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Man, you sure are overly optimistic. That part about bluetooth doesn't make sense, tons of products work reliably with similar dimension/weight restrictions as

Man, you sure are overly optimistic. That part about bluetooth doesn't make sense, tons of products work reliably with similar dimension/weight restrictions as airpods. If Apple with its army of engineers can't make their products work reliably, how could have much smaller companies succeeded? Btw one of biggest disappointments for me with airpods (pro) is weak bettery life compared to competition. I am currently shopping around for new truly wireless headphones for iphone and not a single comparison has apple airpods/pro as winners in 2 most important categories (for me but I believe for many others too): sound quality and battery life. Same for their smartwatches but thats another topic. Apple, or any company, sees that even product with such flaws still sells very well, so there is little pressure to fix things asap. That some engineers somewhere are working on next gen (or even 2 next gens in parallel) is expected, but these generational updates are very iterative and never revolutionary (that's what new product lines are for, for much higher price). One anecdote from today - had a year end review call with my boss while being on sick leave due to covid. He desperately tried to pair his new iphone 13 pro max with his new airpods (not sure if pro or regular) and gave up after some time. It just didn't work and we had good old phone-in-hand call.

oriolid 5y ago
Could you give examples of some Bluetooth devices that work reliably?
guntars 5y ago
If you know any bluetooth headsets that don't have similar quirks to what the post talks about, let me know, because otherwise I'm thinking this is Bluetooth and it wont get better until we ditch it. Quirks of Bose AE2 that I'm dealing with: 1) Switching to the low fidelity Bluetooth headset mode when the mic is activated. Why does this still exist? I'd be happier if they just didn't add a mic if they can't support better quality audio. 2) The headset nominally supports connecting to two devices, except there's no mixing. One channel is primary and will override the other. Annoying when you're on a meeting on a laptop and a notification arrives on your phone and the audio cuts out to play the notification tone. 3) To add, sometimes Apple devices just play silence? Meaning, the secondary device will get muted and it will take a minute for you to figure out why it's not playing. There's no user control over this primary/secondary aspect. 4) Oh, yes, I use three devices daily which results in a lot of manual switching. 5) The devices or the headphones don't always automatically connect for some reason. It's not clear either if it's from me manually switching them or what.. 6) Endless issues with Spotify "Failing to play song" when the audio output switches. 7) Not bluetooth, but this headset gives the "Low power, charge me!" chime when the battery is low, even when plugged in and charging.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  re #1: This is basically because it's written into the standard that everyone implements. There are non-standardized extensions to get around this that nobody implements because they're non-standard and a perpetual "This will be fixed by the next standard!". There are also codecs that mitigate the issue by solving the underlying bandwidth problem, but nobody implements those because there's licensing and thus it's not universal. All of this is made worse by the fact that there's really only a few vendors out there. Almost everyone buys the same stuff, which makes the same tradeoffs and the result is that everything sucks in basically the same ways.
  - symlinkk 5y ago
    Which is why people pay extra for Apple products, because they don’t make excuses like “this sucks because of the Bluetooth standard”, they build something that works even if it’s incompatible with non-Apple systems.
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      Funny you should say that because one of the issues with Catalina was MacOS forcing all headsets, airpods included, to use the terrible default codec I was explaining. Moreover, this then forces all other audio data on the system down to the same terrible quality [1]. The official response was that this was "expected behavior". This is probably also the explanation for annoyance #3 in the article. [1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/282705/airpods-extremely-poor-mic-quality-on-mac https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/282705/airpods-ext...
    - spopejoy 5y ago
      #1 was explicitly mentioned in TFA, so not sure why this is an oppy to say airpods fixes common bluetooth problems, instead it seems Apple is equally burdened by them??
- dnadler 5y ago
  So, I just switched from Android to iOS, and I've noticed that the bluetooth reliability is significantly worse than what I've become used to. I switch from a Pixel 4a to an iPhone 11, and both my Bose QC 35 headphones and Sony wireless earbuds are having lots of issue that I never head on the pixel. So, my takeaway is that iOS is behind here, though I don't know enough about the underlying tech to say anything for sure. Just my anecdotal experience...
keltor 5y ago
I've used 100+ Bluetooth devices and ever single one of them had weird connection quirks. Hell every wireless protocol I've ever seen has been similar excluding some actual industrial stuff.
KerrAvon 5y ago
Would love to know which BT products are actually reliable. Seems like the best are only "reliable" relative to others which are "downright unusable".
tobyjsullivan 5y ago
My only other bluetooth headset is a set of Bose QC35s. As sibling comments reported, quality is about par overall. I find UX of Bose is worse on all counts when working with multiple devices. And the battery life of my AirPods is less on a single use, but much better overall considering I can recharge in the case. My airpods, generally, also have to put up with more. I don't use my Bose with my phone or on the go which is, generally, where the AirPods experience 90% of their quirks. That makes for a poor sample size though so would absolutely love suggestions for more reliable alternatives. Edit: apparently I don't know how to spell Bose
- erichurkman 5y ago
  > I don't use my Boss with my phone or on the go which is, generally, where the AirPods experience 90% of their quirks. My experience is the opposite. When I'm not on the go, the likelihood that my AirPods pick up the right device is slim -- like trying to connect to an iPad on a complete different floor vs. the phone I'm trying to make a call on. When I'm on the go, the only device they can find is my phone, and all works great.
  - tobyjsullivan 5y ago
    Yeah, makes sense for that problem specifically. I don't really have that problem ever. All my problems are skipping audio, dropped connections in one pod, and other intermittent problems. My Bose always connect to the wrong device in my home and have zero method to correct. So I'm quite satisfied with the AirPods which seem to get the right device 99% of the time (no exaggeration - probably use 4x per day and connect to unintended device maybe once per month). I'm sure it helps that my phone is always on silent mode.
abbot2 5y ago
Yes, bluetooth has plenty of unfortunate limitations. For example, there is no standard high-quality bidi audio codec in bluetooth spec (see https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/duplex-high-quality-audio-for-bluetooth https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/duplex-high-quality-audi... for detailed explanation).

oriolid 5y ago

Could you give examples of some Bluetooth devices that work reliably?

guntars 5y ago

If you know any bluetooth headsets that don't have similar quirks to what the post talks about, let me know, because otherwise I'm thinking this is Bluetooth and it wont get better until we ditch it. Quirks of Bose AE2 that I'm dealing with: 1) Switching to the low fidelity Bluetooth headset mode when the mic is activated. Why does this still exist? I'd be happier if they just didn't add a mic if they can't support better quality audio. 2) The headset nominally supports connecting to two devices, except there's no mixing. One channel is primary and will override the other. Annoying when you're on a meeting on a laptop and a notification arrives on your phone and the audio cuts out to play the notification tone. 3) To add, sometimes Apple devices just play silence? Meaning, the secondary device will get muted and it will take a minute for you to figure out why it's not playing. There's no user control over this primary/secondary aspect. 4) Oh, yes, I use three devices daily which results in a lot of manual switching. 5) The devices or the headphones don't always automatically connect for some reason. It's not clear either if it's from me manually switching them or what.. 6) Endless issues with Spotify "Failing to play song" when the audio output switches. 7) Not bluetooth, but this headset gives the "Low power, charge me!" chime when the battery is low, even when plugged in and charging.

AlotOfReading 5y ago
re #1: This is basically because it's written into the standard that everyone implements. There are non-standardized extensions to get around this that nobody implements because they're non-standard and a perpetual "This will be fixed by the next standard!". There are also codecs that mitigate the issue by solving the underlying bandwidth problem, but nobody implements those because there's licensing and thus it's not universal. All of this is made worse by the fact that there's really only a few vendors out there. Almost everyone buys the same stuff, which makes the same tradeoffs and the result is that everything sucks in basically the same ways.
- symlinkk 5y ago
  Which is why people pay extra for Apple products, because they don’t make excuses like “this sucks because of the Bluetooth standard”, they build something that works even if it’s incompatible with non-Apple systems.
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Funny you should say that because one of the issues with Catalina was MacOS forcing all headsets, airpods included, to use the terrible default codec I was explaining. Moreover, this then forces all other audio data on the system down to the same terrible quality [1]. The official response was that this was "expected behavior". This is probably also the explanation for annoyance #3 in the article. [1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/282705/airpods-extremely-poor-mic-quality-on-mac https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/282705/airpods-ext...
  - spopejoy 5y ago
    #1 was explicitly mentioned in TFA, so not sure why this is an oppy to say airpods fixes common bluetooth problems, instead it seems Apple is equally burdened by them??
dnadler 5y ago
So, I just switched from Android to iOS, and I've noticed that the bluetooth reliability is significantly worse than what I've become used to. I switch from a Pixel 4a to an iPhone 11, and both my Bose QC 35 headphones and Sony wireless earbuds are having lots of issue that I never head on the pixel. So, my takeaway is that iOS is behind here, though I don't know enough about the underlying tech to say anything for sure. Just my anecdotal experience...

keltor 5y ago

I've used 100+ Bluetooth devices and ever single one of them had weird connection quirks. Hell every wireless protocol I've ever seen has been similar excluding some actual industrial stuff.

KerrAvon 5y ago

Would love to know which BT products are actually reliable. Seems like the best are only "reliable" relative to others which are "downright unusable".

tobyjsullivan 5y ago

My only other bluetooth headset is a set of Bose QC35s. As sibling comments reported, quality is about par overall. I find UX of Bose is worse on all counts when working with multiple devices. And the battery life of my AirPods is less on a single use, but much better overall considering I can recharge in the case. My airpods, generally, also have to put up with more. I don't use my Bose with my phone or on the go which is, generally, where the AirPods experience 90% of their quirks. That makes for a poor sample size though so would absolutely love suggestions for more reliable alternatives. Edit: apparently I don't know how to spell Bose

erichurkman 5y ago
> I don't use my Boss with my phone or on the go which is, generally, where the AirPods experience 90% of their quirks. My experience is the opposite. When I'm not on the go, the likelihood that my AirPods pick up the right device is slim -- like trying to connect to an iPad on a complete different floor vs. the phone I'm trying to make a call on. When I'm on the go, the only device they can find is my phone, and all works great.
- tobyjsullivan 5y ago
  Yeah, makes sense for that problem specifically. I don't really have that problem ever. All my problems are skipping audio, dropped connections in one pod, and other intermittent problems. My Bose always connect to the wrong device in my home and have zero method to correct. So I'm quite satisfied with the AirPods which seem to get the right device 99% of the time (no exaggeration - probably use 4x per day and connect to unintended device maybe once per month). I'm sure it helps that my phone is always on silent mode.

abbot2 5y ago

Yes, bluetooth has plenty of unfortunate limitations. For example, there is no standard high-quality bidi audio codec in bluetooth spec (see https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/duplex-high-quality-audio-for-bluetooth https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/duplex-high-quality-audi... for detailed explanation).