40 ms·

AirPods don't “just work”

• londons_explore 5y ago
  When one customer finds 7 gripes, and they aren't an outlier, the product is bad. A good product would have 1 gripe found by 1 in 7 customers...
• the-alt-one 5y ago
  Good to hear the gripes with AirPods are identical to my $80 earpods, nothing missed out on in other words :-). Edit: I have a pair of JBL LIVE300TWS. They're good!
  • justinator 5y ago
    Or my $30 ones...
  • jhkiehna 5y ago
    I had the same thought. These issues might just be issues with bluetooth in general, and not much apple can do about it.
  • tluyben2 5y ago
    I decided on the same pair of headphones vs AirPods: do not think it was a mistake.
  • Grumbledour 5y ago
    It feels really good to hear that the expensive models have mostly the same flaws as the cheap ones. So the people who tell me it must be my 40€ anker models, because theirs always work fine probably just don't use them as much, but at the same time, spending more money would not have given me better functionality (except noise canceling). I guess the real thing to take away is, that cable is still the most reliable option (and also saves a lot on battery!)
• mucholove 5y ago
  The worst thing about AirPods—specifically the AirPods Pro is that they provoke tinnitus. I can’t use them. And so it goes…
• sancho_panza 5y ago
  It's so nice being able to bt connect to my Apple watch for the lovely ambience of tick, tock, tick.
• poink 5y ago
  Annoyance 4 is the biggest one for me, with the additional annoyance that "only one works sometimes" extends to charging, too. One of my AirPods will be dead when I go to use them ~10% of the time.
• nvarsj 5y ago
  My first gen AirPods had the annoying habit of simply not playing audio about 5% of the time despite showing as connected in Bluetooth and everything. I still have memories of standing in the rain, at dark, after work, trying to un-pair and re-pair just to get them to play some damn music. Other than that they worked well.
• maerF0x0 5y ago
  I wish there was a "cast" (eg chromecast) style setup that could just connect to my headphones over wifi. Why cant I just stream music to my headphones and have the Mbps of throughput and range of my wifi? Similar to how I can with video to my TV
• IMAYousaf 5y ago
  Does anyone have the AirPods 3? Are they worth it?
• I_am_tiberius 5y ago
  Without Apple device a firmware upgrade is not possible.
• rogual 5y ago
  Annoyance 8: When I'm using the (good) noise cancelling of the AirPods to eliminate distracting background noise so I can focus, after a few hours the battery will run down to 15% and trigger the EXTREMELY LOUD "PING-pong-pong-pong" low-battery noise, right in my ear, without warning. And it's Apple, so of course you can't turn it off.
  • hetspookjee 5y ago
    You'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams in your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on and the battery is almost empty. The flagship Sony headphone is so bug ridden it's a joke if you ask me.
    • zwirbl 5y ago
      I can't comment on the bugs (I'm actually not sure that I've experienced any), but those connected etc. Messages really are very annoying, partly because they feel like forever
    • Beltalowda 5y ago
      I'm reasonably sure you can actually turn those messages off though. I did that for a while, but ended up turning them back on again as connecting them can be ... difficult ... and I'm never quite sure if they're connected until they tell me they are (and if I don't play any audio fast enough, they will also helpfully disconnect).
    • voisin 5y ago
      There should be an option to have this information shown as an alert on the device. iPhones already show the battery charge level of the headphones so why not make it an alert banner?
    • Macha 5y ago
      You can use the android app to disable the device connected/disconnected dialogue.
    • darrenf 5y ago
• kayodelycaon 5y ago
  Apple stuff "just works" until it doesn't. As much as a fan I am of Apple, the lack of feedback when things stop working is absolutely infuriating.
  • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    Had Music.app completely hose my entire data plan last month because it was downloading about 12 albums I had in “Downloaded Music” then deleting them then downloading them over and over last month. Not to mention Apple Music keeps turning itself back on when I turn it off. All impossible to diagnose why and the only advice is reset and delete everything and start over.
    • tluyben2 5y ago
      I was wondering why my phone battery kept running down some days faster than others. Seems it randomly turns on Apple Music even when the volume is down to 0% and I don’t really notice that until I see it is actually playing on the notifications centre. I never, ever want it to play without me touching the play button on my phone, but that is not an option I guess.
  • MereInterest 5y ago
    And sometimes it "just works", but only if everybody is within the Apple ecosystem. Otherwise, it's just a net exporter of problems. See, for example, SMS message of "Liked an image.", email attachments converted into icloud download links, .DS_STORE files scattered everywhere, and so on. Any time Apple comes up with a new feature that would require improving capabilities at a lower level, Apple instead makes a new layer of abstraction on top. And oh how conveniently, that new layer of abstraction is transparent only to Apple users.
    • wccrawford 5y ago
      I overheard someone the other day ranting about Android phones and their broken SMS support. They apparently didn't realize it's actually Apple that has the buggy code/design and will try to send proprietary data to a non-Apple device.
• ushakov 5y ago
  my personal complaint: sometimes the left earpod doesn’t boot both are fully charged, but when i put them into ears, only the right one actually connects i have to put the left one back into the case and take it out again to get it to connect i assume this is a software issue
  • throwaway287391 5y ago
    If you're within the warranty period (or have AppleCare) you should definitely bring them into an Apple store. It might be a hardware issue. If you describe the problem to them they will almost certainly take your word for it and give you a free replacement left AirPod. Even if it's not a hardware issue you'll get a fresh new battery for one ear :) I've done this several times between my two pairs of airpods.
• justinator 5y ago
  Oofta. Is anyone having trouble with white text on black background? That was a design anti pattern that I thought died out in the early 2,000's.
  • d23 5y ago
    How’s that an anti-pattern? With dark mode, it’s more in style than ever now.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • justinator 5y ago
      It's an accessibility problem, especially for people (like me) who have astigmatism. But y'all don't look away from white text on black background to a bright light source (like a page of black text on a white background) and get a "burned in" impression of the previous page in your vision? Lucky you. Dark mode is fine, please let the user choose to have dark mode when she wants to.
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        I wish HN had a dark mode option.
        • justinator 5y ago
          Whip up some css to your liking and inject it into hn's HTML - there's lots of examples of people doing things like that.
          • lotsofpulp 5y ago
            I only browse it on Safari in iOS when I am wasting time.
      • notapenny 5y ago
• m12k 5y ago
  >Annoyance 4: Sometimes, only the left or right AirPod plays sound. Taking them in/out of your ears doesn't fix it, you need to put it back into the case and take it back out, which sometimes, doesn't fix it. So you need to put your AirPods in/out of your case two or three times to fix it. I run into this too, anyone know what's up with that? Is there some "listen with only one headphone in" feature that I'm accidentally enabling?
  • timemct 5y ago
    Yes, there is a listen with only one headphone feature.
  • dijit 5y ago
    It’s not a feature it’s a bug that will affect nearly all Bluetooth in-ears that don’t share a receiver. The design of Bluetooth buds is such that one of the buds is elected to be the receiver of data from the phone, it then propagates its signal to the second bud. What you’re experiencing is a disconnection of one earbud to the other. FWIW: apples AirPods Pro’s rehandshake (from the “slave” side towards the “master” side) every 10s- so you can have a lot of luck just waiting for it to reconnect; that is assuming that the slave device _wants_ to reconnect; it might believe it’s not in your ear.
    • toyg 5y ago
      I disagree, it's definitely a feature in my book. It allows me to keep listening or stay on calls basically forever.
      • hbn 5y ago
        The ability to listen with one headphone in is definitely a feature, but the issue is that sometimes that's happening when it shouldn't be. You pulled both Airpods out of the case, put them in your ears, but only one connects. And you can't get the one with no sound to play sound until you put it back in the case and try again (sometimes takes a couple attempts)
  • _1 5y ago
• baybal2 5y ago
  One of my past coworkers worked on AirPods hardware. One thing he could've said under gazillions of NDAs: software came much behind the hardware.
• mgoetzke 5y ago
  As for 1) You can configure devices not to auto-connect unless previously connected
  • lowercased 5y ago
    That simply doesn't work for me. Regardless of what options I set, about 60% of the time, if I'm talking on an iphone with airpod pros, and I walk within a few feet of my mac (which does have a connection to the airpods), it will switch from the phone while I'm talking and... there's no reliable way to get that back. In the phone app, clicking 'airpods'... is slow as molasses and sometimes shows them as connected again, but... no sound. Speaker works - the call is still ongoing. If I walk far enough away, sometimes it will reconnect, but not usually. The only near reliable way is to disconnect the airpods in the bluetooth menu, then wait, then reconnect. This is annoying as hell for the person on the call to have to sit through. Yeah, sorry Apple support... I've only got the ios 15.x from a couple weeks ago. No doubt upgrading to the very latest will definitely solve all extant problems, everything will magically 'just work' and there will be absolutely no new problems introduced. /s When I describe this to some Apple store folks (2x last fall), they seemed 'shocked' (couldn't tell if it was fake or not). "Wow, never heard of that - no one's ever told me that before, that doesn't seem right. We have some training classes next week you can sign up for".
    • jdminhbg 5y ago
      In case you don’t know this, since it isn’t obvious, you have to set them not to automatically connect on each device they are paired to. And if you unpair and re-pair them you have to do it again. This is annoying but not as annoying as auto-pairing.
      • Nextgrid 5y ago
        I hope it works for the parent, but in my case even that doesn't work. Whatever extra protocol or other crap they introduced with this "automatic switching" feature is garbage and worsens the experience even if you disable the new functionality. The audio menu and connection/disconnection being slow as molasses is a new thing introduced by this change.
• fab1an 5y ago
  Yeah, they're great, but definitely not quite perfect / magical. Another thing I noticed is that using the noise cancelling ocassionally gives me terrible, luckily short-lived tinnitus. Never encountered that with other (over or on ear) noise cancelling devices.
  • bamboozled 5y ago
    Pretty sure I had that from my QC 35 II
• Audiophilip 5y ago
  For me personally, one of the most infuriating product design decisions that Apple made was the removal of the headphone jack from the iPhones and iPads. This is literally the only reason why I switched to Android, despite being a long-time Apple user.
  • robin_reala 5y ago
    I stayed with Apple, went through three of the super-fragile 3.5mm adaptors, and now am on a third-party ”heavy duty” adaptor. Let’s see if this lasts.
  • grujicd 5y ago
    Too bad Android manufacturers want to emulate Apple even with bad decissions. Headhpone port is getting rarer with each new release. Samsung S21 line doesn’t have it in any model afaik.
• scrollaway 5y ago
  A list of a variety of bugs isn't what I expected from the title. Airpods are nice, but outside the Apple ecosystem they're horrendous (and somehow still better than most alternatives...). The proprietary chip / protocol in use makes me sad, but what makes me even sadder is that they're not actually even working on supporting them as a good product on Android. Maybe it makes economical sense but it's really sad that we got to the point that a company can release hardware and go out of their way not to support a significant amount of potential customers. This feels like what anti-monopoly regs try to prevent, but it's not a monopoly either so ... Also, the microphone quality is a lot worse than people say it is (I'm using the Pro version). They are barely usable for calls in a loud environment.
  • recursive 5y ago
    Apple has always gone to lengths to prevent their products from interacting outside their walled garden. The last straw for me (more than a decade ago) was when a firmware update closed a gap I was using to load music onto my ipod without going through the hateful ITunes synchronization process.
• jgrahamc 5y ago
  I had one pair of AirPods and left the charging case on a plane; getting a replacement case was a pain because I had to prove the AirPods were mine. When the battery died in them I gave up on them completely. Battery life too short, too easy to lose, and environmentally not sound.
• Invictus0 5y ago
  I have the "listen for Hey Siri" thing enabled on my iPhone and also my MacBook. I would like to be able to use this to start playing music on the Macbook. But when I say hey siri, and both devices are in range, they both answer, then the macbook shuts off, and siri proceeds only on the iPhone.
• nfRfqX5n 5y ago
  a lot of these annoyances can be solved if the author slightly changed their behavior. I still think AirPods Pro are some of the best new tech of the last 5 years
• philjohn 5y ago
  re: annoyance 1, there is a setting to disable this behaviour
• gman83 5y ago
  My airpods broke so I bought some €25 Bluetooth earbuds and honestly they work just as well for my needs. The best thing is not worrying about losing or breaking them.
• kop316 5y ago
  Heh, I got my spouse a pair of AirPods, and long ago she went back to a pair of wired earbuds due to various issues with them. IIRC, noiuse cancelling didn't work well and causes a lot of sudio issues, there were connection issues all the time. The cheap wired heaphones work much better for her. Out of curiousity, does anyone have a good recommendation for a good pair of 3.5mm wired headphones with a microphone? I still have an old pair of Bose Sport headphones, but they are only wireless now.
  • lowercased 5y ago
    I generally like the QC20, but I think those were recently discontinued. The mic wasn't the best, but for regular conversations generally didn't have problems if I clipped the mic to a shirt. If it bounced around and rustled on a shirt that wasn't good, but that's going to be a problem with any mic on a wire, I'd think.
    • kop316 5y ago
      Yeah it seems that all of the (in-ear) Bose wired headphones were discontinued.
      • falcolas 5y ago
        The market, that ill-tempered, irrational screwball, has spoken, and its says that everyone wants wireless headphones. The manufacturers have listened, and fervently believe that you’re wrong if you disagree.
  • falcolas 5y ago
    Sennheiser Momentum. Or if you want a boom mic, some of the “Pro” or “G” branded logitech headsets.
• JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  Still loving my cords and headphone jack…
  • martneumann 5y ago
    I'm not using Apple ear phones, but wireless head phones are seriously practical. Anytime I have to use my corded ones when walking the dog I get reminded of how they are actually pretty handy. Still use cord ones in other circumstances. When lying down, for example. I like to have the choice at least.
  • blueflow 5y ago
    Best thing: They are dumb. They don't even need a power supply! They don't have many ways to go wrong.
  • thefz 5y ago
    A million times. The "inconvenient" audio jack+cord does not run on batteries that will end in landfills. And it's barely an inconvenience at all.
  • AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
    The list of phones that still have a headphone jack is ever dwindling.
• faebi 5y ago
  Wow, this was a perfect description of my experience. An additional factor is the release date of the used devices. My experience improved by a large margin when I replaced my late 2018 Macbook and my 2019 iPad. Another example are calls which ring on multiple devices. I'm using my iPad and somebody calls me on my iPhone, but the iPhone sends the call also to the iPad. The same when I have MS Teams on my Macbook and my iPhone. Once I put the Airpods in my ears anything can and does happen. Sometimes one Airpod is lost in these situations.
• d23 5y ago
  I have many of these problems plus: the advertised tap-to-control behavior never seems to work when I want it to. It only activates when my AirPods are misinterpreting my adjusting them as trying to pause what I’m listening to. And, of course, tapping again doesn’t restart playback.
• mbreese 5y ago
  Annoyance 1 actually has a setting. You can setup the AirPods to actively switch to a preferred source (your phone), or stay connected to your computer. This one bugged the hell out of me for months before I found the option. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/switch-airpods-between-devices-iph08b253c17/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/switch-airpods-betwee... > To prevent AirPods from automatically switching between devices, go to Settings > Bluetooth. Tap the Actions Available button next to the name of your AirPods, tap Connect to This iPhone, then tap When Last Connected to This iPhone.
  • medbrane 5y ago
    Note that you have to configure that on each device separately.
    • mbreese 5y ago
      Very true, and it's not very intuitive, but at least the setting is available. I guess that's the problem with "it just works" magic -- when it doesn't work, you need to have a few settings available. And unfortunately, those are rarely included.
• AndrewWarner 5y ago
  Most of my frustrations with AirPods could be eliminated if they connected to multiple devices at once. The back-and-forth does not work well.
• whynotminot 5y ago
  I would posit that the AirPods used to be the most magical "Just Works" Apple product I've ever owned, but over-time as Apple has added more features and complications to them, they've lost the magic. Those first generation AirPods were a thing of beauty. Newer ones now are technically better--better sounding, longer lasting, ANC, etc. But I've experienced a lot of the same annoyances that OP is complaining about. I still love them, but the experience is definitely a little fiddly these days.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  I generally enjoy my AirPods. They are occasionally quirky, but most of the time they really do “just work” for me. The annoyances are annoying when they happen, though. The strangest part is that the annoyances aren’t getting any better over time. At first I assumed that they were growing pains of an early product launch. Yet now we’re years into the AirPods experience and they continue to be just as quirky as when I first got them. Apple seems so hot or cold on fixing their own bugs. Certain bugs get rapidly patched in the next iOS or Mac software release. Other bugs languish for what feels like forever. Do Apple execs just not use AirPods? Are they using a different configuration or hardware combination that doesn’t have these bugs? Have they just trained themselves to overlook the bugs because the workarounds have become a reflex? I can’t imagine working at any tech company where one of the flagship products had such a high rate of annoyances without having a lot of engineers diverted to replicating, diagnosing, and fixing it ASAP.
  • dannyw 5y ago
    Apple seems to only improve peripherals (like the AirPods) with new hardware releases; not software updates. They make money based on units of AirPods moved.
    • germinalphrase 5y ago
      Not strictly true in this case. Apple added a lot of additional functionality to the airpod pros over time. The tuning is hidden under the accessibility settings, but it’s there.
    • Gigachad 5y ago
      They have added some things to the airpods over software updates. But I assume they are pretty limited if they are already pushing the hardware to the absolute limit on release. A lot of the stuff they push over updates seem to be things they already planned to have but perhaps didn't have the firmware polished enough yet.
  • Nextgrid 5y ago
    In my experience, the annoyances actually get worse over time. I got my AirPods back when the original ones were released and the experience probably was as good as physically possible (short of including multiple radios so they can maintain connections to multiple devices in parallel and simply mix the audio client-side). They then (2 years ago?) released this new feature where AirPods could automatically switch between all your devices which is just too slow and is more of an annoyance in practice, but even disabling the behavior made the existing experience much worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30085538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30085538
• DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  I would add to the list that it is environmentally negligent to allow for such a complex device to be near irreparable (specifically on battery replacement). Unless you are selling medical devices your electronics should never be thrown away because after-sales cannot swap a battery. Then again Google just dropped the Pixel 3 after just 3 years so this is clearly an issue with the consumer electronics business model. Consumer electronics will remain a vastly wasteful business unless governments force tighter environmental regulations.
  • fsflover 5y ago
    Related link: http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-impossible-deemed-future-e-waste-ifixit-2465348 http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-imposs....
    • mckeed 5y ago
      At least Apple pays to recycle them, which is more than most companies making devices like this would do https://onezero.medium.com/what-really-happens-to-airpods-when-they-die-9ba2fe97b346 https://onezero.medium.com/what-really-happens-to-airpods-wh...
  • 323 5y ago
    How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? Or put another way: people throw away phones after 3-4 years regardless of if you can replace the battery or not. You can pretty cheaply replace the battery in any phone at a repair shop. But people don't want that, they want the new phone with new look and new features.
    • DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      > How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? How many 2010 smartphones have security updates that you can safely use? It's a chicken and egg problem. For every person that chases the shinny new thing there are plenty of people who don't care about that and just want to have minimal functions, phone, sms, video chat, some decent photos/video, and occasional online banking. However due a broken business model from Tech giants and firmware lock-in from Mobile SoC manufacturers this is unattainable at the moment. Vendors should be forced to maintain an LTS work stream to give the alternative to those costumers who do want to act sustainably. Unfortunately that will never happen unless they are forced by regulatory changes.
• bajsejohannes 5y ago
  Personally, annoyances like this is enough for me not to want wireless headphones. My wired headphones work 100% of the time. It's obvious what they are connected to. (PS, I also prefer transport belts over robots in factorio, and explicitly constructed objects over dependency injection in programming)
• StevePerkins 5y ago
  I have a $200-250 pair of AirPod Pros, and a $40 pair of Tozo NC7's that I bought for a backup. The Tozo's get way more use, to the point where I regret buying the AirPods. Your ears may vary, but "dot" style earbuds are WAY more comfortable (and likely to stay put in my ears) than the "stem" style buds. The spatial audio thing turned out to be a pointless novelty that wore off quickly, and isn't even supported on half of my Apple devices. I also get tired of the weird glitches, where my AirPods will spontaneously decide to drop my connection, and connect to a different device. With other earbuds, it's a mild annoyance having to manually tell one device to drop its connection so another device can connect. But the truth is that I don't have to do this THAT often, and the unwanted switchovers are far more frequent and annoying. Plus, there are a ton of bluetooth earbuds and headphones that accept two or more simultaneous connections, which eliminates the issue and is better than what AirPods try to do, honestly.
  • lucian1900 5y ago
    It does depend on ears, for sure. Most in-ear headphones are painful for me, including the "dot" ones. Stem ones tend to be far more comfortable, with the Apple ones the most comfortable. I've also never had AirPods fall out of my hears even when exercising. They seem to be made for my ears.
  • mcphage 5y ago
    > a $40 pair of Tozo NC7's that I bought for a backup. The Tozo's get way more use, to the point where I regret buying the AirPods Thanks for the recommendation... I almost lost one of my airpods in 18" of snow last week when snowblowing, and I decided it's not a good idea to wear my airpods when snowblowing anymore.
  • geoduck14 5y ago
    I have a pair of fancy Bose over-the-ear headphones. They have the "connect to 2 devices" feature you mentioned. And it inconvenient. It will connect to my cell phone and computer at the same time. I'll be on a zoom call (computer) and something will make it decide to disconnect and reconnect from my phone - so I'll get a 10 second interruption notifying me of this glitch. Also, if someone calls me, I haven't figured out how to force it to switch to my cell phone.
• activitypea 5y ago
  I recenty got the AirPods Pro and they're really underwhelming. Apart from their durability, everything they do can be found on headphones half the price e.g. Anker
• cromka 5y ago
  I have many of those issues mentioned in the article daily with iPhone 13 Pro and MacBook Air M1. Whatever Apple advertised as AirPods Pro features, it's all false advertising. I can't get anything to work reliably. Anything. I don't trust them at all with any sort of serious meeting at this point, either, since they recently started to randomly switch from being actively used with my MacBook to an idling iPhone in another room. Seriously, Apple? The experience is getting worse and worse. And I seriously wonder why isn't it yet another class action – they well deserve it.
• easton 5y ago
  The "low audio quality after/during conference" problem as I understand it is because of the SCO codec used for Bluetooth microphone stuff (which is lower bandwidth but allows you to speak and listen at the same time). It takes a few seconds for the AirPods to switch back to their usual codec. Is there a way to fix this without ditching Bluetooth?
  • tomrod 5y ago
    I have the same issue with Samsung earbuds on Linux. My solution was to get a nice webcam with a solid camera, or to use an external mic. Win-win -- good quality sound, video, and mic.
  • archepyx 5y ago
    Get a headset that has Faststream or bidirectional APTX-LL A2DP vendor codec, and use it with BT stack that implements these codecs (e.g. Linux/Pipewire). Such devices are very hard to find, and aptx-ll in most devices is not bidirectional. I know only some headsets by Avantree that have it. Or, wait for a few years for Bluetooth 5.2 LE Audio be available in consumer devices.
• sovietmudkipz 5y ago
  Mine play a high pitched prolongated shrill ping at the highest volume it can. It happened 3 times before I threw them away and went back to hard wired headphones. It hurt. The first time I reacted quickly to get them out of my ears. I figure it has something to do with the noise cancelling feature. I also figure it has something to do with me using my AirPods to run, thereby being exposed to moist conditions for prolongated times. I no longer trust headphones like I did.
• dt2m 5y ago
  All valid annoyances, but I really think OP should try using another brand of Bluetooth headphones for a week just to get some perspective of how well AirPods "just work" compared to the competition. Manually having to re-pair once in every blue moon, one earbud playing while the other isn't, no automatic device switching without having to go through the Settings app everytime, A/V desync, dodgy mic quality, earbuds not waking up correctly when removing them from the case, etc are all part of the non-AirPods Bluetooth experience. I recently switched to a pair of Sony Bluetooth headphones as I don't like the too-neutral AirPods Pro EQ curve, and while they sound excellent, the UX really leaves a bit to be desired.
  • wdb 5y ago
    Yes, I am daily struggling to connect my Sony MX4 headphones in a way the microphone also works so I can use it with Google Meetings. I have re-paired them already more often than my AirPods.
  • jensensbutton 5y ago
    Get some jabra 75Ts. Problems solved.
    • VadimPR 5y ago
      Agreed, Jabras work great without the issues listed here.
    • carb 5y ago
      Also agreed. I have been using Jabra earbuds daily for about four years and they would perfectly.
    • stronglikedan 5y ago
      I had to return mine because the kept popping out, regardless of tip size or material. Now I have the Galaxy Buds Pro, which not only sound better to me (Jabras have IEM sound that I dislike), but also have none of the problems described. And while the do back out, they don't pop out, so it's manageable,
  • 5y ago
• jdavis703 5y ago
  Some of these problems are because of Bluetooth (see complaints in this thread about Sony headphones — a company that many consider to have a similar product design ethos as Apple). Others are due to bad configuration defaults from Apple. Forcing AirPods to connect to the last device and turning off “pause music on removal” fixes two of the author’s problems. This isn’t a defense of Apple or AirPods. They obviously don’t “just work.” But there are things that can improve the experience.
  • ascagnel_ 5y ago
    > Others are due to bad configuration defaults from Apple. Forcing AirPods to connect to the last device and turning off “pause music on removal” fixes two of the author’s problems. I don't even necessarily think these are problems. I almost always want whatever I'm playing to stop when I disconnect my headphones, and there are times I don't want the headphones to connect to the last device (ie: I've been listening to something on my laptop, left the laptop behind somewhere, and want to start listening from my phone).
    • jdavis703 5y ago
      Ok, so the reason I said bad is because this happens to me. I’m playing music on my laptop. I go to the bathroom. Maybe an auto-playing video with sound pops up on my iPhone. The headphones switch to my phone. Now I’m back at my laptop and have to manually reconnect the headphones. Perhaps this is what people want, but in my cases it’s two tech annoyances (auto play video and fumbling with the Bluetooth menu).
  • ninkendo 5y ago
    > Forcing AirPods to connect to the last device If only it were that simple. Unfortunately this config option is not a property of the AirPods themselves, but to each individual device you own, so you can’t just set it once. You have to go to each device you have on your iCloud account and set “connect only when last connected to this device”. But it’s even worse than that, because the option is only available to be changed when you have the AirPods connected, meaning you have to go to each device you own, connect your AirPods to them, then go to the menu, find the option for connection mode, and set it to “when last connected”. And if you forgot a device, it will happily steal your AirPods connection “automatically” the next time it boots up or decided it wants to connect them. And you have to search around and figure out what the hell your AirPods are even connected to. Did I mention Apple will occasionally release an OS update which changes this setting back to “automatically” again? Now you get to do this whole dance over again, but slowly, as your individual iDevices get rolled-out updates. (I have 5 devices near my work desk that are potential AirPod connection thieves, this is a huge annoyance to me if you can’t tell.)
• tambourine_man 5y ago
  I'm reminded of Alan Kay's quote on the Mac. Similarly, AirPods might be the first wireless headphones worth criticizing.
• teekert 5y ago
  This is very good to know. I have all these issues with basically all my wireless headsets and was thinking: I should invest in Apple Airpods to get rid of this mess... Guess I'm not.
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  I highly recommend Jabra bluetooth earbuds as a replacement for AirPods. They stay in your ears well, they're comfy, have pretty decent audio quality, good connectivity, good battery life, ANC, wireless charging. If you watch their website, they sell refurbished units for pretty huge discounts. The Elite 65t's may be old but they're still really good and super cheap now: https://www.jabra.com/deals#?pfs=discountedprice-desc&pff=2ff7 https://www.jabra.com/deals#?pfs=discountedprice-desc&pff=2f...
• boardwaalk 5y ago
  Meanwhile I’ve given them up since the charging contacts have gotten so bad at reliably touching. Most of the time I’ll pick them up and they’re dead or I’ll spend several minutes (not exaggerating) putting them in the case and taking them out to get them to activate properly. No amount of cleaning or other finagling really helps. And this has happened to me in the very first AirPods and the AirPods Pro. I’m not sure how this bad design survives but fool me three times…
• SigmundA 5y ago
  I turn off auto switching, it causes too many issues. Otherwise for me they have worked better than any other wireless headphone / earbuds. They need double the battery life and they would be basically perfect for my use, I am hopeful ver 3's will do this along with maybe some crazy move away from bluetooth which I still believe is the root of all the issues that even Apple can't fully solve without just making some different wireless protocol.
• gullywhumper 5y ago
  My annoyance is that gen3 audio controls are significantly more difficult to use. With gen2 it was possible to simply tap the side of the airpod to pause, skip, or go back, and the user had the option to set which side controlled that functionality. Gen3 has a sensor that has the same functionality, but it is more cumbersome to use. The sensor is small and angled in a position that makes it more awkward and difficult to access. It requires some precision and dexterity - a pinch rather than a tap. The sensor is on the stem of the airpod, so it feels less secure to press. There is also a small click when the sensor is pressed that gets annoying. I live in a cold environment and frequently have to wear multiple layers of gloves, mittens, hoods, and hats when I go for long walks, so I lose that functionality.
• throwaway22032 5y ago
  I barely ever use my headphones with my laptop, but my Sony headphones on an Android phone work 100% perfectly all of the time. I've never had a hiccup. Okay, I mean, if I'm in an area with thousands of others using headphones, I might get some interference. That's it. Otherwise, totally fine.
  • paines 5y ago
    >....if I'm in an area with thousands of others using headphones, I might get >some interference. That's it. Otherwise, totally fine. Which imho is completely unacceptable because it annoys the hell out of me. I was using AirPods with an Xiaomi 8 Pro phone half a year ago. And this happended constanly and most of the time at street crossings in urban areas where 2-3-4 people would cross your way. Since I switched to an iPhone this never happened again. PS: Why was I using AirPods with a cheapish android mobile phone? I tried lots of air pods like products from various vendors and each and any of them worked nicely for a couple of days until I would charge them overnight which killed the charging box where the headphones resided in or the headphones themself. Or like other useres in this thread described: one headphone would pair the other suddenly not anymore...
• NoblePublius 5y ago
  I have a $20 pair of Sony wireless headphones that charge via USB C that have equivalent audio quality to my $199 AirPods pro.
• jakereps 5y ago
  The absolute worst annoyance, IMO, is that if you are listening to audio with an iPhone, AirPods (Pro), and an Apple Watch, and set a timer on your watch (say, a 1.5 minute rest timer at the gym) it will disconnect from your phone to play the alert from your watch and then fail to play music from your phone again without sometimes requiring full Bluetooth cycling, or another 1.5 minutes of fiddling - removing any and all convenience of the device ecosystem. There are support issues open on the Apple forums going back years, but it’s still unresolved. To contrast, my Bose SoundSports can seamlessly achieve the above example just fine, so it’s not a fundamental flaw in the use case, just Apple’s implementation of some part of it.
• jonahx 5y ago
  My addition... Annoyance 0: The default behavior is to pause when you remove a single earbud while listening to music/podcasts. But, especially when working out, this is not what you want, because you just wanted to scratch or wipe off your ear. At minimum, this should be an option I can set ("only pause if both buds are removed"), but afaik it's not.
• Nextgrid 5y ago
  AirPods used to work. They no longer do. I got AirPods shortly after they were released and they were great. They were basic Bluetooth headphones with a decent, minimalistic UI that "just worked". They wouldn't try to be smart and just remain connected to the last device they were on, which worked well 90% of the time and the last 10% wasn't a problem because the connection process was very quick. Under the hood it was presumably just bog-standard Bluetooth which is good enough and can actually be reliable given my experience. But then Apple couldn't leave "well enough" alone and decided to over-engineer and fuck everything up. They tried to do the whole multi-device thing where it's supposed to automatically & seamlessly switch between them, and the problems in this article arise from this - presumably they've now overlaid an extra management layer & protocol on top of the existing Bluetooth. Even disabling the automatic switching feature doesn't help, as the extra complexity seems to still be involved in the background and makes once quick operations take much more time. Connecting to AirPods from the audio menu on another device now takes much longer and doesn't always work - sometimes it'll keep spinning and eventually time out for no reason. Connecting via the Bluetooth menu always works and is faster - I wonder why the audio menu doesn't just do whatever the Bluetooth menu does? Same story on iPhone - connecting via the audio menu is now error-prone and I sometimes have to try again using the Bluetooth settings. Also a problem I have which I suspect is an isolated bug but is still annoying is that since these new changes, I simply cannot get within range of my Macbook without my music playing though AirPods on an iPhone stopping. I suspect the automatic switching garbage they introduced, which despite being disabled, still plays a part. The AirPods don't even actually switch so it's not like the setting didn't apply, they remain connected to the original device but merely pause, so in the end it's the worst of both worlds as it's not even giving me the extra functionality and just ruins something that used to work perfectly. Not to mention, in typical Apple fashion, all these overlay protocols have zero observability and you can't even tell what's going on beyond a spinner that eventually times out. Same with AirDrop, HomeKit, etc but at least those are used infrequently enough that they aren't too big of a deal in practice, but AirPods are particularly problematic especially in a post-pandemic, fully-remote world. Of course, given the recent changes to iPhones, wired headphones are no longer an option either unless you keep dongles around. They should've either switched the new iPhones to USB-C or added a Lightning port to Macbooks so that wired headphones could be used without a dongle you'll inevitably be missing when you need it.
• IndySun 5y ago
  "It Just Works"... This is merely a tagline from Apple, an advertising slogan. As such, I have never taken it seriously - let alone the fact that it is also a hollow statement. Who does/did takes it seriously? That members of the wider YC community do take it seriously, or worse actually believe and re-bark it in the first place, just shows that, in this instance, being fluent in 'tech' is not a panacea for gullibility.
• dewey 5y ago
  I encountered several of these annoyances myself. Turning off auto-switching removed some issues with them randomly jumping between devices but now it's just more manual labor to connect them. Having had my share of annoying buzzing sounds I wrote these up a while ago, since I got them replaced 3 times I don't have any of these any more though: - https://annoying.technology/posts/abea6876cf4f2e13/ https://annoying.technology/posts/abea6876cf4f2e13/ - https://annoying.technology/posts/d3e6a4bce1e140b2/ https://annoying.technology/posts/d3e6a4bce1e140b2/ I'm still using them every day and despite the annoyances the small form factor and the sound quality are just good enough to put up with it.
  • dsizzle 5y ago
    I got two pair of AirPod Pros replaced twice too. I wonder if OP knows about the defect and program that Apple will replace them? https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-issues https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...
• kbos87 5y ago
  AirPods are great when they work, frustrating when they don’t. Mine seem to be in a frequent pattern of not connecting to my phone automatically lately, and I couldn’t tell you why. I don’t feel like that was happening nearly as often a few months ago and I’m guessing it has something to do with the many updates and changes they’ve made to how Bluetooth connections between AirPods and iPhone seem to work. I’ve also experienced my fair share of quality issues - static coming through when noise cancelling operates, which Apple replaced my AirPods under warranty for.) Now I’m experiencing a very tough to describe effect where one AirPod seems to cut in and out of transparency mode repeatedly and in a subtle way. All in all they are a great product and I agree with some of the other commenters that for all their flaws they are miles ahead of anything else I’ve tried.
• loevborg 5y ago
  I don't have AirPods, but every time I've had a meeting with someone who does, the microphone quality has been terrible, even in quiet environments. The sounds has been muffled to the point where, while I could still understand the person, it took me 50% more cognitive effort to make out what they were saying because of the low quality. It's almost always much better when I ask them to switch to the built-in MacBook Pro mic (which is decent). It's an insidious problem. People like their setup because they can hear you well. But what they don't realize is that they are themselves barely understandable. They don't hear themselves and people aren't used to giving them feedback. Is it just me?
  • vxNsr 5y ago
    It’s not just you, but please let them know. I was experiencing this as the AirPods user but wasn’t aware, it’s kinda hard to know because even if you turn on “listen to this device” it’s not quite what zoom/teams sends.
• fastaguy88 5y ago
  I wonder, does "just work" mean work perfectly 100.000% of the time. Or is 99% of the time close enough?
• pluc 5y ago
  how the hell does a list of annoyances about a product makes it to the #1 of HN oh Apple I get it you people need to diversify
  • recursive 5y ago
    We also have Tesla annoyances and NFT haters. That's pretty much all I could hope for.
• graiz 5y ago
  Bluetooth is so broken at a deep and fundamental level. We should really have a low-energy wifi protocol. The listed problems are just the tip of the iceberg. The fact that my headphones can't be simultaneously connected to both my phone and my computer is ridiculous. The connectivity is awful. The latency of connection and disconnection is embarrassing. On top of that Apple has the worst UI to handle all of of the weird things that can happen.
  • shakna 5y ago
    > We should really have a low-energy wifi protocol. HaLow? [0] It's been around since 2016, but never saw any great adoption. Which is a huge pity as it can actually achieve some crazy good speeds for such a low power draw. (300+ Mbit/s). There's also LoRa [1], which _has_ a fair bit of things implemented using it, but unfortunately it's super slow, and has some serious issues around acks that make it unusable for something like wireless buds. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa
  • howinteresting 5y ago
    Bluetooth LE is a completely different protocol from Bluetooth classic.
• dijonman2 5y ago
  Airpods Max are a disaster! I had trouble with bt range on my qc35 ii, switched to sony and will never go back. just wish I could return my airpod max, they’re engraved
• davidbenhaim 5y ago
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  • deleted 5y ago
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  • Nextgrid 5y ago
    > My bose headphones that used to work great now don't work as well as airpods. My AirPods experience has also declined the past couple of years so I think it's just over-engineering and ruining the perfectly functional Bluetooth and/or audio stack rather than an intentional attempt at ruining non-Apple headphones.
  • HatchedLake721 5y ago
    Can people stop overusing and throwing the word “monopoly” every time they’re not happy with an Apple service or product? What’s next? Apple is monopoly on ARM? Smartwatches? Monitors? Touchpads? It sounds like a cheap internet attempt to bash a company using a lately popular but completely irrelevant word in relation to AirPods. I use both AirPods and Bose QC35 II for years, everyday for hours, without any issues. I haven’t had my Bose quality of experience degrade, so I don’t know what you’re on about. You enable pairing mode, select your headphones in list of Bluetooth devices, that’s it. They even swap between Mac and iPhone without much issues.
  • soared 5y ago
    Apple has not degraded 3p Bluetooth - that is bullshit. My Bose work just the same as they did years ago and behave similarly to my AirPods. You cannot expect Apple to not develop better features in their own products. This is not anything close to monopoly and it’s wild to say that.
  • tksb 5y ago
    > …Airpods have a ton of extra UX settings in iOS that are not available to other bluetooth headsets. To be fair, AirPods have "a ton" of hardware capabilities built in that are also not technically available, but that's kind of exactly the point, right?
• nemacol 5y ago
  It is my opinion that bluetooth headphones are garbage. I have several - cheap, expensive, ear buds, over ear. They all suffer from issues between devices, one device out of range weird noises, can't decide which device to connect to. Some of the issues I blame on my phone (Pixel3a). I spend so much time walking around my house turning BT off on all but one device so I can go outside and listen to something. Much easier to plug my wired headphones into the device I am using. It is simple, reliable, and I don't have to charge my wired headphones. For me BT headphones go mostly unused except for yardwork/woodshop time, where the wire poses extra annoyances.
  • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    BT is garbage except for very simple products like mice: poorly thought out, even more poorly implemented, generally brittle. And the audio quality is compromised, although aptX Lossless may finally start changing that.
  • tapoxi 5y ago
    I'm a Bose QC-35 II convert. Slide forward on the power button and it'll switch the paired device. Also excellent sound quality and ridiculous battery life.
• Raed667 5y ago
  For anyone who wants something very close to "just works" checkout the Jabra Elite 85t or 75t.
  • bamboozled 5y ago
    I have the 65t, absolutely love them, insanely solid, always seem to have charge, pair to everything instantly. I wear them during workouts and they get covered in sweat and chalk still sound beautiful. Love them a lot and agree. Check out Jabra!
    • Raed667 5y ago
      Had the 65T for years and can confirm. They are very solid and sound great. I only upgraded when I lost them. And appreciate the smaller size on the 75 model. I still very much recommend them to anyone on a budget.
  • jugg1es 5y ago
    I've never had a single problem with them besides the fact that they think that they are in my ears when they're actually in my pocket so they will unpause whatever you are listening to.
  • pbc 5y ago
    I use jabra 75t and personally I'm not that impressed with them. Connection to 2 devices at the same time indeed works fine, mic quality for earbuds is also very good. But they have other issues like if you remove the right earbud from your ear the left one stops (due to their choice of tech for bud to bud connection), sound glitches randomly when paired to m1 macbook, in ear fit is ok but not great.
• soheil 5y ago
  > Annoyance 7: When moving from working on my iMac to my MacBook, I get a notification asking me if I want to switch my AirPods over to my MacBook. The notification isn't an issue, but the fact it doesn't go away after you ignore it is I have the same issue with Do Not Disturb notification on Mac. There is no way to have it not show up if you have a set time for DND unless you completely disable all notifications.
• drewg123 5y ago
  For me, the most annoying "feature" of airpods vs other BT audio was that Siri started announcing incoming calls, and reading the contact name in full, or the full phone number, both of which take forever. I finally found a recipe to shut that off. I don't recall siri being this invasive with my Bose BT headphones. I wonder why airpods got this special (annoying to me, likely wonderful to others) treatment.
  • Nextgrid 5y ago
    > I don't recall siri being this invasive with my Bose BT headphones I think it's just because Apple is intentionally gatekeeping the feature to AirPods even though it can technically work with any headphones, so in this case your Bose headphones were spared the annoyance because of Apple's anti-competitive practices, whereas AirPods have it on by default. Fortunately it's easy to disable in Settings -> Phone -> Announce calls.
• deleted 5y ago
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• Causality1 5y ago
  if you instantly play the music you were listening to right before the call by clicking the play button on your keyboard, your music will play at a lower audio quality I don't recall the names of the specific bluetooth profiles, but I wish Airpods and bluetooth headphones in general gave you more control over this. Sure, the older headset profile is noticeably lower quality but it's also virtually lag-free. I have a shitty old headset I use when gaming on my phone specifically because there's no noticeable latency.
  • Nextgrid 5y ago
    It's AD2P vs HSP profiles. One gives you good (well, compressed but decent enough) stereo audio one way, one provides shitty audio but both ways. I'm surprised as to why Apple couldn't come up with a better protocol that would manage to do both or switch number of channels & quality seamlessly.
    • Causality1 5y ago
      Nobody seems to care, is the thing. Qualcomm is now deprecating APTX-LL in favor of APTX-Adaptive even though it's 50% laggier even under ideal circumstances.
• ulzeraj 5y ago
  Within less than a year of use my AirPod Plus now makes very annoying buzzing sounds when the microphone is used or any other vibration happens. Its like having a wasp inside your ear. This only happens in transparent and noise reduction mode. Assuming its broken not sure if I trust the product enough to buy another.
  • dsizzle 5y ago
    This happened to me on two separate pairs (!), and Apple replaced them both for free. https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-issues https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-... BTW, you mean AirPod Pro (not Plus).
• stefanwlb 5y ago
• toastal 5y ago
  This Bluetooth headphone trend I think is mostly just to sell more products and bundles. Remove the headphone jack and now people need to buy the matching headphones they don't really want but the OEM is offering a $10 discount. Then they all have their own proprietary "app" for configuration that isn't cross-platform (have a Linux phone? add this to the pile of "sucks to be you"). Said apps always include tracking and phone homing and more permissions than needed because the other part was to sell your user data as the side hustle to Bluetooth headphones. I'm sad I fell for it after buying a newer ASUS laptop without a headphone jack and picking up a pair for my girlfriend too. The issues Bluetooth has caused me have wasted company money as I try to 'fix' my headphones for telecommunication. Active noise cancelation is nice, but not disrupting-my-work nice.
• soheil 5y ago
  I never found AirPods convenient, there are just so many moving parts. There are just so many pieces you need to be mentally aware of, the left/right pods, the case and the charging cable. You need to then think about how this is going to connect to your device, you can't just physically plug them in and be assured they will just work. They run out of battery. The case will separately run out of battery. The BT quality isn't great and degrades depending on the conditions. You can't use one motion with your hands to take them out of their case and plug them in your ears like you can with wired headphones. You are more prone to losing the case or one of the disparate ear pieces since there are three different pieces. There is a bulge in your pocket if you keep them there, which is kind of even more visible and annoying if you wear something other than jeans. I'm not saying there is a better solution it's just that this product is a massive failure in my eyes.
• stephc_int13 5y ago
  I've only had bad experiences with Bluetooth devices so far, especially audio. Speakers, headphones, keyboards or mice. Drivers issues, spurious disconnect, hard reboot needed for no apparent reason, delays when connecting, sometimes even noise on the line, difficult to believe given that this is a purely digital channel AFAIK. Lately I am relying on good old analog electronics for audio, and wires for keyboards/mice. Not only those are more reliable and serviceable (I especially like dumb headphones in that regard) but without batteries, software update or even drivers, they'll probably last much longer.
• xg15 5y ago
  > I get that Apple is trying to be clever and anticipate your moves, which I genuinely appreciate, but when it gets in the way it's annoying. I wonder how long until devices regularly do eye tracking to figure out which device we're currently paying attention to. I think that could both be useful and extremely scary...
• dep_b 5y ago
  I had AirPods since the launch day. The battery was not great to begin with and they decayed pretty fast. After that they're basically trash as replacing the batteries is about as expensive as buying new ones. I'm back to EarPods now. Don't listen to music on my phone anyway.
• brenelson 5y ago
  Try getting another set of Bluetooth earphones, then weigh in the quality.
• thenerdhead 5y ago
  Here's a few more: - Airpods sometimes do not charge when in the case. Usually need to pull it out and put back in again. - Knowing what airpod(s) and case are charging. The UI on the phone, the open the case sliding window, the widgets, and the case light itself are not very useful. - Spatial audio working on some apps but you're not usually aware if it's on until you tilt an ear one way to confirm. - Out of ear detection sometimes doesn't work well and will drain the respective airpod. - No preference list of what devices should have precedence over others. Especially when working on 2+ devices. - Hand-off calls is a weird UX. Why would I answer a phone on my iPhone by default when it's clear I have airpods connected and being used? - The transparency / noise cancelling dance. Not sure if there's a preference, but it feels random which one is on by default. Always do a double check at the gym or when running as outside noise sounds loud. Still the best headphones and experience in my opinion and have enabled me to achieve a hell of a lot more because of them. Easily worth the price for how much I use them.
  • laichzeit0 5y ago
    I thought I was going out of my mind, but I have all these issues as well. The “out of ear” detection failing and draining battery and the not actually charging while in the case issues are particularly annoying.
  • hbn 5y ago
    Am I crazy or have Airpods gotten worse recently? I didn't get mine until recently (November?) and for the first month or so they kinda did work perfectly. The auto-pairing was annoying like the article mentions (switching from my Mac where I want it to my phone cause I pulled it out to look at something), but I turned that off and it was all good. But at some point in December I started constantly getting the issue where one doesn't have audio playing and I have to put it in the case to reset it, sometimes the tap gestures don't work, it'll pause when I pull one out (as intended) but doesn't unpause when I put it back in, etc. I wonder if they pushed some bad firmware. Oh, also here's another complaint: when your Airpods are connected to your iPhone, they HAVE to be the microphone. Which is annoying because for one thing, their microphone is way worse than the one built into your phone, and the other thing is in winter I usually have my AirPods concealed under my toque so my ears don't freeze off, but that means literally no sound will make it to the microphone, and I'm just SOL if I want to use my microphone (and when it's freezing out, I'm less likely to want to try typing a message with the keyboard, so it would be nice to just send a voice message to someone, but I can't). Of course no one at Apple will ever experience this cause they're all in California!
• cabirum 5y ago
  I want so much the wireless headphones fad to go away. When batteries deplete in the middle of a meeting, what are you supposed to do? Connect a spare pair via usb dongle?
  • mmcdermott 5y ago
    I don't generally struggle with battery in meetings (I prioritize battery life when buying ear buds), but I keep a set of wired earbuds with a USB-C in my laptop case as a backup. They don't come out often, but they have gotten me through a couple of meeting marathons.
• jensensbutton 5y ago
  Annoyance 8: I get anxious when I get on a video call and see the other person is wearing airpods because they're always cutting in and out.
• mleo 5y ago
  With one phone and one pair of headphones, many cheaper truly wireless Bluetooth devices will be comparable to AirPods and probably suffer some of the same related annoyances with losing audio in one of the buds. Moving to multiple Apple devices, the AirPods are amazing, but still suffer the annoyances OP mentioned. I can pair AirPods to phone and then move them to Mac for zoom, watch for exercise, tv for listening to content in kitchen not appropriate for younger kids. Being available across all those devices was automatic. That said, the annoyances are real. The weirdest situation I have had recently was some how getting the left AirPod connected to one device and right connected to a different device with audio and mics simultaneously working. Luckily, mute worked on both devices and didn’t have to speak to both at the same time.
• tomxor 5y ago
  > when clicking the active AirPods in the bluetooth list, there is a short 3~ second delay which makes you think they haven't been disconnected, leading you to click it again. But your first click did actually fire leading you to be confused as to what state you are currently in. There is a known correct way to do this in UIs: no large delays for UI state change, even if the underlying function takes a humanly perceptible duration. Apple used to be good at this stuff, it's just attention to detail in UX... it's not like this is an area of opinion.
• baxuz 5y ago
  Bluetooth audio is a mess with no way out. I really think that Apple is going to just drop Bluetooth audio at some point and make their own protocol, with Bluetooth perhaps being the "green bubble" fallback option.
• notapenny 5y ago
  I've "enjoyed" most of these including the occasional loud blast of white noise when trying to connect, and my favourite; they disconnect immediately when there's no output for a few seconds and then take a few seconds to re-connect. Mac OSX also doesn't seem to enjoy that, immediately reconnecting takes a bit and often fails. They're nice but they suffer from "trying to be smart" but end up being annoying.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Annoyance 1 (the biggest one), and Annoyance 4 are the standouts for me. ANNOYANCE 8: Updating the firmware. 'Nuff said...
• somehnguy 5y ago
  I absolutely love my AirPods, so much so that when my original AirPods battery started dying early during meetings I bought a new set of AirPod Pro without even thinking. That said, I experience all of these issues too. Another one to add to the list that I really don't understand. If I'm listening to a podcast on my phone and remove an airpod for a moment (to speak to someone or whatever) the podcast pauses as expected. But then putting it back in my ear there seems to be only about a 25% chance the podcast starts playing again. Most of the time I have to open the Spotify app back up and manually resume.
  • muttled 5y ago
    I've noticed when it doesn't resume, often the music player also isn't on the lock screen. I'm wondering if it's getting kicked out of memory if it happens to be in a non-active paused state when the device decides it needs to free some memory up?
    • somehnguy 5y ago
      If I had to place a bet - my money would be on your theory. I've noticed the exact same thing, which makes it even worse as I then have to pull up the app drawer and go back to my player app. At least it never gets totally kicked out in that the state is preserved/not reloading like a fresh open. I guess my question from there would be why does the device suddenly feel the need to release resources when the music/podcast pauses? I'm experiencing it on an iPhone 13 Pro which should have no shortage. If it was a once in a blue moon thing I would brush it off as just unlucky timing, but it happens very regularly.
• uzbit 5y ago
  I think most of these annoyances can be taken broadly from the fact that everything about any Bluetooth experience is just absolute trash. Why does it take several tries to pair sometimes? When paired, why does it sometimes auto-connect and sometimes not? Why does it just never pair at all? What's with that pair code that it says to enter, but auto fills (sometimes)? And only sometimes do you have to use that code (which is a security thing only implemented on things with screens I'm guessing). I'm sure there's more, but I've already dedicated my days frustration to this. All that being said, I was very happy to "upgrade" to a Pixel 5a for the 3.5mm headphone jack. It's been a supreme experience to live in the past and future.
  • davidmurdoch 5y ago
    How have consumers let companies get away with "premium" phones being the ones with fewer features?
    • criddell 5y ago
      Maybe they don't mind putting the adapter on their headphone cable? If you aren't switching devices a lot, it's a one-time operation that's pretty easy to manage.
    • lanstin 5y ago
      Because it is, statistically, an easier and more pleasant experience. I really get tired of taking twenty minutes to configure a bunch of settings for each marginally novel piece of tech I acquire.
      • 0xedd 5y ago
      • davidmurdoch 5y ago
        I've never had to configure my wired headphones before in my life. What kind of headphones do you have?!
    • 5y ago
• globular-toast 5y ago
  I've bought 2 pairs of headphones and 2 pairs of earphones in my entire life so far (I'm 36). And guess what? They just work. Is it really worth it just to not have wires?
• j_m_b 5y ago
  relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2055/ https://xkcd.com/2055/ Bluetooth is still a nightmare after being around for over 2 decades. Meanwhile, my wireless mouse with USB dongle just works.
• shaunpersad 5y ago
  Airpods are by far the worst Apple product I've ever owned, for all the same reasons the author listed. I genuinely don't understand how they can still say they Airpods are "fantastic" and "wonderful". I would say on average I encounter these issues 50% of the time. Most of my day is doing Zoom calls and either myself or the other party (using Airpods as well) will spend the first 30-60 seconds either switching out for another pair of headphones or trying to get theirs to connect. I'm sure most of these issues actually have to do with Bluetooth, but the criticism still stands. Have we just convinced ourselves that they're great for some mysterious reason?
  • matthewdgreen 5y ago
    Airpods work wonderfully compared to previous headsets! Apple vastly improved the pairing process and reliability over previous products. What Apple needs to polish is the multi-device support. If you're going out for a walk with your phone they will work (nearly) 100% of the time. If you have a Mac and a phone and are switching back and forth for Zoom calls, they will reliably annoy the crap out of you. Before WFH I assume Apple thought this was an edge case, not something we'd be doing for hours each day. PS Google Meet deserves some blame here, too. I often end up with "Airpods for output, Mac speaker for input" and this is entirely due to Meet's burying these weird defaults in a Settings menu.
• tpict 5y ago
  I swear that the automatic switching feature was almost flawless when it first shipped, but at some point the "is the user paying attention to this audio source" heuristics were changed. It now seems very eager to switch to my phone and reluctant to switch to my Mac. There was also a bug for a period of months–I need to check to see if this still happens, I've conditioned myself not to trigger it–where 1. I put in my AirPods 2. I click them in the audio drop-down in the Mac menu bar to connect 3. The "Connect to AirPods" notification appears 4. I click "connect" because I'm already connected and it's the biggest target to dismiss the notification 5. the AirPods DISCONNECT! Come on...
  • sorahn 5y ago
    I have slightly the opposite problem. My AirPods are too eager to reconnect to my Mac. If I’m in a phone call with someone, on my phone, using my AirPods, and my Mac decided to play a single alert for whatever reason (slack, mail, text, whatever) the AirPods IMMEDIATELY connect to the Mac to play that one single notification, and leave me trying to shout across my house to my phone to tell the other person to hold on. Super frustrating.
• eadmund 5y ago
  You know what always just works? Plugging headphones into a headphone jack. It also uses significantly more well-developed technology which does not require the use of rare earth metals and eye-wateringly complex semiconductor manufacturing processes. And those wired headphones will still be in use years or even decades after those AirPods have corroded to nasty plastic and metal lumps in a landfill somewhere.
  • criddell 5y ago
    You still have that option but you might need to buy an adapter which doesn't seem like such a big deal. Those wired headphones with noise cancelling and transparency modes probably do require eye-wateringly complex semiconductors.
    • recursive 5y ago
      You'll never need an adapter if you never buy an audio-producing device lacking a jack. Passive attenuation seems to be almost as good as active in my experience. And when you factor in that the headphones no longer need a battery, it's a net benefit in my book.
      • criddell 5y ago
        Most people aren't upgrading their phone for audio functionality (I believe cameras are the biggest driver of upgrades). The fact that you need an adapter to continue using your favorite headphones isn't going to raise many eyebrows among the general public, especially when they are mostly moving to wireless headphones anyway.
• jmacd 5y ago
  There is something weird about the AirPods Pro product line. I think a lot of us who are very technology focused can appreciate the marvel of engineering that they are. Long battery life, excellent noise cancellation, the right weight, water resistant, etc. By many of my friends and my wife, all of who work in non tech fields but otherwise are 100% apple device people, all seem pretty much not impressed by them. For Christmas I got my wife a pair of Nothing headphones. They are 1/3 the price and I figured it was worth a try since she basically just stopped using her AirPod Pros. Now she raves about these cheap Nothing headphones. Tells her friends they are better. Less obtrusive, clear so they stand out less, good audio quality, and they don't try to magically switch devices, they just wait for you to decide what you want them connected to. They support AAC on Apple, but have not great Bluetooth Audio support for Android.
  • openknot 5y ago
    The price of the AirPods Pro ($329 USD, though they go on sale for a significant discount quite a bit) might be a reason. I purchased no-name Bluetooth wireless earphones for ~$55 USD before the AirPods Pro, and they were shockingly good for the price (super small, lightweight, long battery; similar observations that your wife reported about the Nothing headphones). I got the AirPods Pro after that, expecting a massive upgrade, but really the only significant difference was the noise cancellation (which is why I still use them primarily). The easier switching between Apple devices is nice too, but for my use case, I mostly use the AirPods on my phone anyways. So for the price differential between generic headphones, I would expect a massive upgrade, but now it feels like a nice upgrade but pretty expensive for what it does (especially since I'll have to consider replacing them once the battery degrades).
    • dvtrn 5y ago
      Very similar story with cheaper no-name bluetooth wireless earbuds. Honestly..despite the other complaints in the thread here about regular bluetooth earbuds…I’ve had a MUCH better experience with them than the airpods at doing one thing: being wireless earbuds.
  • pwenzel 5y ago
• visarga 5y ago
  My AirPods2 switch to low quality audio - they sound like a 5$ pair of phones, presumably on account of the microphone being activated. I am very disappointed, already looking for my AirPods1 to replace it. It's just not as easy to use as the old ones. They fall off my ears, they die suddenly with no warning (old ones were better in this regard). I mean, Apple makes the AirPods, Apple makes my laptop, so why don't they ... you know ... make sound? They fail at performing the main functionality.
• theginger 5y ago
  Why is this article is dated 28th of January 2022? It is the 26th of January 2022, (maybe the 27th in a very eastern timezone)
• atombender 5y ago
  Annoyance 1: Go into the AirPods settings (which are, paradoxically, in your phone's Bluetooth settings, and only when connected) and set "Connect to This iPhone" to "When Last Connected to This iPhone". This will disable the wonky automation. I've never experienced 2, 2a, or 2b. 3: This is a Zoom problem, I believe. I find that Zoom periodically enables the microphone even though I'm not in a meeting, and you can see this in the latest macOS by looking for the orange dot in the upper right corner of the screen. The workaround is to quit Zoom, or go into Zoom's settings and change the microphone device to your Mac's. 6: You may have hit a hardware problem with early models. Happened to me, and I also often experienced a screaming feedback tone when I put the earbuds in my ears. Apple will replace them for free. 4, 5, 7: Definitely.
  • jeremyjh 5y ago
    Annoyance 1 almost made me give up on the AirPods until I found that setting, I'd often have my phone at the very edge of bluetooth range and so it would keep reconnecting to it while listening to music from my laptop. I much prefer just explicitly connecting to the pods from the device I want to use, though this is more steps than it should be on iOS.
• break_the_bank 5y ago
  If there are other runners here, with enough ear sweat the AirPods starts beeping, the noise makes you want to pull the AirPods away immediately. After some cool down they start working again, though my right AirPod now starts "hissing" sooner than it beeps. This is when I run at 100+ Fahrenheit. Still a great product though.
  • becurious 5y ago
    My original AirPods started to not charge reliably. It was corrosion from the sweat from running. I now have a pair of AirPods Pro which are supposed to be sweat resistant but I’m skeptical. If I do a long run in the summer there’s a lot of sweat.
• tjpnz 5y ago
  >After several years of usage, my first two pairs of AirPods both developed a buzzing noise which became unbearable. The only solution I found was to buy a new pair. Is that really acceptable for premium headphones? My Bose QC25s continue to work fine after almost eight years of daily use. I realise that there's more which can go wrong with the AirPods, but two (?) years isn't much at all. The author should've taken the issue further rather than just giving Apple more money.
  • capableweb 5y ago
    It's acceptable if it's something you're used to the practice. Many Apple users use their products for seemingly infinite amount of time before retiring the device, but even more users keep buying the newest and greatest when it comes out because A) they want to have the latest and/or B) what they currently had broke and the accepted solution is to buy new.
• namelosw 5y ago
  I'm using AirPods Pro & Max and multiple Macs. They're frustrating sometimes, but still substantially better than most Bluetooth devices especially Bluetooth headphones. Bluetooth is such a crappy technology that blocks for better wireless implementations we could have.
  • bredren 5y ago
    I also think these are overall the best wireless headphones on the market. Not just in Bluetooth connectivity.
• bitwize 5y ago
  You know what Just Work? The $10 Skullcandy headphones I plugged into my phone's headphone jack. Forces greater than us have decided that something so simple yet so functional is obsolete so we can't have it on our phones without a dongle.
  • recursive 5y ago
    "Forces" didn't do it. The headphone jack on my phone is doing great. You can have one too if you choose to.
    • bitwize 5y ago
      Most if not all cellphone manufacturers have decided to discontinue 3.5mm headphone jacks on their flagship, if not lesser, models. So at some point your choices will be to either use a potato (often with a locked bootloader) or muddle through as best you can with an old phone that cease receiving security updates, including kernel updates, in the very near future. It's the same forces that decided all TVs should be "smart" and have made dumb TVs difficult and sometimes expensive to obtain, especially if they are of any quality. The manufacturers want you to buy whatever drives their own and their partners' profit margins, and the buying public is too apathetic to care.
      • recursive 5y ago
        Phones seemed like they were basically solved a decade ago. Everything is so over-specced, that I'm sure a potato would handle everything I could conceivably do with a phone. Except battery life. That still sucks. (or maybe it's worse than it used to be)
• victorbstan 5y ago
  I hope someone at Apple listens to these things. There are a lot of little things that can be improved in general regarding Bluetooth devices. Currently, if my MacBook restarts, I can’t use my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to input my password, I have to use the built in keyboard. Using Logitech devices.
  • hbn 5y ago
    I don't know if it's the same for third party peripherals, but I know I thought this was the case for a long time with my first party Apple wireless keyboard + mouse, but it turned out it just didn't automatically connect on the login screen, and if I just hit any button on the keyboard it would connect in a second or 2 (I'm guessing that hitting keys while it's disconnected sends out a signal to pair)
• toolcombinator 5y ago
  This is part of Apple’s problem right now. They’ve lost focus. TV shows, cars, VR headsets, six different iPad models. So the small stuff suffers: iOS. OS X. AirPods. Airdrop. Airdrop just stopped working for me recently. The clock app in iOS still only lets you have ONE reminder.
• martini333 5y ago
  Annoyance: When I use AirPods Pro and turn on my car, my iPhone automatically switches to the car-stereo's Bluetooth as expected. If I take the AirPods out of my ears for the first 5-10 secs after the switch, the iPhone pauses whatever was playing. I need to wait, or resume manually.
• smoovb 5y ago
  Back to my $15 Xiaomi Mi earbuds after trying the Airpod pros. While not great for calls, battery life after a year of use is 10x better than the Airpods. Plus a better fit for my ears and 0 fear of loss.
• jhaile 5y ago
  Annoyance 5 is the worst for me: the 5-7 second delay when switching from Mac to phone. I'm usually on my Mac during the day, Zoom calls, Spotify, etc. Then I get a phone call. If I just answer, it doesn't auto-switch fast enough. And if I manually switch, it regularly doesn't switch at all on the first try. And even when it does switch, there's a 5 second delay while the other person is going "hello? are you there?"
• danielktdoranie 5y ago
  Mine work great.
• TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
  Annoyance 1 - you can configure auto-connect per device. I have three computers and an iPhone that have been paired with my AirPods. I only have my iPhone configured to connect to my AirPods automatically. Annoyance 2 - since you hear the "connect" tone when the AirPods connect to a device, my guess is the author's AirPods have connected to a device they are not looking at. This is what was happening to me before I realized the auto connection was configurable. Annoyance 3 - this happens for my other Bluetooth headphones that have a microphone when using Mac OS as well. It's a Mac OS issue. I've noticed with a recent update that it happens less frequently. The fix is to set the audio output to the computer speakers, then back to the AirPods. Annoyance 5 - yeah, switching takes time. Based on my experience with Bluetooth devices, I'm not sure how much this is AirPods specific. I ended up buying a pair of the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones because they can connect to two Bluetooth devices. This solved the switching delay, with the caveat that the mic on the WH-1000XM4 is not great so I also bought a cheap USB mic for meetings.
  • cybertim 5y ago
    And to add to this, i learned to not use the 'bluetooth' icon to manage the AirPods, instead use the 'triangle with broadcast signal'-icon found next to the volume in the control centre or on many other different locations on your ipad, iphone or apple tv. Just turn off the auto-connect feature and start using that icon, all the mentioned 'annoyances' will go away :)
    • Veen 5y ago
      > triangle with broadcast signal The AirPlay icon. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/airplay/overview/icons/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
    • skinnymuch 5y ago
      Ah wow! This is so obvious to use AirPlay to manage them. Thank you! Will see how this goes.
• vernie 5y ago
  CBB? Yes. Better than the alternatives? Also yes.
• rabuse 5y ago
  Had a problem with my AirPods just the other day trying to show someone some "cool features" they can use them for. I go to put them in, and they essentially disappeared from my iPhone's bluetooth list, and it was not possible to reconnect them until I restarted my phone. I just said "they're great when they work..."
• morelish 5y ago
  I have found HomePod (mini) to be not great. Doesn't work well with third party services like Spotify or radio providers, so it's content is limited. There's also a very large lag (5 seconds ish) for the sound to stream from my phone or Mac to the HomePod. Pausing or starting sound is delayed by 5 seconds (ish). The lag is so large you cannot really use the HomePod as a speaker attached to a Mac, if you watch a video, the sound comes in 5 seconds delayed. Bit of a pity. Hopefully the next versions will improve the lag. Even providing physical audio cable input would be good. As the speaker itself is fairly nice.
• erwincoumans 5y ago
  I wished they were using a low latency bluetooth codec, such ad AptX or Aptx-LL.
• Bud 5y ago
  His gripe about the buzzing sound in AirPods is easily fixable and he obviously didn't even bother checking. Just went straight to blaming Apple. Apple will replace AirPods with this issue. For free. Several of the other gripes are spurious as well.
• BenderV 5y ago
  Agree with the point of the blog, but the biggest hurdle for me: If you do a short and intensive sprint, Airpods usually will register a click and skip to the next song...
• agency 5y ago
  I just upgraded to a pair of AirPods Pro after my old AirPods were slowly losing battery life until they can barely get through a single podcast ep. It was pretty cool and eerie putting them in for the first time and having the noise cancellation activate and just drop out all the ambient noise. I've never used active noise cancellation and it really makes you realize how much ambient noise you tune out. Beyond that I'm not 100% sure how I feel about them yet. They definitely don't fit quite as well in my ears as the originals and anecdotally a couple coworkers mentioned returning theirs because they were falling out. And they definitely don't fit in their case in the same way as the original. The way the originals just magnetically fall into place perfectly is an amazing piece of product design. Really makes them feel like some otherworldly artifact. The Pros are definitely not the same in that regard.
• robertlagrant 5y ago
  I use Airpod Pros (no Apple, I will not say "Airpods Pro"). Some of the gripes are familiar; some not.
• kristjansson 5y ago
  Most of the authors complaints are valid. I'm definitely guilty of the 10-second 'Hello? Hello?' dance at the start of phone calls. However, AirPods are such a good product I can forgive them all of those flaws and more. One hidden feature: I was walking around my city listening to something on AirPods Pro. A truck in the lane adjacent to the sidewalk braked hard, making painfully loud squeal. Except I didn't hear it. The AirPod on the street side entered noise canceling mode quickly enough to silence almost all of the sound, and stayed there for a few seconds afterward before reverting to ambient sounds. I'm not sure if that was a purposeful feature, or just a volume limiter for the ambient-noise mode kicking in. Regardless, it was one of the most delightful experiences I've ever had with a product. The thing just quietly, casually making my day a little bit better, then getting out of the way again.
  • adh636 5y ago
    So if I'm understanding this correctly, you had the device set to let in ambient sound, but a motor vehicle slamming on the brakes was filtered out, and you consider this to be a good thing? Sounds dangerous to me.
    • kristjansson 5y ago
      It was still audible, but filtered from 'damagingly painful' to 'perceptible', and only on the side that was directly exposed. I don't find a lot of navigational value in listening to someone's poorly maintained brakes while I'm walking around.
• jon889 5y ago
  It would be nice if audio from all your devices played at once through AirPods instead of it trying to switch by guessing which one you want to listen to. In exactly the same way you can hear all your devices at once if not using headphones, the advantage being only you can hear them and not anyone else. Eg if watching TV on a laptop with headphones but you get sent a TikTok or short clip on your phone it plays over the TV and you just tune out the TV for a few seconds like you would if your were at home watching TV while using your phone.
• qwertox 5y ago
  My "it just works"-setup is the following: all devices are connected via a cable to a cheap audio mixer, including one Bluetooth receiver to which my phone can connect to. The mixer has a long cable to a well positioned spot in the apartment and the cable ends with a Bluetooth transmitter. A small (4cm x 4cm x 1cm) Bluetooth receiver has wired in-ear headphones connected to it and that's it. This receiver has small a magnet glued to it, and the desk has another magnet glued to it. The USB-charging cable also has a magnetic adapter so that the micro-USB end is left in the receiver, and when I leave the desk I just have to pull the receiver way, which stops the loading process since the USB cable is also easily separated. When I get back to the desk I just snap the receiver to the magnet of the desk, and if I feel that I should charge it (no issues with using it 6 hours without charging it), I just snap the magnetic end of the cable to the receiver. Every device which wants to send me audio can do it, and I can move freely around the apartment without any interruption. When I go out I use another Bluetooth headset connected to the phone. The annoyances listed in the article would drive me absolutely mad. --- Basically 3 of these: https://www.amazon.de/1mii-Bluetooth-Transmitter-Dual-Verbindung-Stereoanlag/dp/B08JLZYP32 https://www.amazon.de/1mii-Bluetooth-Transmitter-Dual-Verbin... (one for phone, long cable sender, magnetic receiver) one of these: https://www.amazon.de/Moukey-Mischpult-Mikrofon-Keyboard-B%C3%BChnenmixer/dp/B08BBXK8CY https://www.amazon.de/Moukey-Mischpult-Mikrofon-Keyboard-B%C... one of these: https://www.amazon.de/JEEREE-Magnetisches-Schnellladung-Magnetladekabel-Schnellladekabel/dp/B09NN4CZQ5 https://www.amazon.de/JEEREE-Magnetisches-Schnellladung-Magn... and all the cables needed to connect the devices to the mixer. I have this setup for some years now, so my gadgets are not the ones listed here, but an older equivalent. APTX-LL removes any noticeable delay between video and audio.
• BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  It's weird to me how many people are like "yeah but every other bluetooth is worse". I have Airpod Pros and experienced every one of these issues and many more on the regular with them, but my several years old now Bose QC 35II never have any of these problems, still last like 5 times as long on battery after years of recharge cycles, interact better with two simultaneously connected devices, have better signal range before dropping out, and I can control the damned volume without trying a dozen times to get Siri to wake the fuck up because airpods have no built-in volume controls and Siri's voice activation is worse than terrible. The Airpods are set to connect automatically to my macbook when I wear them AND THEY DON'T. EVER. And then calls on my iPhone will stupidly decide to connect and route audio to airpods that I'm not even wearing while they are just sitting on my desk when the phone was literally moments before using the handset speaker for a video. Know what bluetooth device does not have these problems? You guessed it, the one not made by Apple. Like...come on. I really want to like airpods, but they're just not good.
  • hellomyguys 5y ago
    Yeah, using my AirPods Max is one of the most frustrating experiences. In the past week I've had to force reset them so many times and it almost seems arbitrary when it actually connects. I can't imagine a non-savvy tech person being able to easily debug it.
    • bredren 5y ago
      With Mac / iOS devices? It should not behave like this. Consider swapping them out.
      • hellomyguys 5y ago
        Yes with iPads and iPhones. It's not an uncommon experience if you google it. I imagine its a software issue not a hardware issue too.
  • BoxOfRain 5y ago
    That's even more weird given my experience with a pair of Beats Studio 3 headphones I have which are de facto a brand of Apple headphones. They've never given me Bluetooth grief once in years of very regular use, it's not like they can't do reliable Bluetooth equipment.
• INTPenis 5y ago
  It's nice for someone like me who left the Apple ecosystem many years ago to see that an image for producing fancy gadgets does not mean you can eliminate common software issues. Because this sounds just like any pair of BT headphones I've used in the last 2 years. Since I finally gave in and started using BT headphones All in all I love them, I love being able to clean with headphones on and not snag on anything. I love being able to bike with them and not be tied to my phone. But the BT issues are horrendous. After a year of just accepting that BT sucked someone finally said "install the app" so I did and the firmware update that resulted in solved most of the common issues actually. So what's left now is weird stuff and quirks of Android. Like Android has a default setting to reconnect to connected speakers as soon as it sees them. Just like in OPs post this is supposed to be convenient but 99% of the time it's just annoying to me. Because I haven't even put my bike away coming home and already the speaker is blaring my audiobook in the kitchen, where I can't hear it. The other issues are the slow connection when you get a call but that's a bit over demanding imho. Since it wasn't connected and you connect as you get the call so it's a bit short notice. And then there are the rare unexplained issues like once a month I just disconnect and reboot everything because apps are playing, but no sound is coming out on BT.
  • dont__panic 5y ago
    Yeah, there's something comforting about a physical connection I can inspect for defects or just unplug, then plug back in if audio isn't working right. Even when I used AirPods/Pro for a while, I never really trusted the headphones. Sometimes I would take them out of the case and they just didn't connect to my phone. Sometimes they didn't seat quite right in the case and didn't charge overnight, and would be totally dead. Sometimes they would connect, play the sound, show up as the audio output on my phone... then refuse to actually play any audio. I understand that wireless is a nice convenience for a lot of people. But BT makes wireless such a nightmare I just don't think it's worth it. Incredible that nobody has come up with a competing standard.
    • falcolas 5y ago
      Logitech has had a competing standard for years (I have decade-old wireless G series headphones which work flawlessly). I'm not sure why their low-latency/high quality system hasn't been more broadly adopted. Probably requires too much power.
• skinkestek 5y ago
  More annoyingly for me they didn't show up in "Where is" or what that feature is called in English, even if they had power and were close to my phone and had been for hours. I recently wasted an hour or so thinking I must have left them behind at kids soccer training while they were just out of sight next to me.
• dilliwal 5y ago
  Annoyance 0. Your blog post date is wrong But you have a point, I share some of your annoyances
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• hamandcheese 5y ago
  I’m curious if any of these annoyances are better when using with an M1 mac. For example, plugging in my dock (with two 4K monitors attached) is always super slow and janky and takes several seconds for the monitors to display anything. Supposedly on the M1 this is instant.
• tarunkotia 5y ago
  I love the AirPods but stopped using it because of what I have been reading about EMF radiation emitted constantly even when not in use by AirPods. I still need to read-up more about it till then I am using the wired headphones. https://www.macintoshhowto.com/hardware/extreme-emf-exposure-from-apple-airpods.html https://www.macintoshhowto.com/hardware/extreme-emf-exposure...
• jugg1es 5y ago
  I highly recommend the brand Jabra if you are an Android user. Basically all other bluetooth buds have horrible UX in my experience besides Jabra and AirPods.
• unethical_ban 5y ago
  I didn't read the whole article, and this is quite a conversation. However, I have to ask: Why oh why is digital voice quality downgraded to telephony quality, when the computer and buds both play crystal musical audio? This happens for me in Windows, and IIRC in Mac as well. What about the audio device being headset vs. speaker changes things at a technical level? This only seems to happen for Bluetooth. Using a RF gaming headset or a wired connection causes no issue. keyword: Annoyance 3
• simonista 5y ago
  Two suggestions that might help OP with some of these annoyances: - See the "Turn off automatic switching" section of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212204 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212204, to take manual control of when they switch devices - In System Preferences -> Notifications & Focus you can switch any apps notifications from "Alerts" to "Banners" which will make them go away automatically when ignored.
  • JeremyHerrman 5y ago
    Unfortunately the nearby headphone notifications are not generated by an app, so you can't use the normal notification banner settings. The only way I've found to disable them is to go to Bluetooth preferences (while the headphones are connected), click options next to the headphones, and change the "Connect to This Mac" dropdown from "Automatically" to "When Last Connected to This Mac". I'm not satisfied with this solution since I enjoy the automatic switching between devices, but I'm driven crazy by the notifications that pop up on my mac literally as I'm listening to music with those headphones on my iPhone. C'mon Apple - this is all within your ecosystem!
• ho_schi 5y ago
  3.5 mm jack Nasty. Yes ;) I'm sorry but it solves these problems and I think most of us have more prominent issues. Bluetooth - and even overpriced Apple products - are usually working well with one connection only. And the headset profile needs to sacrifice quality for voice input. This is to large degrees a question about priority of the user. If you need good or even excellent quality - opt for a good headset and a jack. Yes. Some issues can be solved with higher priorities by Apple. Or Apple doesn't care because it is good enough. Maybe Apple need an argument for another bad proprietary protocol to make things worse. I would be happy if I can switch my mouse from Logitech (Bluetooth) between two laptops with coupling them entirely again.
  • quacker 5y ago
    Another option is 2.4 GHz wireless, which is common in gaming headsets, at least, for low-latency / high-quality audio. The downside is it requires a dongle.
    • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >Another option is 2.4 GHz wireless Sorry to break it to you but Bluetooth also operates on the 2.4GHz ISM band. Those 2.4GHz dongles you're talking about is basically a custom wireless protocol that doesn't follow Bluetooth or any other open standard or OSI stack but is most likely based on some internal protocol of what the three major chip makers in the 2.4GHz space offer (Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs, Nordic Semi) . I think the world needs less proprietary standards, not more, where the dongle is paired to the device in factory and if you loose the dongle then most likely the headphone or peripheral is instant e-waste. So I'll stick with Bluetooth for the time being thank you very much.
      • eqvinox 5y ago
        The reason "2.4 GHz wireless" is an option is the very proprietary standard right there, or rather the static pairing coming with it. The absence of Bluetooth connection negotiation/switching/… removes an entire class of bugs and annoyances.
• gnicholas 5y ago
  Apple doesn’t allow you to use ANC on AirPods when you have only one ear inserted. But there’s actually a setting — buried deep inside the Accessibility preferences — that enables this feature. Why wouldn’t they make this the default? Who would want ANC to work only some of the time? And what does this setting have to do with accessibility/disability?
  • ynniv 5y ago
    I've had it run with only one ear, and it feels uncomfortably lopsided. Maybe if you could only hear in one ear or had a hearing aid in the other you would want to enable this. In general, accessibility settings seems to be a place immune from the simplicity police at Apple. There are often useful features in there.
    • gnicholas 5y ago
      I completely agree. I actually just wrote a blog post called The Best Accessibility Features You've Never Heard Of, which details some of these features that Apple, Google, and Amazon hide within accessibility settings. [1] 1: https://beelinereader.medium.com/the-best-accessibility-features-youve-never-heard-of-94ebc81320ee https://beelinereader.medium.com/the-best-accessibility-feat...
  • ahepp 5y ago
    unless you were deaf in the other ear, why would you want to use ANC in one ear only?
    • gnicholas 5y ago
      I use one ear at a time, both for battery purposes, and so I don’t have the two AirPods communicating with each other through my brain. I realize that we think nothing bad happens from the emissions from AirPods, but this may change in the future. Some have pointed out that prior studies involved devices that were not stuck quite so far into our ears. Since I listen to podcasts and books, I have no need to use two simultaneously.
• Lamad123 5y ago
  28 January 2022?! First time in my life reading something before it was published!
• suresk 5y ago
  I had frustrating issues where they would halfway connect, then disconnect, and only a reboot of the Mac would fix it. Finally trawled through system logs to realize that Spotify was preventing it from fully connecting. Apparently, an app can register callbacks of some sort that get called during the connect/handshake/sync process, and those can cause it to fail? Also, hate how sometimes only one side will charge.
• gnicholas 5y ago
  I also find the automatic device switching to be super annoying. In my experience it is both under inclusive and over inclusive. I have no idea how this passed muster for release at a company like Apple. There is a way to turn off this feature in settings, BTW.
• rootusrootus 5y ago
  I do get some of the quirks, but not nearly that full list. If I'm on a call or listening to music through my AirPods when connected to my Mac, and then open my phone, they do connect to the phone, but it does not switch the audio away from the computer unless I tell it to on the phone. I also have a pair of fancy Sony noise canceling wireless headphones, and they're much more finicky about connecting and staying connected than my Airpods are. Fundamentally the problem seems to be that bluetooth kinda sucks.
• glxxyz 5y ago
  I've given up with AirPods Pro. I had to replace them several times during the warranty period (once was a recall). Even when working correctly they would have annoying connection problems, for several conference calls I had to switch back to an old school wired pair, which just always works. My attempt to have the case (which only showed life while connected to power) resulted in Apple throwing away my working AirPods and trying to upsell me a whole new case + 2 AirPods (at above market price, with no charging cable, and a shorter warranty). If you do still have AirPods out of warranty- a support adviser admitted to me that they don't actually service them, and they don't replace one component alone- if you send them in for repair they just toss the whole thing and sell you a new set. So if only one piece is broken just report it as lost and they'll charge you to replace it.
  • Me1000 5y ago
    I usually dont buy AppleCare for my products, but I figured since this was a 1st gen AirPods Pro and they were so small AppleCare was justified this time. And boy am I glad I did, I've had my AirPods Pro replaced like five or six times now. Issues I've experienced: - Loud random static noise (usually for about .25 seconds). It's like someone screaming in your ear. I've experienced this now with TWO pairs. - Noise canceling/transparency mode just stopping working when you touch them. - "Hey Siri" just stopped responding (not usually a big deal, but that's usually how I make calls) - One pair just stopped working entirely. Wouldn't charge or anything. - Each ear would get out of sync until you took them out of your ears. AirPods Pro are by far the worst Apple product that I purchased. I regret buying them. I suspect the regular AirPods don't have most of these issues since I think the issues were mostly related to feature specific to the Pros. I can't imagine how angry I would be if I hadn't purchased AppleCare with them, so many defects.
    • smoldesu 5y ago
      My ex-boyfriend went through 3 or 4 pairs in one year, I could hardly believe he stuck around after the second replacement. Guy didn't even do anything besides sit in his office and type, either, I have no idea what could have caused their repeated failure besides bad QA.
• kawfey 5y ago
  Regarding annoyance 6, Apple replaces crackling airpods for free. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-airpods-pro-free-replacement-faulty-airpods-static-crackling-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-airpods-pro-free-repla... I've had my left one replaced twice now, no charge. But since my left pod is new, and my right is old, the right has a rapidly decaying battery life, which cannot be replaced free of charge.
• amelius 5y ago
  Are AirPods safe for audiophiles?
• ryguytilidie 5y ago
  My favorite part is how on Monday mornings when I have a meeting I can just 100% count on one of these things happening: -One of them will have a dead battery, even though they've been in a perfectly clean case that charged it yesterday and will charge it tomorrow. -They will no longer be paired with my phone for some reason. -They will pair with my phone, but just not recognize that they should be the primary audio output and calls will just play on speaker phone. But sure, they "just work".
• brezelnbitte 5y ago
  Airpod Pros are great for running but that’s it. I’m genuinely surprised to see them used in meetings given battery life and well with my ears they would fall out immediately. I can’t chew or talk without them wiggling out. I tried beats fit pro and were worse.
• Pxtl 5y ago
  Honestly, the whole Bluetooth pairing process is an industry-wide failure. I'd throw out all the pairing logic industry-wide and say "Connecting to Bluetooth peripherals requires NFC. NFC-tap a Bluetooth device to its host to connect".
• AtNightWeCode 5y ago
  It is a fashion and convenience tool. Poor sound quality. Comes with the general Bluetooth problems. The funniest problem I had was on the subway and some bored kid next to me opened and closed the lid back and forth. For some reason this spammed my phone with connectivity messages to the point that I could not use my phone.
  • duderific 5y ago
    I think the sound quality is remarkably good given the size and form factor. It's not comparable to over the ear headphones of course, but that is a different use case.
• juramento 5y ago
  Yeah, I suggest trying -other- brands of bluetooth earbuds and then write a comparison. After experiencing more frequent and odd annoyances, for me AirPods really do "just work".
• orkon 5y ago
  I seem to experience troubles like that with any kind of Bluetooth devices. E.g., sometimes they don't connect or disconnect or lag. At this point, I am suspicious of the entire Bluetooth technology. The same is with WiFi actually: it does work well most of the time but sometimes it does not (for whatever reasons, bugs? changes in environment?).
  • ConceptJunkie 5y ago
    I find Bluetooth to be the flakiest of the common technologies I use. There are just way too many times that it just doesn't work for no discernable reason. I have 3 cars with Bluetooth and they all have their quirks, but they generally work. The Ford Fusion, which boasts the Sync system "by Microsoft" is the worst, though. It will always show the little Bluetooth icon soon after starting the car, but when you try to switch to your device, it says there is no Bluetooth device and I have to connect manually by selecting the phone (which Ford lovingly places behind about 8 knob turns and clicks). And of course, sometimes it simply refuses to acknowledge there is a phone at all, so we keep an analog audio-in cord handy. And I have had a couple of different Bluetooth phones. My previous phone was a Samsung Galaxy 4 Mini that I replaced about 6 months ago with an A52. Bluetooth always worked fine with both phones, but again, there are quirks. In my Honda Civic, the old phone would automatically connect to the car's system and start playing whatever music I'd left off within about 20-30 seconds, whereas with the new (and much nicer) Samsung A52, it takes 2 or 3 minutes... or until I get impatient and select the phone manually.
• lifewallet_dev 5y ago
  > AirPods are wonderful products. But I just wish these annoying gripes would go away. What's wonderful about all that? Our fanboyism is re-defining the word "wonderful", Annoyence 4 and 3 made me think AirPods broke and they happen so frequently, I also have the Sony wh-1000xm4 and I cannot configure the mic without degrading my audio quality. I'm back to wired, I have a Beyerdynamic DT 1990 PRO, and none of these overhyped products match its quality, I can live with the cables :)
  • JohnBooty 5y ago
    I'm back to wired Same here. Absolutely don't understand the appeal of wireless headsets for people who are sitting at a desk. I've snapped up a bunch of used Bose QC25s from eBay, their last model that used a removable standard AAA battery. Great sound, solid noise canceling, the wired mic is fine, they work even if the battery is drained, sound is better than Bluetooth. I keep a little AAA battery charger on my desk so it takes 10 seconds to swap out a depleted AAA for a new one; IMO far less hassle than remembering to charge headphones with non-replaceable internal batteries. I expect the QC25s to last more or less indefinitely, aside from occasional replacement of the (insanely comfortable) earpads.
    • loginatnine 5y ago
      Yea I went wired at the beginning of the pandemic, QC-35 wired with a wired antlion mic, works like a charm. 3 main reasons I went with this setup : 1- Reduce the audio lag (bluetooth comes with a noticeable lag in video conferencing) 2- Not having to worry about battery life (going wired vastly improved the QC-35 battery life) 3- Keep the stellar comfort (at least for me) of the QC-35. I personally don't understand why people endure the sucky audio quality of bluetooth handset profile. Couple this with a very ordinary battery life for airpods (I don't care if it charges in 10 minutes, when it's out and you need it you're stuck), I don't understand why this product is so popular.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
• diebeforei485 5y ago
  Annoyances 1 and 7 can be solved by changing the settings for automatic switching. The instructions for that are at the bottom of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212204 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212204, under "Turn off Automatic Switching".
• gnicholas 5y ago
  Automatic device switching is hell. These two anecdotes happened since I read this article 10 minutes ago: I was listening to a podcast using AirPods and my iPhone. Someone reacted to a message I’d sent, which paused the podcast. When I tried to resume a second later, my AirPods had magically connected to my computer instead of my phone. WTF! Still listening to the podcast and setting up a FaceTime call for my kid on an iPad. Before starting the call, I turned off Bluetooth, so my iPad wouldn’t connect to my AirPods. Regardless, it connected to them anyway. Did no one at Apple test this ‘feature’?
  • Spivak 5y ago
    This is a bad end-user experience but I can kinda see the flow. You're listening on your iPhone but using your computer. Device switching then says "okay since they're using their computer if any sound comes from the computer they should hear it" and then iMessage made a sound. Had the thing you did been playing a YouTube video or Spotify then it would be weird if your AirPods didn't switch. I think it makes sense for notification sounds to not trigger switching by default but IDK what they currently do isn't totally unreasonable.
    • gnicholas 5y ago
      This would make sense if I had been using my computer. But I was in the kitchen and hadn’t played any media on my computer all day. Also, the distance from the devices should have been a giveaway: 3 feet from the phone and 25 feet from the computer.
    • vanviegen 5y ago
      I strongly disagree. These kinds of annoyances are not acceptable, as the no-nonsense alternative (switching manually) is just great in comparison.
    • biot 5y ago
      It's even worse when you're on an active phone call (the standard iPhone phone functionality, not third party meeting/voip app) talking to another human being and an alert sound plays on the computer, stealing the audio from your phone call and you can no longer hear or speak with the other person. I can't think of a better example where "don't steal the audio" is more applicable.
• bradgessler 5y ago
  Apple could get away with introducing their own wireless audio I/O standard the eliminated the need for Bluetooth for sound. This new wireless protocol would ideally: 1. Allow AirPods to be connected to multiple audio devices at the same time and eliminate the need to have to switch between exclusive audio sources. 2. Eliminate the problem where a Zoom call (or any call) downgrades audio quality. 3. Allow the playback of lossless audio wirelessly. I know there’s a crowd that will absolutely hate this idea because it’s yet another step away from a standard (Bluetooth), but the protocol has so much baggage that it’s not delivering a great experience for people in the Apple ecosystem.
  • deergomoo 5y ago
    Expect this soon. There was an interview with an Apple manager in What HiFi recently and some of the stuff he was saying strongly suggested that they’re considering doing their own thing.
• bironran 5y ago
  My one mega-annoyance is no mute button. Not being able to mute a Zoom call (or a phone call) using just the Airpod hardware interface is... annoying. I don't use Siri that often and would honestly remap long click as mute/unmute. I'm willing to pay premium for that feature alone. Hell, I'm willing to subscribe that feature. Apple, "take my money", just give me a mute button that works without the phone (or watch, or laptop).
  • ZitchDog 5y ago
    The worst part about the click is that it hangs up your call. I was on hold with the IRS for 3 hours and hung up on the representative when I adjusted my airpod. Rage inducing!
• baby 5y ago
  For the pros, I don't understand how anyone can use these air tips, they never stay in my ears :( also no more volume and previous/next buttons :/
• jasonnchann 5y ago
  My Bluetooth connection has become less and less reliable on my Airpod Pros, which tell me a new one is probably coming soon. Funny how that works :)
• floatingatoll 5y ago
  Too bad they didn’t turn in those buzzing AirPods for the buzzing noise recall.
• DavideNL 5y ago
  Annoyance 8: Apple Music desperately tries to make you use it by automatically opening the Music app (even though you use Spotify 99% of the time)
• omgitsabird 5y ago
  Does no one else view "it just works" as an incredibly annoying phrase?
• plonkus 5y ago
  A few commenters have mentioned the service program -- I think it's worth mentioning that if you're experiencing sound issues (buzzing, crackling) Apple will repair/replace AirPods Pro even if they're out of warranty (up to three years after the sale, which currently includes all AirPods Pro). I just sent mine in this week. https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-issues https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...
  • SpelingBeeChamp 5y ago
    In my experience, if you are clearly experiencing a Service Program issue, the Program cutoff dates are not set in stone.
• ianthiel 5y ago
  I've experienced most of these issues. Also, it appears this blogpost is from the future?
• spoonjim 5y ago
  I bought a pair of AirPods Pro and I loved how they sounded but hated how they made me look, because my skin is very dark and the little white things stood out like sore thumbs on Zoom calls. I returned them for the Jabra Elite 85t which are less comfortable in my ears but which match my skin color much better. Apple lost more than $249 of revenue because they don't make them in black. There's something to be said for considering the diversity of your market.
• leokennis 5y ago
  I would be a happy man if I could tell my AirPods: “You only need to be paired to my iPhone. I don’t need you synced to all my devices via iCloud and you never need to accept audio from and switch to anything but my iPhone. That’ll do earbuds. That’ll do.”
• smaudet 5y ago
  Two words: Audio Jack. Dumb-ass Mac people.
• surfsvammel 5y ago
  Wow. I do agree with some of the annoyances, now that I read them. But, to me, my feeling about my AirPods where the exact opposite. I only got them recently, because I didn't quiet see the point of yet another pair of earphones. But man, They Just Work, has been my feeling about them so far and I have not regretted getting them. Maybe I have not had them long enough to actually start having them annoy me...
  • j2bax 5y ago
    I've been using Airpods since day 1 and although they didn't quite deliver on the promise of "it just works" when it comes to connecting between multiple devices they have been my favorite new technology since the iPhone released. They feel like the closest thing to a fully realized "wearable" computing device to me. I bought the Airpod Pro's the first day they came out and haven't ever looked back to my wired headphone past. They are the perfect balance of comfort and features for me. Of course I'd like to see them improve and work out the general bluetooth issues, but I can't imagine living/working without them.
  • knowingathing 5y ago
    Basically, yes. That's been my experience. Even though I listed all of these annoyances, I still really like them :)
• apricot13 5y ago
  My airpod pros work better than my airpod pro max's but both buggy. - if your listening to your airpods and answer a phone call on your apple watch the speaker it chooses is not the airpods its your watch! so I'm thinking wow they're speaking really quiet only to realise its coming from my watch! - switching audio devices while on a call takes far too long - when I switch my audio output on my iphone sometimes the whole phone hangs. Seems to be fixed now but it was a problem for such a long time that I'm too scared to change audio devices on my phone - when I connect to my mac sometimes they just wont reconnect and I have to reboot - when I connect to my mac, then my phone or I disconnect them for a while when they come back the audio jumps up to max. I'm scared to use them with my mac because of this!
• jcpst 5y ago
  Sounds like a lot to deal with, for the price. I’ve never had to replace the pair of wired earbuds that come with an iPhone.
  • nneonneo 5y ago
    I've had to replace...a lot of wired earbuds. I have an entire shelf full of dead wired earbuds, from all sorts of manufacturers (Apple, RIM, cheapo $5 earbuds, Sony, Shure, ...), which almost uniformly failed in the same weird way: the right earbud becomes intermittently staticky after a few months. I checked with multiple devices (phones, computers), so it's probably not the socket, but more likely something to do with the way I tug on the cord when I run or walk? Anyway, after burning through a lot of wired headphones, I've had the current AirPods Pro for over a year with no trouble, and the sound quality is the same to me (plus, noise cancellation is useful).
• fungiblecog 5y ago
  i don't find that any of my apple products "just work". they all have annoying "features" that sound great as a sales pitch but are crap in real life use
• DrZootron 5y ago
  Annoyance 8: More for those on a call with people using airpods or listening to them be interviewed on a news show - the audio quality is akin to that of a a tin-can-and-string phone.
• KSPAtlas 5y ago
  The date on the article is either wrong, or the article was made by a time traveller
• nneonneo 5y ago
  Annoyances 1 and 7, at least, can be solved by disabling the automatic switching logic. When connected to the AirPods, under Bluetooth -> (AirPods name) -> Connect to this {iPhone/iPad/Mac}, select "When Last Connected" instead of "Automatically". Repeat for each Apple device. It's a simpler mental model and it works way more reliably. No more weird handoff prompts and no unexpected switching. Yes, you have to select the device manually, but that takes just seconds from the control center or audio output menu. I definitely agree with some of the other annoyances, although my AirPods have been generally very reliable (and much more so than my other set of wireless buds!). The weirdest one to me is that Apple is still using the crappy HFP profile for bidirectional audio, leading to annoyance #3; I'm surprised Apple hasn't just engineered their own bidirectional audio profile, because the sound quality drop is so noticeable that it's laughable.
  • knowingathing 5y ago
    This is true... but I like the automatic switching when it does work :) I try my hardest not to adjust Apple defaults too much because on the whole, I really like their design decisions and their UX. So I don't want to start straying too far away from their core defaults. It's a slippery slope :)
• r00fus 5y ago
  Reviewer didn't say which ones he has nor which phone. My view of "AirPods" has changed over the years - had them since the OG launch with my iPhone7. A lot of the gripes make sense with the older models. Then I upgraded my iPhone to latest, and got the AirPods3. With the v3 I finally feel it's a great product. I turn off the "automatic connection" BT settings for all but one device (iPhone) and it works as I expect. The spatial audio is great. I tried a non-Apple AirPods equivalent for a while (cheap now, $30) and really missed the "find my" feature, plus the sizing was off. My favorite new feature is the Find My where you can play MarcoPolo with your missing AirPod. THAT was much better than with my OG pods. Of course, the "your AirPods have been left behind" is often spurious so that needs improvement but better a false negative than a missed positive.
• arthurmorgan 5y ago
  I regret getting my AirPods Pro. I have them for two years now and went through 2 cases and 4 earbuds. The quality just does not match the expectation and price tag. My Sony headphones work like on the first day after 3 years, however they don't share the same form factor. :) I wonder how the WF-1000XM4 perform especially in combination with iOS.
• myko 5y ago
  After replacing mine 3x and my latest Pros just shitting the bed (the left one has a weird echo sound in it, but the Apple Store says it's fine so they won't do anything) I'm done with AirPods Hopefully the Samsung Buds I have ordered are better
• mrtranscendence 5y ago
  The most annoying thing about my AirPods Pro, which I generally like very much ... my phone starts playing music from its speakers when I take the AirPods out of my ears (and was not previously listening to music). Not all the time, but maybe 15% of the time, enough to be annoying. I have no idea what's going on. I've tried googling it, but nobody else seems to be having this problem. I've combed through settings but nothing seems applicable. I think I'm stuck with it.
  • dnhz 5y ago
    I don’t have AirPods but this sometimes happens to me when I turn off my Bluetooth headphones. Usually it’s Spotify that begins playing on my computer. I agree that google searching has been unhelpful.
  • initplus 5y ago
    Do you use Spotify? There is a really annoying feature on IOS Spotify where it hijacks the system volume control, and syncs it with the Spotify desktop app running on another computer. Sometimes even when the mobile app is closed! And inevitably because I don't use the desktop app volume adjust just the system volume, it syncs my phone volume to 100% every time.
    • mrtranscendence 5y ago
      Nope, Apple Music. You'd think if any music app worked properly with the AirPods it would be that.
• bvogelzang 5y ago
  I just got Airpods for Christmas and I love them. Most of these annoyances revolve around the fact that you're using two devices at the same time. I do the same on a regular basis and run into some of these all the time. One that is not on this list: Sometimes when I switch from my Mac to my iPhone, Spatialized Stereo does not kick in until I toggle the setting on my iPhone from off to on.
• greggman3 5y ago
  Well, since we're ranting about Airpods My Gen 2 Airpods work great. I tried Airpod Pro's and Airpod Gen 3. Both have the crappy "pinch" controls instead of the awesome "tap" controls. Pinching requires more fingers free so for example walking home from the grocery store with heavy bags in both hands and trying to control my Airpods (next song, pause), is much easier with tap (single finger, knuckle, palm) than with pinch (2 free fingers). Also while cooking, can tap with knuckle if hands are dirty but can't pinch with dirty fingers. Otherwise, they've worked for me 98% of the time. A few times they've failed to connect to one device or another and the only solution was to re-pair them (only ever used them on Apple devices). The other is they suck in crowded places like busy trains and stations in Japan, they'll cut out OFTEN! (Shibuya, Shinjuku, rush hour). My current ones cut out in my living room. No idea why but it's really annoying, I'm 1-2 meters from my M1X Mac and they're cutting out quite often. But overall I like them alot.
• CTmystery 5y ago
  I'm only an indirect user of AirPods and I really do not like them: Every time my team does a google meet / hangout the folks using AirPods sound terrible to the point that it's distracting. I don't know if it's in the microphone, the bluetooth connection, or the interaction with a google product, but it is much worse than (a) wired earbuds and (b) the folks using Bose QC 35s (which the company gave out a while back)
  • willchis 5y ago
    I was about to post this. People with AirPods really should know this - you sound like you're talking on a 1980s radio when you're on a Slack/Zoom/Teams call.
  • frosted-flakes 5y ago
    Wired headphones have the mic on the wire beside your mouth. Wireless headphones have them around the corner on the side of your head, which is an objectively terrible location for a microphone.
  • smoldesu 5y ago
    Dankpods did a pretty good comparison of wired mic quality with wireless: https://youtu.be/N6Y_Q7RYmmY?t=315 https://youtu.be/N6Y_Q7RYmmY?t=315
• dools 5y ago
  You can disable that automatic connection behaviour in the airpod settings from each device, that resolves a few of the issues
• chaostheory 5y ago
  Annoyance 1 drives me insane. I don’t understand why it would switch when I’m actively listening to something. It should ask first on the new device instead of automatically switching.
• pjerem 5y ago
  If you think you have Bluetooth issues with AirPods, just try Apple Watch. It works, yes, but rarely.
  • skinnymuch 5y ago
    In what way[s] for the Apple Watch?
• imron 5y ago
  Try using them on Linux. Then they really don’t just work. As headphones yes but good luck using the mic.
• weedfroglozenge 5y ago
  Something I've found annoying is if I'm using the airpods with my iPhone, and I'm chilling on the couch and decide to Chromecast, if I have already started chrome casting to the TV and then take my airpods out it will pause the show despite audio already going through TV?
• 0xedd 5y ago
• _23sd 5y ago
  I really hope Apple decides to improve things for their ecosystem within the framework of Bluetooth rather than go their own way as some people here have suggested. That route would almost certainly lead to a proliferation of proprietary PAN standards and allow cell manufacturers to tax (or just acquire) consumer audio companies, many of which are struggling to compete with AirPods already. Anyway, we're going to find out soon: Apple has all but confirmed that they're working on something to solve their Bluetooth bandwidth problem [1]. Could just be a new Bluetooth profile, and I feel for the Apple users because that would almost certainly just multiply these annoyances rather than fixing them (wider audio quality gap = more people notice when the connection is inexplicably stuck on the ultra-low quality voice call profile which happens all the time, causes the OP's Annoyance 3 and is one of the causes of Annoyance 4). But I think we'll be better off in the long run if Apple and others in the industry work on Bluetooth improvements that everyone can use without paying up to Qualcomm. [1] https://www.whathifi.com/features/is-bluetooth-holding-back-apples-airpods-we-asked-the-man-who-made-them https://www.whathifi.com/features/is-bluetooth-holding-back-...
  • jonwinstanley 5y ago
    The bluetooth standard seems to move very slowly though. We've had bluetooth headphones around for so many years and they usually leave a lot to be desired.
• the_watcher 5y ago
  Annoyance 4 is the one that really bothers me (although to be fair, I have Beats Studio Buds that have exactly the same issue). Also, they get _really_ dirty and are very irritating to clean. Really not sure how Apple hasn't produced a good cleaning tool (or at least identified one and listed it in the store).
• rcfox 5y ago
  e aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwws
• p2t2p 5y ago
  AirPods Max _often_ just work. Anything else involves manual switching almost every time.
• serverlessmom 5y ago
  I only ever bought one pair of air pods and I ended up giving them away after that update was released where they were supposed to be able to switch seemlessly between devices but the feature was cumbersome. I don't think I managed to find eight distinct issues with during that time, but I can say I've switched to galaxy buds which I much prefer.
• sgspace 5y ago
  Another annoyance I have is if you are working on multiple Apple devices using different Apple IDs, you have to go in Bluetooth settings, disconnect and set up the AirPods as new on other machine. Have to do it again to switch back.
• husamia 5y ago
  I have the best Sony noise cancelling earbuds and headphones. I thought the AirPods are better but from what you describe. I feel Sony did a pretty good job.
  • hyakosm 5y ago
    I have the Sony XM4 headphones but it's not perfect. It takes nearly 30 seconds to connect to the computer with the voice saying "Power on", "Device 1 connected", "Device 2 connected". When I restart the computer, I must restart the headphones manually and wait. And Sony has not released a MacOS software to manage them.
• addicted 5y ago
  Wow, annoyance 1 itself would lead me to trash the headphones. Is there no way to avoid that? I’ve been using these Bose in ear noise canceling head phones for 5 years (actually, this specific piece for a bit more than 4 years…the one I bought was in the first batch and had a known defect where the outer covering would peel off, so Bose replaced it in my 10th or so month of using it…it’s a genuine recall and nobody had to sue them to offer the recall either!). $300 headphones, working for the past 5 years, and Inhave no complaints whatsoever. There are a couple of random gym equipment I’ve occasionally had trouble connecting it to, but I suspect that it was the gym equipments fault. Admittedly, the mic could be better, and Bose had a ridiculous issue of tracking the music you played on your phone, which thankfully they’ve ended. But it’s a trustworthy device which actually “Just Works” and I see no reason it wouldn’t last another couple of years at least (there is no physical damage I can see, despite using it in the gym nearly everyday, and all day long to listen to music).
• TrisMcC 5y ago
  Not quite related to airpods, but is Apple's Bluetooth stack awful? I got three pairs of iClever BTH-02s and they all connect fine to our hand-me-down LG android phones, but they fail to connect to a brand new (but low end model) iPad. It says they connect, but the upper left corner does not show the headset icon and the sound goes through the external speakers. It's awful.
• errcorrectcode 5y ago
  If you have more than one iDevice or use ear security tips where the case lid can't close all the way, the iDevice fires a modal popup to show you battery info on half the screen. Oh, and if you want to make a call with the phone itself, it switches to the AirPods twice, even when you don't want them and they're not in your ears.
• maerF0x0 5y ago
  Annoyance, today I left my airpods when I left the hotel, I didnt get the left behind notification because I had the case with me. Phone + Case (and airpods not connected) doesnt seem like a good proxy for "You have your airpods"
• mung 5y ago
  I've had the sound on a video playing on my mac disappear, only to find that the mac decided to randomly connect to the AirPods... that are in their case.
• elwell 5y ago
  Not comparing Apples to apples, but my Beoplay B9 are a joy to listen to; I have no affiliation with B&O btw.
• chias 5y ago
  Annoyance 3 -- or something very similar -- is going to be the case for any bluetooth headset. There simply isn't enough bandwidth in a bluetooth connection to have a high quality audio stream and a microphone stream going at the same time, so a bluetooth headset switches between high-quality-headphones and low-quality-headset modes. You can experience this in action by listening to music via a bluetooth headset then performing something which toggles them to headset mode (e.g. navigating to a Google Meet page or whatever). I suspect there is a brief delay when switching modes, so the AirPods don't switch while actively playing anything. So immediately firing up some music before the AirPods switch back to headphone mode probably keeps them in headset mode.
• kderbyma 5y ago
  SIRI....disable it....plug in airpods...suddenly she is back and demanding your attention.... forget streaming.....mac m1 cannot Bluetooth
• Friedduck 5y ago
  I’ll add one: if you pair AirPods with one of your devices, it adds them to all devices attached to your AppleID. Remove them from one removes them from all. This removes one possible solution to unwanted switching between devices. I know you can turn off automatic switching, which makes connecting cumbersome. Finally, if you have them in, iPhone will occasionally start a video, or music, at the conclusion of a call even if you weren’t actively listening to it before. Add to that the unremovable Lock Screen play controls and it’s a recipe for not doing what I want.
• MarkusWandel 5y ago
  Does any bluetooth gadget ever "just work"? Not in my admittedly non-Apple world. The rules for connecting/disconnecting, especially if a gadget is paired to more than one thing, seem to be too complex to understand. It's almost reassuing that even Apple can't make this look 100% simple and easy.
• danielyaa5 5y ago
  For annoyance 1 I use a bettertoutchtool shortcut to connect to my AirPods . I also noticed BigSur will have a notification pop up asking if you want to reconnect
• arendtio 5y ago
  A fatal combination are AirPod Pros + an Amazon FireTV Stick 4k. You pay 250€ and can't even change the volume... Other FireTVs have the ability, other headphones have the ability, but this combination is just madness.
• neycoda 5y ago
  I don't have these issues with $8 wired earbuds. Manufacturers are removing headphone jacks from mobile devices, causing us to buy expensive buggy Bluetooth ones that are easier to lose. Our world is getting dumber every year.