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A crazy experience losing Apple earbuds in a remote town in Chile
- jakupovic 2y agoThis all boils down to, I like my apples and don't want anyone to say otherwise.
- robertlagrant 2y agoI love how this story is written, and also that the world is so amazing we think it's bad that wireless earbuds can be made for $15 on the shelf.
- jsnell 2y agoWireless earbuds being that cheap isn't bad. What's bad is that the price of real wired headphones is artifically inflated by the licensing terms, to the extent they can't compete.
- k4rli 2y agoWhich part of wired has expensive licensing? I thought at least 3.5mm and USBC were free to use.
- jsnell 2y agoThe article was about headphones using a Lightning port, which suggests a phone without a 3.5mm jack or USB-C. (It must be an iPhone, so no 3.5mm port if it's newer than 8 years; and Lightning and USB-C are mutually exclusive).
- School-Cotton 2y agowell, they are not really wireless.
- Control8894 2y agoWell, they are really wireless. Wireless costs more because suddenly you need to deal with antennas and RF and whatever. Adding a wire back on top of that doesn't magically make it cost less again.
- School-Cotton 2y agoIt also costs more because wireless devices need batteries, which this doesn't.
- xnzakg 2y agoThought I would find out how much these cost straight from AliExpress, seems like searching for "bluetooth lightning" finds a lot of these. Spoiler: Apple EarPod clones cost about $1.59, with free shipping over $10. Crazy.
- wmf 2y agoFor comparison, I read that the MFi license fee is $4 which is far more than the cost of the headphones themselves.
- recursive 2y agoWow, this is such a better experience with longer form content on twitter than I've seen before. I don't know if this is multiple tweets crammed together somehow, or just tweets can be long now? And also have italics? Anyway, I'm accustomed to twitter links being an incomprehensible mess of UI showing people responding to stuff without showing what it is or how to get to it. This is remarkably sane and coherent. Do I... like twitter now?
- JohnMakin 2y agoI believe you need a twitter blue subscription or whatever the heck they're calling it now to make tweets this long.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoFor $8/month your character limit is bumped from 280 to 25k https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/x-premium https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/x-premium EDIT: $3 is a "basic" subscription, long posting is reserved for "premium" and "premium+" lol
- ClassyJacket 2y agoTweets (I refuse to call them "posts on X") can be long now if you pay for premium
- Control8894 2y agoDon't worry, you're only allowed to see responses to stuff if you're logged in. Hope they don't ban you from having an account for daring to @ musk.
- recursive 2y agoWow, this is awesome! I'm never logging in again.
- tomxor 2y agohmm, maybe if there was some kind of way to just directly connect earphones with some kind of new fangled direct analogue technology, then "wired bluetooth" wouldn't be the most economical way to get wired earphones. It would only require a port supporting 3 wires and a miniscule onboard amplifier. I'm sure Apple have the courage to invent a new port for the good of humanity, maybe they can even pave the way for a new standard. hides
- lxgr 2y agoI know this is a popular opinion and I might or might not be in the minority here, but I don't miss the headphone jack on my phone at all, and every gram of battery or other functionality that has taken its place is worth it for me. Water proofing one connector (USB-C) is probably also easier than two. For the increasingly unlikely case in which I really do need wired headphones, I just carry them with an adapter permanently plugged into them. > a miniscule onboard amplifier That amplifier would be dead weight for me! (To be fair, it would be in good company with all the power amplifiers for 5G bands not available in my country, but I get the point of unifying SKUs globally and I can hardly plug one of these in with an adapter when traveling.)
- Control8894 2y agoNothing has taken its place, and you didn't even get anything cheaper. The only one who won was Apple.
- School-Cotton 2y agoDo you honestly think they removed the headphone jack for no reason?
- Control8894 2y agoOf course not. They removed it because it saves them money, thus increasing their profit margins.
- bradleybuda 2y agoI inadvertently bought a pair just like this from Amazon - I knew they were knockoffs, but I didn’t think they would be Bluetooth. Hilariously they also identify as “Baets“ (not “Beats”) when connecting.
- davekeck 2y ago> I wish @Apple would devote an employee or two to cracking down on such a technological, psychological abomination as this. What can Apple do though? Any change that cracks down on this will render these devices unusable for thousands of people, generate tons of e-waste, and create a huge backlash towards Apple. It reminds me of when FTDI permanently bricked FTDI clones [0]. Further, I'm not sure I agree with the OP's vitriol against these manufacturers. They're using an open standard to bypass Apple's MFi tax. It's a hack for sure, but if it leads to cheaper devices -- which is the ultimate goal for this segment of product -- I don't see the problem. I could see the problem if they're advertised as wired headphones without mentioning Bluetooth though. [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/ftdi-admits-to-bricking-innocent-users-chips-in-silent-update/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/ftdi-admits-to-bricking-innoce...
- amluto 2y agoWhat can Apple do? They could make standards-compliant USB-C audio adapters work on the iPhone 15 and up, with no NDAs, magic chips, or Apple-specific standards. (Maybe the already do?)
- davekeck 2y agoTotally agree, the time to crack down on these devices was before they were needed in the first place. Apple created this situation, I just hope they don't feel the need to "fix it". Given their sensitivity to bad PR, I'd be very surprised if they did.
- lxgr 2y agoI'm pretty sure they already do. The story in the tweet mentions Lightning.
- meatmanek 2y agoThey _almost_ do. I can use a USBC-headphone dongle that came with some Pixel phone with my iPhone, but only for listening to music and videos. For video calls (at least Google Meet), the phone just plays the audio out its speakers like normal, and doesn't offer the option to use the headphone dongle. I thought this was a bug in Google Meet until I plugged in a first-party Apple dongle and it worked perfectly.
- sunshowers 2y agoAn interesting story with rather absurd moral conclusions drawn from it. I think this is a fantastic workaround against one of the world's largest corporations extracting revenue from everything, and there should be more of this energy in the world.
- krisoft 2y ago> this is a fantastic workaround against one of the world's largest corporations extracting revenue from everything Exactly. The idea that one looks at this situation and somehow concludes that Apple is good and the manufacturers are bad is absurd.
- rootusrootus 2y agoOTOH, taking the position that Apple is the baddie here is just as absurd. These are all big companies out to make a buck. Without taking sides, I'd say the fundamental problem in this case is the deception. They are pretending to sell one thing and delivering another. If they told you what you were buying, I'd call it clever and totally reasonable.
- Control8894 2y ago> These are all big companies out to make a buck. != not bad
- calibas 2y ago> taking the position that Apple is the baddie here is just as absurd. These are all big companies out to make a buck. I see this logic often, and I don't understand it. If I did something people considered unethical, arguing that I did it out of greed wouldn't change people's minds. It would probably hurt my argument. When a big company does something people consider unethical, there's almost always someone who mentions that the point of a business is to make money, as if that's a excuse for their behavior. It's like there's a separate set of ethics for business, and the worst sin of all is not being profitable.
- Carrok 2y agoCould someone post a summary? I can't load twitter.
- sandyarmstrong 2y agoIn some parts of the world, wired lightning headphones are actually cheap bluetooth headphones that only use the lightning port for power (to avoid Apple licensing fees). For the author this was baffling, as everyone else took it as normal that bluetooth needed to be enabled to use wired headphones.
- School-Cotton 2y agohttps://pastebin.com/vFqCFWBP https://pastebin.com/vFqCFWBP
- e12e 2y ago> A scourge of cheap "lightning" headphones and lightning accessories is flooding certain markets, unleashed by unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers who have discovered an unholy recipe: > True Apple lightning devices are more expensive to make. So instead of conforming to the Apple standard, these companies have made headphones that receive audio via bluetooth — avoiding the Apple specification — while powering the bluetooth chip via a wired cable, thereby avoiding any need for a battery. Ditto for minijack to lightning adapters. Wonder if this will be fixed now that Apple uses usb-c like they should have been doing all along.
- rootusrootus 2y ago> they should have been doing all along USB-C wasn't a thing when Lightning was created. And Lightning was way, way, way better than Micro-USB. Apple has been converting their iDevices to USB-C for years, they held out on the iPhone because it is a high-impact switch that would affect a lot of customers with purchased accessories (some of which are quite expensive).
- e12e 2y ago> wasn't a thing Might be a bit strong? > Design for the USB-C connector was initially developed in 2012 by Apple Inc. and Intel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C > Lightning is a proprietary computer bus and power connector, created and designed by Apple Inc. It was introduced on September 12, 2012, in conjunction with the iPhone 5, to replace its predecessor, the 30-pin dock connector. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector) It wasn't a thing Apple had sole control over. And they still use it for keyboard and mouse (with usb-c on the other end).
- glacials 2y agoThis is an amazing story and a clever innovation. I cannot fathom why the author is so upset about it.
- munzman 2y agothis makes you wonder if apple specs where designed to enhance the user experience or just to gate-keep the access to thier lucrative market. If the later, and I highly believe so, then can we blame others to come up with workarounds?
- rootusrootus 2y agoNo matter what we think of Apple, we can absolutely blame others for being deceitful and claiming they are selling one thing while actually providing something inferior.
- lxgr 2y agoThis could need a better title: Losing earbuds has nothing to do with the actual (interesting!) discovery. > I wish @Apple would devote an employee or two to cracking down on such a technological, psychological abomination as this. Why blame these manufacturers for finding a clever workaround and not Apple for requiring hardware DRM and extracting royalties out of accessory manufacturers in the first place?
- jazzyjackson 2y agoCertifications and royalties are not an altogether bad thing selling bluetooth headphones without disclosing they're bluetooth is however anti-consumer, buyer should know what they're buying
- lxgr 2y agoWhat's the upside in me paying for a DRM chip in every damn dongle that Apple can get away with putting one into, and clever manufacturers still inevitably defeating the scheme and flooding the market with poor quality fakes (that Amazon will gladly distribute for them stateside)? I'm so glad we're mostly past this bullshit with Apple's move to USB-C.
- elbasti 2y agoHN's convention is to keep the original title whenever possible. Since tweets have no title, I followed the convention used in poetry where a poem with no name is referred to by its first line. I guess technically then I should have titled the post [A crazy experience — I lost my earbuds in a remote town in Chile].
- cdelsolar 2y agoI accidentally bought one of these pieces of garbage from Amazon a few years ago. I had no idea why my wired headphones needed Bluetooth. They broke after a few months and Amazon gave me a refund.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- grecy 2y ago> I wish Apple would devote an employee or two to cracking down I can't help but wonder which "World Police" are supposed to take action here, and exactly how they're going to stop this. The laws of one country should not be forced on others.
- Control8894 2y agoErm... no.
- walterbell 2y agoThe issue is pollution of human language and confusion of customers by conflating: audio-wired headphones power-wired wireless headphones Confusion can be avoided by correctly labelling the headphones. If these devices are sold in France, one could ask the French language police for guidance on accurate names. For hacker points, there could be an open-source logo for the bizmodel workaround, borrowing from the mythologies of Halt and Catch Fire, HBO Silicon Valley, Wild West, Sherwood Forest, or the Silk Road of Marco Polo's travels.
- dangus 2y ago> I wish @Apple would devote an employee or two to cracking down on such a technological, psychological abomination as this. OP wants want Apple to crack down on open standards? What tyrant king declared that Bluetooth devices need to be powered by separate batteries? I think this is an ingenious solution, to a problem Apple created in a way that should be illegal, no less. And one less battery in the landfill on top of it! Interestingly, Apple’s own keyboards and mice pair to Bluetooth automatically using lighting cables. I think this is a case where the first world perspective is blind to the burdens that big multinational corporations put on poorer countries. A $4 Apple lightning license may seem like no big deal to a high income country’s citizen but the rest of the world is used to electronics like this costing less ~$5 or less.
- klyrs 2y agoI feel the same way about Logitech wireless mice. They have a USB port, only for charging. Agh!