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I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75%

I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75% of young people owning a pair, great quality, features, and battery life. I dont think a swappable battery is even a good feature, the parts would be tiny and break easily given their size not to mention how often they could get lost

bombcar 1y ago
AirPods are one of Apple’s best products in forever and their size forgives them battery complaints, to me. Even phones and laptops I’m willing to give a pass on, ever since USB-C got “good enough” and the battery life long enough. If I had one complaint it’d be that they should sell one fat phone with no camera hump (because it has more battery). Edit: I should have clarified as AirPods Pro are the ones I have experience with; no idea how the original AirPods are. But the Pros are phenomenal.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  Airpods are very, very expensive compared to competitors with 90% of the same features. I've been using a $30 set for several years and the main drawback is it's difficult to switch devices—because apple doesn't allow third parties to use access the proprietary comms that allows this for airpods. Also, I think the white is ugly. But kids seem to love it.
  - hedora 1y ago
    AirPods (and Bose QuietComfort) make me dizzy/nauseous. Also, they don’t have decent passive noise cancellation, so they’re not appropriate for mowing the lawn, etc. My Sennheiser ear buds solve all these problems for a much lower price, and their sound quality is much better than the last pair of AirPods I tried. To each their own, I guess.
    - lurking_swe 1y ago
      well to be fair, some people simply don’t tolerate ANC well. Likely due to a more sensitive vestibular system. I believe this group often (not always) also struggles with motion sickness.
    - kjkjadksj 1y ago
      It should be stated that noise cancellation is not hearing protection, if you were using it for that while mowing. An old groundskeepers trick for having music and ear protection is to get those big over ear protectors and put your buds on with that over them, just being mindful of volume of course.
      - hedora 1y ago
        Another trick is to get earbuds with passive noise isolation. The Sennheisers are a hybrid. They are solid ear plugs even with the power turned off, but support active cancellation too. With the big over ear hearing protectors that works much better than either in isolation. Sadly, you usually have to find third party tests to find out what the passive noise isolation rating is for different brands. Manufacturers are terrible at marketing it.
        kjkjadksj 1y ago
        You could also go hybrid the opposite way. They make some of those protective earmuffs with built in blutooth speakers now.
  - oliyoung 1y ago
    I'll happily pay the premium for "it just works", especially device switching iPhone to iPad to MacBook to Apple TV, it works first time, every time. I have a pair of Sony XM5s, and even at that price point, pairing and device switching can be a crapshoot some of the time. Bluetooth honestly feels like a non-deterministic stack sometimes, it even took Apple 4 years to support it on the iPhone, how they have the AirPods working is close to magic.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      > how they have the AirPods working is close to magic They control the entire ecosystem and keep the variants and with it, the testing complexity, down as far as possible. That's how Apple stuff works so damn seamlessly. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has to contend with dozens if not hundreds of Bluetooth chipsets, driver combinations, OS stacks... and each of these has their own quirks, and even if a bug gets fixed in a Bluetooth driver or controller firmware, good luck getting that distributed to users...
  - bombcar 1y ago
    You absolutely know they have tanks and tanks of colored plastic ready to hit those molds the moment sales slow down a tiny bit ...
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    I doubt very seriously your $30 headphones sound as good as AirPods Pro or have the ANC. But you can buy much cheaper headphones with the H1 chip for fast switching between devices by buying one of the Beats headphones. I love my $60 Beats Fiex with the double flange ear tips for traveling.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      I have proper over-ear headphones for when I want to listen to music. I'm not sure what ANC is or why it's worth hundreds of dollars—hence why I said 90%. I don't know what the h1 chip has to do with the fast switching—surely this is a bluetooth protocol detail, yea?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - Telaneo 1y ago
        > I'm not sure what ANC is or why it's worth hundreds of dollar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control > I don't know what the h1 chip has to do with the fast switching—surely this is a bluetooth protocol detail, yea? A detail apparently no-one else bothers to deal with. The amount of hardware out there that does bluetooth the worst way possible is horrendous, and I will gladly pay extra to not have those in my life.
        MangoToupe 1y ago
        It seems the $30 headphones by the brand I use (soundcore) do offer noise canceling in the years since I last looked. Is it as good? Probably not. But I'm not going to spend $200 for slightly better earbuds.
        Telaneo 1y ago
        Bad noise canceling is worthless. Good noise canciling is like magic. The airpods offer pretty good noise canceling.
Gigachad 1y ago
Hot swappable batteries kind of became not so important after battery banks and fast charging became a thing. Makes more sense to carry one battery bank that can charge anything than to have 2-3 phone batteries in your bag (which would be exposed to puncture too). I still think the price of battery replacements is way too high from apple. It's $150 AUD here which feels far and beyond the cost of the part cost itself.
- wpm 1y ago
  Because the "replacement" is "get two new AirPods". Even Apple can't take AirPods apart non-destructively. They are disposable. So much for their carbon neutrality.
  - daedrdev 1y ago
    Are you sure? They say they can replace a battery online
    - Gigachad 1y ago
      I’m fairly sure that battery replacements for the AirPods and Apple Watch involve giving you a new one and sending yours to be recycled. And the service only exists to avoid controversy about non reparable products.
    - fsflover 1y ago
      http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-impossible-deemed-future-e-waste-ifixit-2465348 http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-imposs...
  - VogonPoetry 1y ago
    Everything humans do is carbon negative. Breathing, eating, driving, pooping (Westerners: toilet paper, All: waste management) and building. Getting every human to be carbon neutral would be an amazing thing! From searched / online numbers, Apple has shipped 150 million AirPods since 2016. The AirPods 3 weigh 5.5g. The gross weight of a basic Tesla model 3 is 1760Kg. I picked a Tesla because it has plastic, metals, magnets, copper, lithium - similar materials. In the ~10 years Apple has been making AirPods the materials used (by weight) is ~ 470 Tesla cars. So, per year (avg, not really good for this), resources consumed is about 47 Teslas (by weight). Apple claims 40% of AirPods 3 are from recycled materials, so ~ 290 crashed / discarded Teslas could provide part of these materials - on average 29 per year. I did the above because it perceptually relates to "real things". Teslas are NOT carbon neutral, very much carbon negative. The reality / HORROR of waste is far, far worse. Any single plastic bag used to dispose of weekly waste likely weighs more than a pair of AirPods. Any can, made of steel or aluminum, could likely could make a lot of AirPods. The toy or product you bought that had a flap that you could lift up - there was likely a magnet under there. Any disposed single use battery might have zinc, if it was a CR2032 or "watch" battery, lithium (or silver). Yes, AirPods might be disposable. Do they improve the qualify of life of the humans that purchase them? What is the real cost in perspective - with everything else taken into consideration? If the AirPods are used to listen to music or entertainment, then the positive mental health aspects are likely significant in a positive value direction.
dmbche 1y ago
Don't most people use nondescript earbuds?
- daedrdev 1y ago
  A casual search showed several studies over several years estimating 70-80% of young people owning airpods, which matched my irl expirence. In the past random earbuds and headphones were common but apple has taken the market by storm.
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  I rarely see any earbuds except AirPods in the US, they are the overwhelming majority. Several other countries I’ve worked in also have pretty ubiquitous AirPods penetration, though not quite at the level of the US. I have a few friends that bought every inexpensive alternative to AirPods, had a poor experience with all of them, finally relented and bought AirPods. Now they won’t use anything else. They spent more money avoiding AirPods than buying them. Apple did a really good job with the AirPods.
  - markemer 1y ago
    Especially if you're in the ecosystem. I can use them with all my devices, and they switch seamlessly.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    It was like that in the wired earpod era too. It just carried over when they dumped the headphone jack and sold you the airpod you didn't need before. I still remember those early ipod commercials with the silhouettes dancing with the white cord.
  - dmbche 1y ago
    I'm suprised, might just have been lucky I got a pair of Jlab pro whatever for 30$ at Canadian Tire and have been getting other ones when I lose them for years now - never thought of shopping for something else.
- swiftcoder 1y ago
internet2000 1y ago
> I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The poster himself admits that after a meandering 2000 words... > I found a lot of reactions to these products to be weirdly optimistic. Either I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue, or certain people are easily impressed.
rectang 1y ago
I used to hate Airpods in videochats since they made the person wearing them sound bad because of dropouts, had heinous latency, and frequently disconnected causing meeting interruptions. But people think they're "better" than [wired] Earpods, which have none of those problems. /me shakes fist at cloud
- Marsymars 1y ago
  If I could do so, I would mandate that everyone at my workplace must use a wired headset with a boom mic for every Teams call.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    You're fucking disgusting. You'd force people to use Teams?
    - op00to 1y ago
      I love the skeumorphic campfire style room layout of Teams, with the talking heads. It's hilarious.
    - Marsymars 1y ago
      Hah, I laughed. But seriously, I don’t love Teams overall, but for business video conferencing, what’s actually better? I’d take Teams over Zoom or Google Meet. Haven’t tried any others.
      - fragmede 1y ago
        Phew, wasn't sure that would land :) For video conferencing only, it's pretty okay. It's that it's terrible for instant messaging and group chats and everything else that it gets used for that makes it an exercise in getting papercut to death. Meet is a lot friendlier about not having to download a client and just use a web browser, so that's nice for clients. It's not great for messaging and group chats either though. The problem with Zoom is that a lot of people use it for personal use, but aren't tech savvy enough, so occasionally you'll get PantsPooper69 joining a business meeting until they change it right after joining, if they notice.
op00to 1y ago
The Airpods Pro 2 are probably the "best" headphones I've owned when you weigh sound quality, ease of use, convenience, etc. I've owned many, many sets of headphones over the years. The AirPods Pro 2 got the most use by far.

bombcar 1y ago

AirPods are one of Apple’s best products in forever and their size forgives them battery complaints, to me. Even phones and laptops I’m willing to give a pass on, ever since USB-C got “good enough” and the battery life long enough. If I had one complaint it’d be that they should sell one fat phone with no camera hump (because it has more battery). Edit: I should have clarified as AirPods Pro are the ones I have experience with; no idea how the original AirPods are. But the Pros are phenomenal.

MangoToupe 1y ago
Airpods are very, very expensive compared to competitors with 90% of the same features. I've been using a $30 set for several years and the main drawback is it's difficult to switch devices—because apple doesn't allow third parties to use access the proprietary comms that allows this for airpods. Also, I think the white is ugly. But kids seem to love it.
- hedora 1y ago
  AirPods (and Bose QuietComfort) make me dizzy/nauseous. Also, they don’t have decent passive noise cancellation, so they’re not appropriate for mowing the lawn, etc. My Sennheiser ear buds solve all these problems for a much lower price, and their sound quality is much better than the last pair of AirPods I tried. To each their own, I guess.
  - lurking_swe 1y ago
    well to be fair, some people simply don’t tolerate ANC well. Likely due to a more sensitive vestibular system. I believe this group often (not always) also struggles with motion sickness.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    It should be stated that noise cancellation is not hearing protection, if you were using it for that while mowing. An old groundskeepers trick for having music and ear protection is to get those big over ear protectors and put your buds on with that over them, just being mindful of volume of course.
    - hedora 1y ago
      Another trick is to get earbuds with passive noise isolation. The Sennheisers are a hybrid. They are solid ear plugs even with the power turned off, but support active cancellation too. With the big over ear hearing protectors that works much better than either in isolation. Sadly, you usually have to find third party tests to find out what the passive noise isolation rating is for different brands. Manufacturers are terrible at marketing it.
      - kjkjadksj 1y ago
        You could also go hybrid the opposite way. They make some of those protective earmuffs with built in blutooth speakers now.
- oliyoung 1y ago
  I'll happily pay the premium for "it just works", especially device switching iPhone to iPad to MacBook to Apple TV, it works first time, every time. I have a pair of Sony XM5s, and even at that price point, pairing and device switching can be a crapshoot some of the time. Bluetooth honestly feels like a non-deterministic stack sometimes, it even took Apple 4 years to support it on the iPhone, how they have the AirPods working is close to magic.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > how they have the AirPods working is close to magic They control the entire ecosystem and keep the variants and with it, the testing complexity, down as far as possible. That's how Apple stuff works so damn seamlessly. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has to contend with dozens if not hundreds of Bluetooth chipsets, driver combinations, OS stacks... and each of these has their own quirks, and even if a bug gets fixed in a Bluetooth driver or controller firmware, good luck getting that distributed to users...
- bombcar 1y ago
  You absolutely know they have tanks and tanks of colored plastic ready to hit those molds the moment sales slow down a tiny bit ...
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  I doubt very seriously your $30 headphones sound as good as AirPods Pro or have the ANC. But you can buy much cheaper headphones with the H1 chip for fast switching between devices by buying one of the Beats headphones. I love my $60 Beats Fiex with the double flange ear tips for traveling.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    I have proper over-ear headphones for when I want to listen to music. I'm not sure what ANC is or why it's worth hundreds of dollars—hence why I said 90%. I don't know what the h1 chip has to do with the fast switching—surely this is a bluetooth protocol detail, yea?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - Telaneo 1y ago
      > I'm not sure what ANC is or why it's worth hundreds of dollar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control > I don't know what the h1 chip has to do with the fast switching—surely this is a bluetooth protocol detail, yea? A detail apparently no-one else bothers to deal with. The amount of hardware out there that does bluetooth the worst way possible is horrendous, and I will gladly pay extra to not have those in my life.
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        It seems the $30 headphones by the brand I use (soundcore) do offer noise canceling in the years since I last looked. Is it as good? Probably not. But I'm not going to spend $200 for slightly better earbuds.
        Telaneo 1y ago
        Bad noise canceling is worthless. Good noise canciling is like magic. The airpods offer pretty good noise canceling.

Gigachad 1y ago

Hot swappable batteries kind of became not so important after battery banks and fast charging became a thing. Makes more sense to carry one battery bank that can charge anything than to have 2-3 phone batteries in your bag (which would be exposed to puncture too). I still think the price of battery replacements is way too high from apple. It's $150 AUD here which feels far and beyond the cost of the part cost itself.

wpm 1y ago
Because the "replacement" is "get two new AirPods". Even Apple can't take AirPods apart non-destructively. They are disposable. So much for their carbon neutrality.
- daedrdev 1y ago
  Are you sure? They say they can replace a battery online
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    I’m fairly sure that battery replacements for the AirPods and Apple Watch involve giving you a new one and sending yours to be recycled. And the service only exists to avoid controversy about non reparable products.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-impossible-deemed-future-e-waste-ifixit-2465348 http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-imposs...
- VogonPoetry 1y ago
  Everything humans do is carbon negative. Breathing, eating, driving, pooping (Westerners: toilet paper, All: waste management) and building. Getting every human to be carbon neutral would be an amazing thing! From searched / online numbers, Apple has shipped 150 million AirPods since 2016. The AirPods 3 weigh 5.5g. The gross weight of a basic Tesla model 3 is 1760Kg. I picked a Tesla because it has plastic, metals, magnets, copper, lithium - similar materials. In the ~10 years Apple has been making AirPods the materials used (by weight) is ~ 470 Tesla cars. So, per year (avg, not really good for this), resources consumed is about 47 Teslas (by weight). Apple claims 40% of AirPods 3 are from recycled materials, so ~ 290 crashed / discarded Teslas could provide part of these materials - on average 29 per year. I did the above because it perceptually relates to "real things". Teslas are NOT carbon neutral, very much carbon negative. The reality / HORROR of waste is far, far worse. Any single plastic bag used to dispose of weekly waste likely weighs more than a pair of AirPods. Any can, made of steel or aluminum, could likely could make a lot of AirPods. The toy or product you bought that had a flap that you could lift up - there was likely a magnet under there. Any disposed single use battery might have zinc, if it was a CR2032 or "watch" battery, lithium (or silver). Yes, AirPods might be disposable. Do they improve the qualify of life of the humans that purchase them? What is the real cost in perspective - with everything else taken into consideration? If the AirPods are used to listen to music or entertainment, then the positive mental health aspects are likely significant in a positive value direction.

dmbche 1y ago

Don't most people use nondescript earbuds?

daedrdev 1y ago
A casual search showed several studies over several years estimating 70-80% of young people owning airpods, which matched my irl expirence. In the past random earbuds and headphones were common but apple has taken the market by storm.
jandrewrogers 1y ago
I rarely see any earbuds except AirPods in the US, they are the overwhelming majority. Several other countries I’ve worked in also have pretty ubiquitous AirPods penetration, though not quite at the level of the US. I have a few friends that bought every inexpensive alternative to AirPods, had a poor experience with all of them, finally relented and bought AirPods. Now they won’t use anything else. They spent more money avoiding AirPods than buying them. Apple did a really good job with the AirPods.
- markemer 1y ago
  Especially if you're in the ecosystem. I can use them with all my devices, and they switch seamlessly.
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  It was like that in the wired earpod era too. It just carried over when they dumped the headphone jack and sold you the airpod you didn't need before. I still remember those early ipod commercials with the silhouettes dancing with the white cord.
- dmbche 1y ago
  I'm suprised, might just have been lucky I got a pair of Jlab pro whatever for 30$ at Canadian Tire and have been getting other ones when I lose them for years now - never thought of shopping for something else.
swiftcoder 1y ago

internet2000 1y ago

> I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here. The poster himself admits that after a meandering 2000 words... > I found a lot of reactions to these products to be weirdly optimistic. Either I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue, or certain people are easily impressed.

rectang 1y ago

I used to hate Airpods in videochats since they made the person wearing them sound bad because of dropouts, had heinous latency, and frequently disconnected causing meeting interruptions. But people think they're "better" than [wired] Earpods, which have none of those problems. /me shakes fist at cloud

Marsymars 1y ago
If I could do so, I would mandate that everyone at my workplace must use a wired headset with a boom mic for every Teams call.
- fragmede 1y ago
  You're fucking disgusting. You'd force people to use Teams?
  - op00to 1y ago
    I love the skeumorphic campfire style room layout of Teams, with the talking heads. It's hilarious.
  - Marsymars 1y ago
    Hah, I laughed. But seriously, I don’t love Teams overall, but for business video conferencing, what’s actually better? I’d take Teams over Zoom or Google Meet. Haven’t tried any others.
    - fragmede 1y ago
      Phew, wasn't sure that would land :) For video conferencing only, it's pretty okay. It's that it's terrible for instant messaging and group chats and everything else that it gets used for that makes it an exercise in getting papercut to death. Meet is a lot friendlier about not having to download a client and just use a web browser, so that's nice for clients. It's not great for messaging and group chats either though. The problem with Zoom is that a lot of people use it for personal use, but aren't tech savvy enough, so occasionally you'll get PantsPooper69 joining a business meeting until they change it right after joining, if they notice.

op00to 1y ago

The Airpods Pro 2 are probably the "best" headphones I've owned when you weigh sound quality, ease of use, convenience, etc. I've owned many, many sets of headphones over the years. The AirPods Pro 2 got the most use by far.