my fault, and I will have to pay the fix. And yes, I know people have plenty of complaints about apple, but I never had encountered such an obvious problem with an Apple product. Have they not stress-tested this stuff?

NalNezumi 5y ago
I don't remember which iPhone it was, but didn't one launch with the problem that the entire phone could be "bent" by having it in the back pocket and sitting down? (or similarly putting some force) And their reactions to it was "its your own damn fault"?
- saagarjha 5y ago
  iPhone 6 (Plus).
sangnoir 5y ago
I guess you didn't purchase the iPhone 6, or perhaps you had very large pockets. A phone that bends semi-/permanently when placed in pockets was a ridiculous oversight.
- dereg 5y ago
  Apple replaced the bent iPhones on the spot for free. That said, the iPhone 6 represented peak Jony Ive. I'm glad he's gone. Apple has walked back their obsession with thinness in favor of maximizing utility, all to the benefit of the user.

sQL_inject 5y ago

Some small but important details about the product architecture that's changed over time somewhat: - The antenna is sticking out of the ear, while the densest components are deeper in the ear, making them more stable. Now the battery is in the ear and PCB is out of the ear. - They've added large external mesh over the world-facing mic to reduce windnoise during phone calls. This creates a sort of turbulence that prevents acoustic howling. The air is channeled into a secondary chamber before reaching the mic. - The airpods had two Infrared Detectors to prevent being spoofed when resting on the table. - the cases moved from a resistive magnetic hinge to an over-center spring hinge, that's why the newer cases feel less satisfying and fidgety.

Tildey 5y ago
As much as I like the fun factor of my magnetic 2nd gen case, it is inherently flawed. The magnets attract magnetic particles, and as the lid is repeatedly closed they're slowly beaten into the plastic and I've never been able to get those marks out. I imagine with a manget-free hinge this would be severely minimised, as everywhere outside of the magnets there is basically no staining.
- sQL_inject 5y ago
  well the magnet you're referring to are closure magnets, not the hinge magnet. You can see them on iFixit's teardown as black rectangles. Those magnets attract gnarly metallic bits which, yes, permanently make marks on the surfaces of the interior. Airpods OG vs. Pro for comparison. Both have closure magnets, I think the primary reason to move away from them was space, based on the internals. https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/f3k1ysoFjvJ5xoF5.large https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/f3k1ysoFjvJ5xoF5.lar... https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/DSCA4bK5SAlTVGtn.large https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/DSCA4bK5SAlTVGtn.lar...
patentatt 5y ago
> The airpods had two Infrared Detectors to prevent being spoofed when resting on the table. Can you elaborate on this?

nunez 5y ago

I think the AirPods Pro were a regression from the OG AirPods for four reasons: - Idle life took a huge dive from the originals. My OGs haven't been charged in something like six months, and the case is still at something like 20%. Meanwhile, the case holding the APPs would die in less than a week and the buds inside of them a week after that. My wife's APPs have been lost for a while because of this. - Noise cancellation performs worse than the original firmware. They have actually been outclassed by other offerings, such as the Sony WF1000XM4. - The buds themselves have a design flaw wherein earwax will accumulate in its inner grille severely enough to significantly compromise bass response. There's a thread in MacRumors that's something like 36 pages long acknowledging this. Apple quietly fixed this in version 2 of the APPs (with the MagSafe case). - The mic isn't as good. The original APs performed extremely well in wind and loud surroundings. I think the downward beam-forming mics were a big part of this. The mic on the APPs perform worse in these scenarios IMO. I'm glad that Apple went back to beam-forming mics. Regardless, I'm thankful for Apple for lighting up the true wireless headphone industry. The APs were a dream come true when they came out; nothing before it compared (and I had $600 custom IEMs that were waterproof and had a control scheme controlled by head nods). The APPs accelerated the creation of noise cancelling true wireless. I'm excited for the next iteration of these products.

throwanem 5y ago
> The buds themselves have a design flaw wherein earwax will accumulate in its inner grille severely enough to significantly compromise bass response Not to be glib, but maybe clean your ears more often? You can also take the tips off (invert, then pull) and blow them out from the back with canned air to clear the outer grilles which are integral with the eartip. As fine as those outer grilles are, you'd really have to have wax packed in there for it to extrude through to the inner grille. I do this with mine, but only very occasionally, because my ear hygiene is such that wax very rarely even appears on the outer part of the tip, and almost never in the sound channel. I listen to a lot of podcasts and often run down one or the other bud by 60-80% in a single go, so it seems very reasonable to suggest that if serious wax problems were really that hard to avoid, I would run into them too. (Of course, if you're using third-party tips without integral grilles - well, I suppose now we know why the original engineers saw fit to include them, you know?)

p2t2p 5y ago

That's the missing piece for that Designed By Apple 300 dollar book.

emmanueloga_ 5y ago

I imagine it may be hard and they don't have incentives to "fix it", but I think the single most important disadvantage of airpods is the battery life... no matter how long it lasts, there's no way to replace it, so they became essentially discardable items. [1]? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

hk__2 5y ago
This has nothing to do with some evil planned obsolescence, it’s just that you can’t make a device that small while retaining (easy) battery replacement capability. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/your-wireless-earbuds-are-trash-eventually/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/your-wireless-earbud...
- MaKey 5y ago
  Turns out you can: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Teardown/135908 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Tea...
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    Those are huge, though. There's a trade-off.
  - hk__2 5y ago
    They have a 10-steps guide of "moderate" difficulty to replace the battery, and it may damage the water resistance of the buds. That’s definitely not what I’d call "easy" battery replacement. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Battery+Replacement/144851 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Batter...
- truculent 5y ago
  Well they had a choice to make it less small and repairable. But ultimately, they chose small and disposable. It may not be planned obsolescence, but it's still a choice made with a certain level of disregard for consumers.

jtdev 5y ago

I actually really don’t like my AirPods… constantly dropping the Bluetooth connection during calls, poor battery life, expensive. I’m now back to using my corded earpods.

kapildev 5y ago

Anybody knows how they create such a website? I have seen such websites built for showcases of several tech products.

malshe 5y ago
I don’t know if this website used it but scrollama.js can do it. https://pudding.cool/process/introducing-scrollama/ https://pudding.cool/process/introducing-scrollama/

asiachick 5y ago

My self, my best friend, and an apple employee I know, all bought the new Airpods 3rd gen and all returned them. Of course that's just my small circle but 3 for 3. I guess any friend that bought them and was happy with them probably didn't say anything. The 3 of us that did have issues went back to 2nd gen. For me, I hate pinch to control, I love tap to control. Tapping takes 1 free finger. Pinching takes 2. Another friend said they wouldn't stay in her ears, kept falling out. The 3rd friend just said they didn't fit as well. Didn't go into details. Just returned them.

megamix 5y ago

id like to see a ct scan of the brain using these devices

coatta 5y ago

Is there any information about the type of CT scanning equipment and methods they use?

maille 5y ago

Sounds like a weird PR stunt. I'm really curious who is behind those CT scans, is it a CT manufacturer, a metrology lab or a 3d viz software company?

micheljansen 5y ago

I wish they also did the second generation AirPods (also from 2019). Would love to see how they compare to the gen 1 and gen 3.

varjag 5y ago

but we wonder if voice pickup would have been better with the microphones pointed out of the bottom of the stems. Wonder no more, it would not. This arrangement (aka beamforming array) is common for improved noise reduction. The downward-facing microphone has made its return [...] could the downward-facing mic deliver better audio quality? The 3rd gen AirPods have no active noise canceling, hence one mic arrangement. So, nope.

raffraffraff 5y ago

I don't really care about AirPods, but that webpage fucking rocked. Rotating the scans as I scroll? Nice. I'd look at scans of anything on that website.

noisy_boy 5y ago
Agreed. I only wish that they had two images rotating side by side - one the transparent scan and one the opaque image so I had both the transparent and opaque views simultaneously for all rotation angles.

tcpekin 5y ago

Does anyone know who is behind this site? I couldn't find anything poking around, and for such a cool website to (in my mind) blow up so suddenly is very surprising, with very cool content as well. I'd be interested in following anyone who is doing this.

cloudengineer94 5y ago

Absolutely love the AirPods family of devices I have own every single one of them but sadly the AirPods Pro are not compatible with me because of the tips which hurt my ears. Currently using the new Gen 3 and they are amazing! I do have a full life inside Apple ecosystem besides my Gaming Rig and Gaming Laptop.