4 ms·

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 ar

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!
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Clearly, no one at Apple considered cold weather when designing the pinch based Airpod Pro interface. Just about impossible with gloves.
  - hbn 5y ago
    Yeah, that's actually one of the reasons I didn't go for the 3rd gen even though they were out when I got mine I can't use that through a toque, whereas with the 1st gen I can double tap the side of my head through the toque and it pauses
    - saurik 5y ago
      Yeah: the tapping interface for the original AirPods is one of the most interesting mechanisms I'd ever seen, both obvious in retrospect and yet not at all obvious. I think of it as one of the more "inspired" mechanisms I've ever seen in such a product... and then they replaced it with "the kind of thing an idiot might have built". And like, I know the pinch mechanism does have some smarts to it: it isn't even really a button, and the thing you think you are pinching is haptic feedback; but that frankly just makes it worse as the only reason why the pinch feature is better than the tap feature is because the tap feature had an unfortunate requirement that you had to have it in your ear to use it (and to the extent to which it would accidentally work when not in your ear was, fwiw, annoying)... ...but then, for some inexplicable reason, they decided that the pinch feature also shouldn't work if the AirPod isn't in your ear, only, due to the dynamic haptic feature, squeezing it suddenly isn't a button anymore and I find myself just squeezing it harder, twisting it around trying to find the button, until the part of my brain that knows how it works turns on and goes "there isn't really a button there" and I go into problem-solving mode to figure out I need to put it in my ear again for it to work. The tapping interface was (/is, as I still have them) incredibly intuitive on that front: the part of my brain that wanted to interact with it fundamentally got that "you have to put this in your ear in order to tap it", and I don't ever use them wrong. But with the new pinch interface, I've had a pair ever since they came out (and now have a pair of the AirPod 3, which I don't like anywhere near as the old ones) and I continue to routinely attempt to pinch them when they aren't in my head. What is crazy to me is that I've complained about this to various people and the response that I tend to get--both from people "in the know" as well as end users giving me this exact complaint back--is that a sizable number of customers apparently really really really hate tapping their head: they find the action annoying and the sound it makes in their skull / ear canal unfortunate. The pinch interface is simply sufficiently boring that everyone seems to be willing to do it without squinching. :/
spacemadness 5y ago
Out of ear detection is my biggest gripe. If I take them out quick and place them on a table because I don’t have the case handy, they try to reconnect when I’m receiving a call or using audio in any way without them. I have to look for the icon in control center and manually remove them. It’s incredibly annoying. I also noticed the membrane sounds like it’s getting blown out when they attempt to deal with loud noises in the environment.
- glxxyz 5y ago
  There was a recall about a year ago for the membrane blown out buzz problem- if you report it to Apple theyplace them.
dont__panic 5y ago
I really wish they'd add an LED per AirPod in the case, as an easy visual indicator that they're properly seated and charging. I don't know if I'm especially oily or something but both pairs of AirPods I've used have had charging issues in the case after just a few months, and it's so frustrating that it's almost impossible to tell if they're both charging in there. Nothing like going out for a run and figuring out 50 feet down the road that your audio is only playing through one bud.
- thenerdhead 5y ago
  Same. I would be fine with like 3 LEDs where the left and right LED would turn green when fully charged airpod & green for the case as middle one. While it's charging everything, you might see blinking/orange LEDs until they turn green. Of course interactions for when the case is charging the airpods and when the case is plugged in, but that's not too difficult I think.
mns 5y ago
Ha, the preference list is interesting, I don't know how some stuff works for Apple when connecting the AirPods even with multiple apple ids. I had my girlfriend connect her AirPods to my iPad to watch a movie on the plane. A couple of weeks later I was using airplay to stream a game on the TV, while my gf was in another room wanting to watch something on her phone connected to her apple id. All of the sudden sound goes off on the tv, and after a couple of seconds stream is paused. She comes in that the game was playing on her AirPods. I have no clue how the AirPods connected to my laptop after 1 month of her using her airpods only with her devices.
- thenerdhead 5y ago
  Yeah, my big gripe is that I keep my computers docked/clamshelled and whenever you lift them, airpods will ALWAYS transfer. So I've had to learn to stop doing that with multiple devices and prevent them from going to sleep.
origamirobot 5y ago
Strange that that happens to me is, every time I take out my Airpods and put them in their case, I get a Find My alert on my phone saying I left them behind even though they're in my pocket.

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!

germinalphrase 5y ago
Clearly, no one at Apple considered cold weather when designing the pinch based Airpod Pro interface. Just about impossible with gloves.
- hbn 5y ago
  Yeah, that's actually one of the reasons I didn't go for the 3rd gen even though they were out when I got mine I can't use that through a toque, whereas with the 1st gen I can double tap the side of my head through the toque and it pauses
  - saurik 5y ago
    Yeah: the tapping interface for the original AirPods is one of the most interesting mechanisms I'd ever seen, both obvious in retrospect and yet not at all obvious. I think of it as one of the more "inspired" mechanisms I've ever seen in such a product... and then they replaced it with "the kind of thing an idiot might have built". And like, I know the pinch mechanism does have some smarts to it: it isn't even really a button, and the thing you think you are pinching is haptic feedback; but that frankly just makes it worse as the only reason why the pinch feature is better than the tap feature is because the tap feature had an unfortunate requirement that you had to have it in your ear to use it (and to the extent to which it would accidentally work when not in your ear was, fwiw, annoying)... ...but then, for some inexplicable reason, they decided that the pinch feature also shouldn't work if the AirPod isn't in your ear, only, due to the dynamic haptic feature, squeezing it suddenly isn't a button anymore and I find myself just squeezing it harder, twisting it around trying to find the button, until the part of my brain that knows how it works turns on and goes "there isn't really a button there" and I go into problem-solving mode to figure out I need to put it in my ear again for it to work. The tapping interface was (/is, as I still have them) incredibly intuitive on that front: the part of my brain that wanted to interact with it fundamentally got that "you have to put this in your ear in order to tap it", and I don't ever use them wrong. But with the new pinch interface, I've had a pair ever since they came out (and now have a pair of the AirPod 3, which I don't like anywhere near as the old ones) and I continue to routinely attempt to pinch them when they aren't in my head. What is crazy to me is that I've complained about this to various people and the response that I tend to get--both from people "in the know" as well as end users giving me this exact complaint back--is that a sizable number of customers apparently really really really hate tapping their head: they find the action annoying and the sound it makes in their skull / ear canal unfortunate. The pinch interface is simply sufficiently boring that everyone seems to be willing to do it without squinching. :/

spacemadness 5y ago

Out of ear detection is my biggest gripe. If I take them out quick and place them on a table because I don’t have the case handy, they try to reconnect when I’m receiving a call or using audio in any way without them. I have to look for the icon in control center and manually remove them. It’s incredibly annoying. I also noticed the membrane sounds like it’s getting blown out when they attempt to deal with loud noises in the environment.

glxxyz 5y ago
There was a recall about a year ago for the membrane blown out buzz problem- if you report it to Apple theyplace them.

dont__panic 5y ago

I really wish they'd add an LED per AirPod in the case, as an easy visual indicator that they're properly seated and charging. I don't know if I'm especially oily or something but both pairs of AirPods I've used have had charging issues in the case after just a few months, and it's so frustrating that it's almost impossible to tell if they're both charging in there. Nothing like going out for a run and figuring out 50 feet down the road that your audio is only playing through one bud.

thenerdhead 5y ago
Same. I would be fine with like 3 LEDs where the left and right LED would turn green when fully charged airpod & green for the case as middle one. While it's charging everything, you might see blinking/orange LEDs until they turn green. Of course interactions for when the case is charging the airpods and when the case is plugged in, but that's not too difficult I think.

mns 5y ago

Ha, the preference list is interesting, I don't know how some stuff works for Apple when connecting the AirPods even with multiple apple ids. I had my girlfriend connect her AirPods to my iPad to watch a movie on the plane. A couple of weeks later I was using airplay to stream a game on the TV, while my gf was in another room wanting to watch something on her phone connected to her apple id. All of the sudden sound goes off on the tv, and after a couple of seconds stream is paused. She comes in that the game was playing on her AirPods. I have no clue how the AirPods connected to my laptop after 1 month of her using her airpods only with her devices.

thenerdhead 5y ago
Yeah, my big gripe is that I keep my computers docked/clamshelled and whenever you lift them, airpods will ALWAYS transfer. So I've had to learn to stop doing that with multiple devices and prevent them from going to sleep.

origamirobot 5y ago

Strange that that happens to me is, every time I take out my Airpods and put them in their case, I get a Find My alert on my phone saying I left them behind even though they're in my pocket.