12 ms·

Real vs. fake AirPods with industrial CT

157 points by eucalyptuseye 3y ago

latchkey 3y ago
My partner bought fake AirPods off ebay. We kind of had a feeling they'd be fake but felt it was worth the risk. We got a refund from the seller pretty quickly and they told us to keep them. The pods themselves looked exactly the same. The case was the real sign. It was clearly not the same as an original case. They actually worked, but they were essentially just generic bluetooth headphones. We ended up listing them on FB Marketplace. Clearly marked them as fake. Person came and picked them up and I said again that they were fake. Got the same amount we paid for them. I don't understand this world sometimes. The fake sellers must make enough off of people who don't realize that they are fake that they can just write off the few that do.
- tomdeboer 3y ago
  Or buyer will try to resell as non-fake…
  - latchkey 3y ago
    I doubt it. Zero profit (since I charged the going rate) and a real waste of time/gas to drive to my house to pick up a single pair. The fake sellers must buy them by the crate for cheap to see any real profits.
    - dspillett 3y ago
      If you charged the going rate for pre-used, maybe the buyer is planning to put them in official looking packaging (likely really official packaging picked up elsewhere, perhaps from their own purchase of an official product) and sell them as new for a profit?
      - latchkey 3y ago
        Probably more likely: 1. Buy a new pair off Amazon. 2. Return the fake and get a refund from Amazon.
        dspillett 3y ago
        That does seem a more reliable option. I need to update my thinking of I want to be a good scammer!
        _yb2s 3y ago
        Jokes on them… the Amazon ones will also be fake
- frou_dh 3y ago
  Seems kinda like "kids eat free" at restaurants... fake-spotters eat free at eBay.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    But in this case they ended up with no product, the same starting money and a bunch of time/energy lost.
    - poszlem 3y ago
      They ended up with twice the amount of money and some time wasted.
    - mathematicaster 3y ago
      > We got a refund from the seller pretty quickly and they told us to keep them. So they made some? Spent time/energy for science of course ...
    - Tade0 3y ago
      The way I read it they ended up with double the starting money, because they both got a refund and sold the headphones.
      - AlecSchueler 3y ago
        Ah yes, apologies for the miscalculation.
  - everly 3y ago
    Until this happens a few times and their algorithm flags you as an 'abuser' of the refund system (despite you doing nothing besides correctly calling out fraud) and you're banned or automatically ruled against in all disputes going forward.
- JCharante 3y ago
  > but they were essentially just generic bluetooth headphones. I heard that there are fake airpods that will connect and behave just like a normal airpod to iphones, as if they have a fake H1 chip or something. Can anyone confirm?
  - thomasqbrady 3y ago
    Yes. I have a set that appear to my iPhone to be legit, including auto-connect/disconnect, noise-canceling modes and all, though the functionality isn’t actually reliable. My iPhone doesn’t seem to know any difference between my real AirPods Pro 2 and these fakes.
    - ewzimm 3y ago
      I got my first AirPods off eBay recently that I was expecting might be fake, but they arrived new in the package with all the usual Apple paperwork and pull tabs and registered normally, even the Apple warranty, and everything seems to work, except if I get a notification when I'm playing audio, it just goes silent until I pause and resume the audio. It seems like other people have the same issue. Is this a real issue with genuine AirPods Pro 2, or is this potentially an incredibly good fake?
    - thebigman433 3y ago
      Feels like this could maybe be a pair from a fake/third shift or something? Seems like that level of functionality with (fake) Apple products is super rare.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    Might not even technically be “fake”. Apple has ghost shift problems just like every other major manufacturer that contracts out semiconductors to China. I’ve heard that Apple drives such a hard bargain with some of their suppliers that selling ghost shift parts and the parts that fail QC to counterfeiters and repair shops is the only way they make any profit. The Apple contract pays for the factory and the bills but they make the real money on the side.
- darkclouds 3y ago
  [dead]
- dspillett 3y ago
  > We got a refund from the seller pretty quickly and they told us to keep them. A good will gesture to reduce the chance of you reporting them as selling fakes, and tarnishing their carefully manicured feedback scores, if they were in the business of doing this regularly.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    They asked for a positive review and we refused and threatened to contact Ebay, so yes... exactly that.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  >Got the same amount we paid for them. I don't understand this world sometimes. Someone wants ear buds, they want to signal wealth so choose expensive brand, but they want knockoffs because they're actually poor[er]. The main risk with knock-offs is they arrive broken, or just don't arrive, or... basically it's a scam of some sort. So, you took on the risk of buying, assessed the earphones as working, the earphones are now probably worth more as they've been QC-ed (by you), moreover the buyer can actually see them working and refuse them if they wish. Within the context the buyer seems relatively rational.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    >signal wealth >$100 product It really boggles my mind that this works on anyone. We all see the commercials for financing. We all see teenagers with no jobs having them. I'm a bit mind boggled that Apple was able to turn <$1000 tech products into 'luxury' products. Maybe it makes more sense if you didn't get screwed by iTunes DRM and were more open minded during iphone Era.
    - latchkey 3y ago
      When I lived in Vietnam, getting the latest iPhone (or really any product), as soon as someone smuggled it into the country (usually from Australia or Singapore), was a national pastime for people there. That logo is everywhere.
      - tuankiet65 3y ago
        I concur. My mom sometimes talked about how her friends / coworkers just got the latest iPhone and that made her want to get one herself. I guess part of it is just FOMO but there's also something about the brand that drove people to do "unusual" things (like you said, smuggling phones from other countries just to be the first)
    - stronglikedan 3y ago
      Where I grew up, $100 sneakers were a signal of wealth. Nothing new under the sun.
- heisenbit 3y ago
  Same here. My wife washed the old airpods so she got me some new and "better" AirPod Pros. They looked perfect and since I did not really care about getting other ones I did not much research. In any case they looked genuine and worked for a while until their flakiness got on my nerves and I went to a slightly embarrassing Apple appointment where I was told there were scores of service requests for this particular serial number. She got her money back since at least in our country EBay the company is now the seller and could not run away and as it was bought with PayPal... What convinced me that they were originals - packaging looked genuine - paired out of the box without much hassle - showed up as air pods with serial number Lesson learned and bought the new ones and these were the differences: - print inside the lid was 20% larger in original - packaging of original was not shrink wrapped - slight off-colour white of the packaging - the lightning port of the fake was not feeling right - the button on the case did not click distinctly - the button on the case did not enter the special mode after 10 seconds like original - ANC of original light years ahead. More modes displayed on the menu. With hindsight the biggest give-away probably were the - shrink-wrap plastic around the package - lightning port feel - much, much lower microphone quality. But since I never checked that out myself as I don't use them much for talking and so complaints from others were not so frequent. - imperfect find-my performance but since I did not care about this feature much I suspected I mis-clicked somewhere and gave up. - transitions from case to ear to case with sometimes not registering that it was back in case (contact issues in the case?) not so reliable with impact on battery. - battery erratic behaviour I guess if I would have been in the market for them and then bought them I may have found out immediately but so I just started feeling Apple starts slipping on quality with new products more complex but worse. As I got them as a replacement and just wanted to get on with listening during my walks they were able to fool me. They are certainly good enough to fool casual buyers and they are certainly bad enough to hurt Apple's reputation for quality products.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    Oh right, yea... the sn# gives it away immediately, you can google it and see that it is fake. Another pro tip for buying used stuff online... request a photo of the sn#. Even a partial will get you a match in google.
- deleted 3y ago
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baz00 3y ago
I'd be interested in some fake airpods if they lasted twice as long and sounded 80% as good. Literally I get perhaps a year out of a set of genuine bought at Apple Store airpods before the case gives up or one airpod goes muffled or craps out. After a year Apple don't want to know or care unless you have AppleCare. Decided I wasn't going to fish out for a fourth set, so I bought some Sony ones for £20 with a wire between them. Seem to work ok and for that money, meh!
- latchkey 3y ago
  It sounds like what you have found out is that not all Apple hardware is worth the hype. Personally, I have the beats fit pro. While still owned by apple and benefiting from the same chip integrations, these have held up just fine for me for a few years now of daily use.
  - baz00 3y ago
    Yes I could write several pages of diatribe about my shitty Apple experiences recently.
- someotherperson 3y ago
  You can get high quality fake AirPods that sound just as good. They pair with Apple products like the real thing and the batteries are solid. The problem they usually have is with the microphone. That's usually the case with a lot of this stuff. I've had super cheap (i.e $10) wireless off-brand headphones that sound even better than AirPods but the microphone is almost always poop.
- somehnguy 3y ago
  AirPods or AirPods pro? My current set of AirPods Pro have long outlasted my original set of AirPods in terms of battery longevity. Both very heavily used. It seems the switch from pouch cell (in regular AirPods) to button (in Pro) made a huge difference.
  - baz00 3y ago
    I killed two sets of plain Airpods. The Pros I bought crapped out after 14 months of ownership. They do get used heavily but no excuse at that price.
plugin-baby 3y ago
> significant differences that have implications for performance and safety This seems to refer to charging safety, but the thing that makes me fork out for genuine headphones is ear safety - I _assume_ Apple tries to protect from damaging sound levels and frequencies, and could be held to account in a way that counterfeiters could not.
- user_7832 3y ago
  > Apple tries to protect from damaging sound levels and frequencies, and could be held to account in a way that counterfeiters could not. I doubt Apple tries this too much, or that they could be held accountable. There is the volume alert thing, but that (partially) works with 3rd party headphones too (though it's likely much more inaccurate). Android phones too give a warning if you set the volume very high for headphones. I don't think using 3rd party ear/headphones really change much. That said, it is important to keep volumes "reasonable". Ear damage from high volumes is unfortunately very real.
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    There’s a headphones safety section in the sound settings on iPhones for reducing loud sounds and setting a maximum decibel limit.
    - JCharante 3y ago
      I often accidentally set my phone volume to max by holding the volume button for too long, so enabling this setting earlier this year has been really helpful. 10/10 would recommend everyone to set this.
  - astrange 3y ago
    Some amount of volume limits are required by EU regulation I think.
- lazycouchpotato 3y ago
  There was this incident in the news last year. > Apple Facing Lawsuit After AirPods Allegedly Ruptured Child's Eardrums With Amber Alert https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/17/apple-airpods-pro-amber-alert-lawsuit/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/17/apple-airpods-pro-amber...
stinos 3y ago
This is really cool and kinda makes me want to put various things I have under such scanner. However several statements like provide optimal power efficiently along with other assumptions made this a bit awkward to read. What does it mean to provide 'optimal' power except making it sound like a commercial? Maybe it's just me, after all I was expecting a very technical article (as have been on HN previously, also from CT scans IIRC).
- kube-system 3y ago
  These critiques come up in every thread about a Lumafield post. But these articles are really sales pitches for the CT scanner and not a rigorous analysis of the item they put in it.
  - INGSOCIALITE 3y ago
    There has been an influx of social media “ads” for these CT scanners - probably the worst (and obviously paid) example is Adam Savage’s YouTube channel where they just throw random things into a CT scanner under the guise of “how does this thing we’re scanning function from the inside out” - but it just ends up being an advertisement for “check out the features of the scanner and the settings you can change” with literally no investigation into the object being scanned
- wetmore 3y ago
  I think they mean the space efficiency is optimal, since the battery is using all of the space available (as opposed to the counterfeit AirPod batteries which are a rectangular battery that leaves unused space in the round housing).
keithxm23 3y ago
This is the second time inside a month I've seen Lumafield portray Apple products engineering prowess. First time being when they compared the USB-C cable (unfairly because they compared against the wrong type of third party USB-C). Is this just happenstance or is there a connection between the two companies?
- dewey 3y ago
  The more likely explanation is that they saw that their content marketing piece worked really well, so they did another one.
  - keithxm23 3y ago
    That's fair. And it's probably more interesting to showcase Apple products because they do produce relatively better engineered products in general that would look great with this kind of imaging technology.
    - pimlottc 3y ago
      Apple products are also very well known. Readers are likely more interested in scans of familiar products than something from a lesser-known company.
- SushiHippie 3y ago
  It would be even more interesting for me if they'd compare these things against "real" competitors, i.e. in the same price range or the same quality, and not just "here is the XXX$ apple product vs this XX$ counterfeit". Otherwise these scans are really cool
  - willtheperson 3y ago
    I would like to see comparisons for things in the same price category too. Especially for something like usb-c cables where it's hard to know if you are just paying for a brand or actual quality. Most of the time when you buy Apple you are buying a better engineered product and maybe these scans are just proving that it's actually hard to match their quality for the price.
filleokus 3y ago
I really enjoy these scans that have been popping up lately, so cool to see inside of things! Are there any intellectually property issues related to publishing these? I've had a piece of (probably false) information stuck in my mind about how industrial design can be IP protected in some way, making it problematic to publish x-rays without licensing. Which I've thought of as another silly example of IP gone mad. But apparently there is nothing to this, or has something changed in that space?
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I would not think so. It's really no different from doing a destructive tear-down of something you bought and making a video about it.
- EwanToo 3y ago
  I have a similar probably false memory of schematics having copyrighted writing embedded in them so the layout can't be reproduced without a breach of copyright.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    Like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
syntaxing 3y ago
That updated viewer is a absolutely awesome, I like how you can go through the part layer by layer.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  Medical images are much like this - if you have any interest, it’s quite easy to get a DICOM viewer and get a few patient scans. I recommend Horos and Osirix, though I’m a Mac user. And MRI of course, not CT!
  - figomore 3y ago
    I recommend InVesalius (multi platform).
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      Thanks for this, I’ll explore. Saying available for ‘Apple Mac OS X platforms’ isn’t encouraging but auto segmentation and 3D printer support, and screenshots look good. There badly needs to be a cross section platform viewer that gets full support on each platform. I’m using InteleViewer currently and it’s borderline abandonware on its native platform (Windows) and it’s creaking badly on the Mac. Having copy and paste being the Windows default keys (when in the Mac) is like a middle finger to the user every time you use it.
  - fest 3y ago
    You can also convert the DICOM images to 3D model and print it. I did it with MRI scan of my head (isolated the brain specifically) and kept it on my desk at work, ready to be handed to whoever came by wanting to pick my brain.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
What is the moral calculus of counterfeiters? Fake power adapters can kill.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Poverty and desperation can often drive people to bend their moral compass quite a bit.
  - JCharante 3y ago
    How many people knowledgeable to mass produce fake chargers are in poverty? My assumption is that it's greed.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      Wasn't it just two years ago that apple was caught using slaves? And that was after years of their factories and suppliers abusing children and keeping workers in inhumane living and working conditions. I think we can pretty much guarantee that a massive number of people who are intimately familiar with making apple products, including chargers, are living in poverty. Some people at Foxconn were even caught selling genuine apple parts that failed QA to be used in making counterfeit apple products.
  - askonomm 3y ago
    I tend to believe that a moral compass is a made-up social invention. Children don't have it. We have to teach them these made up rules, how you should feel when you do something against those rules, etc. We ingrain it deep into you much like how religion is ingrained deep into young people, so that by the time you are an adult that's all you know, and it seems to work well, most people never even second guess these things.
    - mportela 3y ago
      As most things in life, it is more complicated than that. While the environment plays a major role in people's moral codes, there seems to be at least some innate development happening too. I'm not a trained psychologist but I've seen scientific evidence on some of these behaviors already showing up in babies as young as a few weeks old, suggesting some of the things we consider to be culturally nurtured can actually be part of the species as a whole. Netflix has an easy-to-digest docu-series called Babies and episode S0204 talks about that, if you're interested. [1] https://www.netflix.com/title/80117833 https://www.netflix.com/title/80117833
deleted 3y ago
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diimdeep 3y ago
This AirPods scan is so unbelievably cool, there is cross section view aligned along speaker battery and circuit board (click Slice Place A on the left) https://app.lumafield.com/project/b618e6f7-9a17-42bc-a2b4-a2208a667968 https://app.lumafield.com/project/b618e6f7-9a17-42bc-a2b4-a2...
kajic 3y ago
I just learned from this article that AirPods can be charged by the Apple Watch charger. Wow, I had no idea.
- JCharante 3y ago
  That's the airpods pro 2 case, which also features speakers at the bottom (for help with locating). Airpods Pro 1 didn't have this feature, but they did have wireless charging.
rob74 3y ago
> The counterfeit AirPods even resort to using internal weights with no other function than to mimic the heft of the genuine product That's ironic, as being lighter would actually be an advantage (makes them less likely to fall out on sudden movements).
- dewey 3y ago
  I'm not sure that's true, I'd assume gravity is doing _some_ kind of job in keeping them inside by pulling down. I think losing them would be a lot easier if they were very light.
  - QuarterReptile 3y ago
    In the sudden movement scenario, gravity is overcome by rapid acceleration in the upward direction. In the no-dropped-item scenario, friction within your pocket (presumably) comes to the rescue to make up the difference between gravity and upward acceleration so that the item doesn't make a successful escape. The friction in a pocket should be a function of tension (how tight your pants are, especially around the item) and not, as often is the case, proportional to the mass of the item. So this particular method of losing the item should be less common with something lighter.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  For B2B, a business would never pay for extra weight. For B2C, monkey likes pink sparkles. Wow! I want.
MarkusWandel 3y ago
On the real vs. fake Apple product front: I get a lot of my electronic bric-a-brac from garage sales. The little iPhone cube chargers are so cute and practical, but: Is it a real one, or a dangerously cost-reduced fake? By comparison, less cute chargers from other major brands, that aren't a target for counterfeiting, are therefore more trustworthy. This is another "why we can't have nice things" kind of problem.
- civilitty 3y ago
  Now all you have to do is bring your $3,000/mo CT scanner along!
  - projektfu 3y ago
    Or a magnifying glass. I bought a used iPhone and it included a little cube charger labeled "Designed by Abble"
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Scales are a good way to tell the difference and still portable.
nunez 3y ago
the driver in the fake earbuds is basically like a wired earbud, which is crazy. i was expecting more sophistication there. no wonder they sound like crap!
- crashmat 3y ago
  There are lots of different types of drivers that work differently and they can all sound good or bad. I also don't think all wired earbuds/IEMs use the same kind of driver.
adamm255 3y ago
I got some AirPods Pro 2 knock offs from Temu for £16. Paired exactly like AirPods, was super shocked. Work great with an Apple TV. They don’t have multi connect though. But are actually more comfortable than the real deal. I find the originals hurt after about 45 mins.
- permo-w 3y ago
  how is the sound?
  - stronglikedan 3y ago
    Curiously absent from OPs story, so we already know the answer.
- astrange 3y ago
  If it's AirPods Pro, you probably have the wrong size tips on if they hurt. There's also some third party tips; I use them because they sound a little different but they're also different sizes.
  - tstrimple 3y ago
    And if the counterfeits are good enough, they will be compatible with the existing ecosystem of 3rd party tips. Foam tips were a huge upgrade to my AirPod Pro 2 experience.
permo-w 3y ago
the tone of this article makes me question who paid for all this
- astrange 3y ago
  They paid for it, they're selling CT scanners. (Leasing?)
karaterobot 3y ago
> Lastly, the contrast in overall build quality is dramatic between the genuine AirPods and their counterfeit counterparts. That's undoubtedly true, but my anecdotal experience was that a pair of $250(?) AirPods Pro broke after a couple of months, and the $40 Chinese knockoff pair is still going after almost a year. I'm sure that, on average, the Apple ones last longer, but it's so hard for me to shell out another $250 on something that broke so quickly just because it's from a company with a headquarters that looks like a Lifesaver. And at about 1/5th the price, it's a pretty easy decision to replace the ersatz airpods if (when) they should break. Unless Apple comes out with something new and exciting, I'll stick with the fakes.
- dave84 3y ago
  I’m on my third pair of AirPods Pro, two warranty replacements and about to try for a third.
jacquesm 3y ago
Ah, the monthly Lumafield advertisement, I always look forward to these because they're actually interesting. previous ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lumafield.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lumafield.com
rowanG077 3y ago
> Our CT scans reveal an intriguing difference between the heat sinks in the real and counterfeit chargers. The genuine charger uses a relatively thin heat sink that wraps around most of the transformer. The counterfeit uses a heavier, but simpler heat sink design. Apple’s heat sink requires more manufacturing steps to stamp and assemble and likely provides more even distribution of heat. The counterfeit’s design is more likely to lead to dangerous hot spots—especially combined with its less sophisticated transformer, which would tend to generate more heat. This just seems like wild speculation to me. It totally reads like we found differences between Apple and the counterfeit. Let's make up a reason why Apple is better. Instead of coming from a place where you give it the counterfeit benefit of the doubt.
gaoryrt 3y ago
This is cool, did they scan any other electronics?
Bluescreenbuddy 3y ago
Use a flashlight to test. Real airpods, the plastic does a really good job at blocking the light and it won't diffuse. Fake ones almost always use shitty plastic and the light diffuses. When I was an Apple Certified iOS Technician, this was one of the tests we did.
ags1905 3y ago
The way I see it, sooner or later, if the fakes are getting better and better and if differences are becoming so hard to spot, it might be ok to buy fakes. Especially if the difference in price would be greater than that in quality. This way producers of fakes would be encouraged to make them better, becoming a strong competition.

157 points by eucalyptuseye 3y ago

My partner bought fake AirPods off ebay. We kind of had a feeling they'd be fake but felt it was worth the risk. We got a refund from the seller pretty quickly and they told us to keep them. The pods themselves looked exactly the same. The case was the real sign. It was clearly not the same as an original case. They actually worked, but they were essentially just generic bluetooth headphones. We ended up listing them on FB Marketplace. Clearly marked them as fake. Person came and picked them up and I said again that they were fake. Got the same amount we paid for them. I don't understand this world sometimes. The fake sellers must make enough off of people who don't realize that they are fake that they can just write off the few that do.

tomdeboer 3y ago
Or buyer will try to resell as non-fake…
- latchkey 3y ago
  I doubt it. Zero profit (since I charged the going rate) and a real waste of time/gas to drive to my house to pick up a single pair. The fake sellers must buy them by the crate for cheap to see any real profits.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    If you charged the going rate for pre-used, maybe the buyer is planning to put them in official looking packaging (likely really official packaging picked up elsewhere, perhaps from their own purchase of an official product) and sell them as new for a profit?
    - latchkey 3y ago
      Probably more likely: 1. Buy a new pair off Amazon. 2. Return the fake and get a refund from Amazon.
      - dspillett 3y ago
        That does seem a more reliable option. I need to update my thinking of I want to be a good scammer!
      - _yb2s 3y ago
        Jokes on them… the Amazon ones will also be fake
frou_dh 3y ago
Seems kinda like "kids eat free" at restaurants... fake-spotters eat free at eBay.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  But in this case they ended up with no product, the same starting money and a bunch of time/energy lost.
  - poszlem 3y ago
    They ended up with twice the amount of money and some time wasted.
  - mathematicaster 3y ago
    > We got a refund from the seller pretty quickly and they told us to keep them. So they made some? Spent time/energy for science of course ...
  - Tade0 3y ago
    The way I read it they ended up with double the starting money, because they both got a refund and sold the headphones.
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      Ah yes, apologies for the miscalculation.
- everly 3y ago
  Until this happens a few times and their algorithm flags you as an 'abuser' of the refund system (despite you doing nothing besides correctly calling out fraud) and you're banned or automatically ruled against in all disputes going forward.
JCharante 3y ago
> but they were essentially just generic bluetooth headphones. I heard that there are fake airpods that will connect and behave just like a normal airpod to iphones, as if they have a fake H1 chip or something. Can anyone confirm?
- thomasqbrady 3y ago
  Yes. I have a set that appear to my iPhone to be legit, including auto-connect/disconnect, noise-canceling modes and all, though the functionality isn’t actually reliable. My iPhone doesn’t seem to know any difference between my real AirPods Pro 2 and these fakes.
  - ewzimm 3y ago
    I got my first AirPods off eBay recently that I was expecting might be fake, but they arrived new in the package with all the usual Apple paperwork and pull tabs and registered normally, even the Apple warranty, and everything seems to work, except if I get a notification when I'm playing audio, it just goes silent until I pause and resume the audio. It seems like other people have the same issue. Is this a real issue with genuine AirPods Pro 2, or is this potentially an incredibly good fake?
  - thebigman433 3y ago
    Feels like this could maybe be a pair from a fake/third shift or something? Seems like that level of functionality with (fake) Apple products is super rare.
- civilitty 3y ago
  Might not even technically be “fake”. Apple has ghost shift problems just like every other major manufacturer that contracts out semiconductors to China. I’ve heard that Apple drives such a hard bargain with some of their suppliers that selling ghost shift parts and the parts that fail QC to counterfeiters and repair shops is the only way they make any profit. The Apple contract pays for the factory and the bills but they make the real money on the side.
darkclouds 3y ago
[dead]
dspillett 3y ago
> We got a refund from the seller pretty quickly and they told us to keep them. A good will gesture to reduce the chance of you reporting them as selling fakes, and tarnishing their carefully manicured feedback scores, if they were in the business of doing this regularly.
- latchkey 3y ago
  They asked for a positive review and we refused and threatened to contact Ebay, so yes... exactly that.
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
>Got the same amount we paid for them. I don't understand this world sometimes. Someone wants ear buds, they want to signal wealth so choose expensive brand, but they want knockoffs because they're actually poor[er]. The main risk with knock-offs is they arrive broken, or just don't arrive, or... basically it's a scam of some sort. So, you took on the risk of buying, assessed the earphones as working, the earphones are now probably worth more as they've been QC-ed (by you), moreover the buyer can actually see them working and refuse them if they wish. Within the context the buyer seems relatively rational.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  >signal wealth >$100 product It really boggles my mind that this works on anyone. We all see the commercials for financing. We all see teenagers with no jobs having them. I'm a bit mind boggled that Apple was able to turn <$1000 tech products into 'luxury' products. Maybe it makes more sense if you didn't get screwed by iTunes DRM and were more open minded during iphone Era.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    When I lived in Vietnam, getting the latest iPhone (or really any product), as soon as someone smuggled it into the country (usually from Australia or Singapore), was a national pastime for people there. That logo is everywhere.
    - tuankiet65 3y ago
      I concur. My mom sometimes talked about how her friends / coworkers just got the latest iPhone and that made her want to get one herself. I guess part of it is just FOMO but there's also something about the brand that drove people to do "unusual" things (like you said, smuggling phones from other countries just to be the first)
  - stronglikedan 3y ago
    Where I grew up, $100 sneakers were a signal of wealth. Nothing new under the sun.
heisenbit 3y ago
Same here. My wife washed the old airpods so she got me some new and "better" AirPod Pros. They looked perfect and since I did not really care about getting other ones I did not much research. In any case they looked genuine and worked for a while until their flakiness got on my nerves and I went to a slightly embarrassing Apple appointment where I was told there were scores of service requests for this particular serial number. She got her money back since at least in our country EBay the company is now the seller and could not run away and as it was bought with PayPal... What convinced me that they were originals - packaging looked genuine - paired out of the box without much hassle - showed up as air pods with serial number Lesson learned and bought the new ones and these were the differences: - print inside the lid was 20% larger in original - packaging of original was not shrink wrapped - slight off-colour white of the packaging - the lightning port of the fake was not feeling right - the button on the case did not click distinctly - the button on the case did not enter the special mode after 10 seconds like original - ANC of original light years ahead. More modes displayed on the menu. With hindsight the biggest give-away probably were the - shrink-wrap plastic around the package - lightning port feel - much, much lower microphone quality. But since I never checked that out myself as I don't use them much for talking and so complaints from others were not so frequent. - imperfect find-my performance but since I did not care about this feature much I suspected I mis-clicked somewhere and gave up. - transitions from case to ear to case with sometimes not registering that it was back in case (contact issues in the case?) not so reliable with impact on battery. - battery erratic behaviour I guess if I would have been in the market for them and then bought them I may have found out immediately but so I just started feeling Apple starts slipping on quality with new products more complex but worse. As I got them as a replacement and just wanted to get on with listening during my walks they were able to fool me. They are certainly good enough to fool casual buyers and they are certainly bad enough to hurt Apple's reputation for quality products.
- latchkey 3y ago
  Oh right, yea... the sn# gives it away immediately, you can google it and see that it is fake. Another pro tip for buying used stuff online... request a photo of the sn#. Even a partial will get you a match in google.
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baz00 3y ago

I'd be interested in some fake airpods if they lasted twice as long and sounded 80% as good. Literally I get perhaps a year out of a set of genuine bought at Apple Store airpods before the case gives up or one airpod goes muffled or craps out. After a year Apple don't want to know or care unless you have AppleCare. Decided I wasn't going to fish out for a fourth set, so I bought some Sony ones for £20 with a wire between them. Seem to work ok and for that money, meh!

latchkey 3y ago
It sounds like what you have found out is that not all Apple hardware is worth the hype. Personally, I have the beats fit pro. While still owned by apple and benefiting from the same chip integrations, these have held up just fine for me for a few years now of daily use.
- baz00 3y ago
  Yes I could write several pages of diatribe about my shitty Apple experiences recently.
someotherperson 3y ago
You can get high quality fake AirPods that sound just as good. They pair with Apple products like the real thing and the batteries are solid. The problem they usually have is with the microphone. That's usually the case with a lot of this stuff. I've had super cheap (i.e $10) wireless off-brand headphones that sound even better than AirPods but the microphone is almost always poop.
somehnguy 3y ago
AirPods or AirPods pro? My current set of AirPods Pro have long outlasted my original set of AirPods in terms of battery longevity. Both very heavily used. It seems the switch from pouch cell (in regular AirPods) to button (in Pro) made a huge difference.
- baz00 3y ago
  I killed two sets of plain Airpods. The Pros I bought crapped out after 14 months of ownership. They do get used heavily but no excuse at that price.

plugin-baby 3y ago

> significant differences that have implications for performance and safety This seems to refer to charging safety, but the thing that makes me fork out for genuine headphones is ear safety - I _assume_ Apple tries to protect from damaging sound levels and frequencies, and could be held to account in a way that counterfeiters could not.

user_7832 3y ago
> Apple tries to protect from damaging sound levels and frequencies, and could be held to account in a way that counterfeiters could not. I doubt Apple tries this too much, or that they could be held accountable. There is the volume alert thing, but that (partially) works with 3rd party headphones too (though it's likely much more inaccurate). Android phones too give a warning if you set the volume very high for headphones. I don't think using 3rd party ear/headphones really change much. That said, it is important to keep volumes "reasonable". Ear damage from high volumes is unfortunately very real.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  There’s a headphones safety section in the sound settings on iPhones for reducing loud sounds and setting a maximum decibel limit.
  - JCharante 3y ago
    I often accidentally set my phone volume to max by holding the volume button for too long, so enabling this setting earlier this year has been really helpful. 10/10 would recommend everyone to set this.
- astrange 3y ago
  Some amount of volume limits are required by EU regulation I think.
lazycouchpotato 3y ago
There was this incident in the news last year. > Apple Facing Lawsuit After AirPods Allegedly Ruptured Child's Eardrums With Amber Alert https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/17/apple-airpods-pro-amber-alert-lawsuit/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/17/apple-airpods-pro-amber...

stinos 3y ago

This is really cool and kinda makes me want to put various things I have under such scanner. However several statements like provide optimal power efficiently along with other assumptions made this a bit awkward to read. What does it mean to provide 'optimal' power except making it sound like a commercial? Maybe it's just me, after all I was expecting a very technical article (as have been on HN previously, also from CT scans IIRC).

kube-system 3y ago
These critiques come up in every thread about a Lumafield post. But these articles are really sales pitches for the CT scanner and not a rigorous analysis of the item they put in it.
- INGSOCIALITE 3y ago
  There has been an influx of social media “ads” for these CT scanners - probably the worst (and obviously paid) example is Adam Savage’s YouTube channel where they just throw random things into a CT scanner under the guise of “how does this thing we’re scanning function from the inside out” - but it just ends up being an advertisement for “check out the features of the scanner and the settings you can change” with literally no investigation into the object being scanned
wetmore 3y ago
I think they mean the space efficiency is optimal, since the battery is using all of the space available (as opposed to the counterfeit AirPod batteries which are a rectangular battery that leaves unused space in the round housing).

keithxm23 3y ago

This is the second time inside a month I've seen Lumafield portray Apple products engineering prowess. First time being when they compared the USB-C cable (unfairly because they compared against the wrong type of third party USB-C). Is this just happenstance or is there a connection between the two companies?

dewey 3y ago
The more likely explanation is that they saw that their content marketing piece worked really well, so they did another one.
- keithxm23 3y ago
  That's fair. And it's probably more interesting to showcase Apple products because they do produce relatively better engineered products in general that would look great with this kind of imaging technology.
  - pimlottc 3y ago
    Apple products are also very well known. Readers are likely more interested in scans of familiar products than something from a lesser-known company.
SushiHippie 3y ago
It would be even more interesting for me if they'd compare these things against "real" competitors, i.e. in the same price range or the same quality, and not just "here is the XXX$ apple product vs this XX$ counterfeit". Otherwise these scans are really cool
- willtheperson 3y ago
  I would like to see comparisons for things in the same price category too. Especially for something like usb-c cables where it's hard to know if you are just paying for a brand or actual quality. Most of the time when you buy Apple you are buying a better engineered product and maybe these scans are just proving that it's actually hard to match their quality for the price.

filleokus 3y ago

I really enjoy these scans that have been popping up lately, so cool to see inside of things! Are there any intellectually property issues related to publishing these? I've had a piece of (probably false) information stuck in my mind about how industrial design can be IP protected in some way, making it problematic to publish x-rays without licensing. Which I've thought of as another silly example of IP gone mad. But apparently there is nothing to this, or has something changed in that space?

SoftTalker 3y ago
I would not think so. It's really no different from doing a destructive tear-down of something you bought and making a video about it.
EwanToo 3y ago
I have a similar probably false memory of schematics having copyrighted writing embedded in them so the layout can't be reproduced without a breach of copyright.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  Like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

syntaxing 3y ago

That updated viewer is a absolutely awesome, I like how you can go through the part layer by layer.

lostlogin 3y ago
Medical images are much like this - if you have any interest, it’s quite easy to get a DICOM viewer and get a few patient scans. I recommend Horos and Osirix, though I’m a Mac user. And MRI of course, not CT!
- figomore 3y ago
  I recommend InVesalius (multi platform).
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    Thanks for this, I’ll explore. Saying available for ‘Apple Mac OS X platforms’ isn’t encouraging but auto segmentation and 3D printer support, and screenshots look good. There badly needs to be a cross section platform viewer that gets full support on each platform. I’m using InteleViewer currently and it’s borderline abandonware on its native platform (Windows) and it’s creaking badly on the Mac. Having copy and paste being the Windows default keys (when in the Mac) is like a middle finger to the user every time you use it.
- fest 3y ago
  You can also convert the DICOM images to 3D model and print it. I did it with MRI scan of my head (isolated the brain specifically) and kept it on my desk at work, ready to be handed to whoever came by wanting to pick my brain.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

What is the moral calculus of counterfeiters? Fake power adapters can kill.

AlecSchueler 3y ago
Poverty and desperation can often drive people to bend their moral compass quite a bit.
- JCharante 3y ago
  How many people knowledgeable to mass produce fake chargers are in poverty? My assumption is that it's greed.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Wasn't it just two years ago that apple was caught using slaves? And that was after years of their factories and suppliers abusing children and keeping workers in inhumane living and working conditions. I think we can pretty much guarantee that a massive number of people who are intimately familiar with making apple products, including chargers, are living in poverty. Some people at Foxconn were even caught selling genuine apple parts that failed QA to be used in making counterfeit apple products.
- askonomm 3y ago
  I tend to believe that a moral compass is a made-up social invention. Children don't have it. We have to teach them these made up rules, how you should feel when you do something against those rules, etc. We ingrain it deep into you much like how religion is ingrained deep into young people, so that by the time you are an adult that's all you know, and it seems to work well, most people never even second guess these things.
  - mportela 3y ago
    As most things in life, it is more complicated than that. While the environment plays a major role in people's moral codes, there seems to be at least some innate development happening too. I'm not a trained psychologist but I've seen scientific evidence on some of these behaviors already showing up in babies as young as a few weeks old, suggesting some of the things we consider to be culturally nurtured can actually be part of the species as a whole. Netflix has an easy-to-digest docu-series called Babies and episode S0204 talks about that, if you're interested. [1] https://www.netflix.com/title/80117833 https://www.netflix.com/title/80117833

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diimdeep 3y ago

This AirPods scan is so unbelievably cool, there is cross section view aligned along speaker battery and circuit board (click Slice Place A on the left) https://app.lumafield.com/project/b618e6f7-9a17-42bc-a2b4-a2208a667968 https://app.lumafield.com/project/b618e6f7-9a17-42bc-a2b4-a2...

kajic 3y ago

I just learned from this article that AirPods can be charged by the Apple Watch charger. Wow, I had no idea.

JCharante 3y ago
That's the airpods pro 2 case, which also features speakers at the bottom (for help with locating). Airpods Pro 1 didn't have this feature, but they did have wireless charging.

rob74 3y ago

> The counterfeit AirPods even resort to using internal weights with no other function than to mimic the heft of the genuine product That's ironic, as being lighter would actually be an advantage (makes them less likely to fall out on sudden movements).

dewey 3y ago
I'm not sure that's true, I'd assume gravity is doing _some_ kind of job in keeping them inside by pulling down. I think losing them would be a lot easier if they were very light.
- QuarterReptile 3y ago
  In the sudden movement scenario, gravity is overcome by rapid acceleration in the upward direction. In the no-dropped-item scenario, friction within your pocket (presumably) comes to the rescue to make up the difference between gravity and upward acceleration so that the item doesn't make a successful escape. The friction in a pocket should be a function of tension (how tight your pants are, especially around the item) and not, as often is the case, proportional to the mass of the item. So this particular method of losing the item should be less common with something lighter.
hospitalJail 3y ago
For B2B, a business would never pay for extra weight. For B2C, monkey likes pink sparkles. Wow! I want.

MarkusWandel 3y ago

On the real vs. fake Apple product front: I get a lot of my electronic bric-a-brac from garage sales. The little iPhone cube chargers are so cute and practical, but: Is it a real one, or a dangerously cost-reduced fake? By comparison, less cute chargers from other major brands, that aren't a target for counterfeiting, are therefore more trustworthy. This is another "why we can't have nice things" kind of problem.

civilitty 3y ago
Now all you have to do is bring your $3,000/mo CT scanner along!
- projektfu 3y ago
  Or a magnifying glass. I bought a used iPhone and it included a little cube charger labeled "Designed by Abble"
jacquesm 3y ago
Scales are a good way to tell the difference and still portable.

nunez 3y ago

the driver in the fake earbuds is basically like a wired earbud, which is crazy. i was expecting more sophistication there. no wonder they sound like crap!

crashmat 3y ago
There are lots of different types of drivers that work differently and they can all sound good or bad. I also don't think all wired earbuds/IEMs use the same kind of driver.

adamm255 3y ago

I got some AirPods Pro 2 knock offs from Temu for £16. Paired exactly like AirPods, was super shocked. Work great with an Apple TV. They don’t have multi connect though. But are actually more comfortable than the real deal. I find the originals hurt after about 45 mins.

permo-w 3y ago
how is the sound?
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  Curiously absent from OPs story, so we already know the answer.
astrange 3y ago
If it's AirPods Pro, you probably have the wrong size tips on if they hurt. There's also some third party tips; I use them because they sound a little different but they're also different sizes.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  And if the counterfeits are good enough, they will be compatible with the existing ecosystem of 3rd party tips. Foam tips were a huge upgrade to my AirPod Pro 2 experience.

permo-w 3y ago

the tone of this article makes me question who paid for all this

astrange 3y ago
They paid for it, they're selling CT scanners. (Leasing?)

karaterobot 3y ago

> Lastly, the contrast in overall build quality is dramatic between the genuine AirPods and their counterfeit counterparts. That's undoubtedly true, but my anecdotal experience was that a pair of $250(?) AirPods Pro broke after a couple of months, and the $40 Chinese knockoff pair is still going after almost a year. I'm sure that, on average, the Apple ones last longer, but it's so hard for me to shell out another $250 on something that broke so quickly just because it's from a company with a headquarters that looks like a Lifesaver. And at about 1/5th the price, it's a pretty easy decision to replace the ersatz airpods if (when) they should break. Unless Apple comes out with something new and exciting, I'll stick with the fakes.

dave84 3y ago
I’m on my third pair of AirPods Pro, two warranty replacements and about to try for a third.

jacquesm 3y ago

Ah, the monthly Lumafield advertisement, I always look forward to these because they're actually interesting. previous ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lumafield.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lumafield.com

rowanG077 3y ago

> Our CT scans reveal an intriguing difference between the heat sinks in the real and counterfeit chargers. The genuine charger uses a relatively thin heat sink that wraps around most of the transformer. The counterfeit uses a heavier, but simpler heat sink design. Apple’s heat sink requires more manufacturing steps to stamp and assemble and likely provides more even distribution of heat. The counterfeit’s design is more likely to lead to dangerous hot spots—especially combined with its less sophisticated transformer, which would tend to generate more heat. This just seems like wild speculation to me. It totally reads like we found differences between Apple and the counterfeit. Let's make up a reason why Apple is better. Instead of coming from a place where you give it the counterfeit benefit of the doubt.

gaoryrt 3y ago

This is cool, did they scan any other electronics?

Bluescreenbuddy 3y ago

Use a flashlight to test. Real airpods, the plastic does a really good job at blocking the light and it won't diffuse. Fake ones almost always use shitty plastic and the light diffuses. When I was an Apple Certified iOS Technician, this was one of the tests we did.

ags1905 3y ago

The way I see it, sooner or later, if the fakes are getting better and better and if differences are becoming so hard to spot, it might be ok to buy fakes. Especially if the difference in price would be greater than that in quality. This way producers of fakes would be encouraged to make them better, becoming a strong competition.