There's like a next-level Apple marketing babble on that page:
"AirPods introduce an effortless wireless listening experience packed with high-quality audio and long battery life. These magical wireless headphones use advanced technology to reinvent how we listen to music, make phone calls, enjoy TV shows and movies, play games and interact with Siri, providing a wireless audio experience not possible before."
As much as I've also become an apple hater recently because of what they've done to iOS10 and the new macbook pro, I think criticizing a marketing copy for being a marketing copy is not fair.
Actually it is a bit more than "a pair of fucking headphones". As someone who spends a lot of time throughout the day listening to music, and finds Apple's Earpods to be some of the most comfortable nice sounding headphones I have owned, I'm rather excited about some innovation being done around this space.
A few features that make them new/innovative:
• Smart switching between multiple devices logged into iCloud. You need only pair with one of your iCloud devices and the rest will auto pair.
• Auto-pause when removed from ears.
• Auto-mono when only one is in your ear.
• Carrying case that charges them rapidly and keeps them safe in your pocket.
Edit: I said AirPods when I meant EarPods (the current wired ones). I don't currently have the AirPods.
Edit 2: Another reason I'm excited about these: I absolutely abhor talking on the phone (like holding the phone up to my ear) and find single ear bluetooth devices to be lame in both function and appearance. I might be a smidge hard of hearing, so I much prefer to have both ears in on the action. I've tried a handful of Bluetooth headsets in the past, and they've all left me seriously wanting. Connectivity isn't consistent. Audio quality isn't great. If something doesn't just work like my wired headphones, I'm not going to switch. If these turn out to have the same issues, I'll gladly report how inaccurate Apple's marketing was and how disappointed I am.
Like with most things Apple, they don't necessarily create the first product in a space, but they define the category by refinement of user experience and inventing the necessary tech to support that.
This Plantronics case isn't that great. You have to open it with two hands in front of you, and carefully place the awkwardly shaped headset in. You probably have to look at it while doing so. It's rather large, and the clear plastic cover looks like it can break pretty easily. It's also only one ear, and it's a $30 accessory.
The AirPods can be opened one-handed while in your pocket, and you can place them in without looking. They're also smaller, the case looks quite a bit more durable, and they work with the charger you already have as an iPhone user (lightning). The AirPods and case were designed with a broader UX scope - the entire user experience, from opening to listening to putting away - as one unified product.
The process that most hardware teams typically take is more narrowly focused on the core product hardware, rather than the entire scope of its use. If Plantronics had designed their headset with a broader UX scope in mind, they probably would have designed the headset itself differently, because its awkwardly shaped and hard to store. Instead I imagine they optimized the headset design for solely when its on-ear, and then asked how they could make a case for that shape. Such are the little differences that distinguish between regular products and category-defining ones (see also: iPod with iTunes).
Indeed. The fact that the first use experience is (from what I've heard) the very best pairing experience for any bluetooth headset ever tells that story quite well (all thanks to Apple's proprietary W1 chip, of course).
I've got a pair of Bose QC 35s and though their pairing experience is standard annoying bluetooth pairing, their support of multiple devices/easily switching between them is the best I've seen in bluetooth headphones I've purchased. The AirPods are, apparently, comparable to the Bose in this regard, with a better onboarding experience.
"The fact that the first use experience is (from what I've heard) the very best pairing experience for any bluetooth headset ever tells that story quite well (all thanks to Apple's proprietary W1 chip, of course)."
From who? They're not available, not even any pre-release reviews around.
Beats headphones with the W1 chip in them have been available since the the iPhone 7 release. I am, admittedly, assuming that the AirPods will be as good at this as the Beats headphones with the chip, but I believe that's a reasonable assumption.
>• Smart switching between multiple devices logged into iCloud. You need only pair with one of your iCloud devices and the rest will auto pair.
Genuine feature, and a neat one at that. Previously I had to rely on stuff like NFC or saved pairs, which is still more than 1 pair.
>• Auto-pause when removed from ears.
Also a genuine feature. Takes some real thinking to make that a priority in the UX.
>• Auto-mono when only one is in your ear.
Is that really a feature? I mean I guess that's cool, but it seems like a play on the previous feature sensing if in use or not.
>• Carrying case that charges them rapidly and keeps them safe in your pocket.
This is a necessity rather than a feature per say.
Wired headphones don't need to be charged. Wireless headphones with a headphone port for backup also don't require a charge.
Most modern headphones are a single unit, so they don't need a case to be kept from getting lost.
That said, many have cases to keep them from getting tangled or damaged in transport, the latter which is true for the airpods, however if your case were damaged, so is your charger.
> If these turn out to have the same issues, I'll gladly report how inaccurate Apple's marketing was and how disappointed I am.
If they have the same issues as other Bluetooth devices, hopefully you find out about it before you spend your money on some expensive tech.
>Is that really a feature? I mean I guess that's cool, but it seems like a play on the previous feature sensing if in use or not.
I think the distinction is that its not just turning off one of the phones. Its switching from stereo to mono so you can still hear everything you previously required both sides of the stereo mix (left + right) for. Definitely not a big jump from the other feature, but still goes to show how they are thinking about the small details.
That's true, it shows some attention to detail in the UX of the device.
I don't think however people were having a "crippled" xp when using just one wired earbud in "mono" rather than "combined stereo"
I think the feature really should be "senses when individual pods are in use" and because of that feature, some automatic tasks can be applied like combining stereo or pausing the music.
I guess I am just complaining that it feels like they used one feature and got two marketing points out of it, which is fair game.
Do you actually have them in hand? How is the sound quality? What headphone did you use before the AirPods and are they better or worse in terms of sound quality?
I'm probably not switching soon because I love my Atomic Floyd's sound quality (don't get me started on their customer service) but I'm just curious how they did with the sound quality aspect, which feels like the most important thing to me.
Sorry, edited my post after I realized I said AirPods and not EarPods. I don't have a pair. I would imagine they will be the same. Which is my hope because the EarPods fit my ears perfectly... I have pretty big ears (not sure if that typically translates to ear holes), which caused more than a little fun poking back in school, but apparently they are a good size for Apple's design spec. Take that BILLY you little jerk!
I have nil fashion sense, but I think the single-ear Lt. Ohura look is much better than headphones with the wires hanging. But I only like them for voice conversations.
I'm not sure if you have a bias against Apple or not but you're distilling your adjectives down to the simplest level in order to attack them. I do not believe that is a fair assessment.
The AirPods include some interesting UX changes not typically seen (open case to connect, etc) and while some abilities have been done before (the tiny ear buds, the recharging case, etc) it also has some interesting aspects with voice commands and gestures.
Yes I wouldn't necessarily call them world class but a "pair of fucking headphones" seems possibly even more inaccurate to me.
That's important to notice. Just adding "fucking" in front of what something is isn't a very good argument. You can do it to anything that people love or consider to be great. The Beatles is just a fucking band. Tesla just makes fucking electric cars. A cure for cancer is just a fucking medical discovery.
I can't speak for the other guys above, but I must have missed something. I am baffled why this particular set of wireless headphones has received as much press as it has. It seems so overblown that I have to wonder if people with iPhone 7s have actually been refusing to use existing wireless headphones because they are actually waiting for these.
I've had a set of $25 Motorola wireless (Bluetooth) headphones that I use on my daily walking commute to and from work for many years. They work and sound great. They double as a wireless microphone and playback controls. I charge them every day via a USB cable. Woohoo.
I can't see anything specs-wise with the Apple headphones that is interesting. Auto-pause? Okay, cool, but I can press the pause button on my Bluetooth headphones from 2010. Switching between devices? I can enable or disable Bluetooth on my devices, I guess, if I had wanted to use the headphones with more than my phone (though I do not want that).
These new features seem incremental at best. The clamor for these—and the fact that their availability is a high-ranking news item on HN—seems to suggest I am missing something very fundamental. And yet, it feels that I am not. These are wireless headphones with a couple incremental features and an Apple logo.
> I can't speak for the other guys above, but I must have missed something. I am baffled why this particular set of wireless headphones has received as much press as it has.
They're tiny, they pair to multiple devices trivially, and are well designed. They're one of the big reasons Apple is supposed to have removed the headphone jack off the iPhone 7. "You don't need it, let us show you why" kind of thing.
The other reason is that this is releasing MONTHS LATE. It was supposed to be released at the end of October, now it's coming out end of December. That's HUGE.
When was the last time Apple screwed up the launch of something big like this? The biggest one people can recall is the white iPhone 4 which basically released 9 months late. At that point most people just waited the extra 4-5 months for the iPhone 4s.
Ignoring that they're neat little headphones, this is big news today because APPLE SHIPPED LATE. That just doesn't happen. Maybe quantities are low (Apple watch), but not a flat out delay on a major product after announcing a release date.
Eh, they'll pair trivially to other Apple devices (which ... NFC assisted pairing is not new).
It's months late, it's still not here yet, AND there's a "big" warning on the page that even when it is here it will only be in limited quantities and that prospective buyers are "advised" to check online for stocking levels... very un-Apple.
Looking at the list of specs you mentioned, yes, you missed something. There's another guy right above talking about the non-music related features, take a look.
The other two from that message that I didn't mention were auto-mono and a carrying case. Are those the other features you're referring to?
Auto-mono: I guess I see some people listening in only one ear sometimes, but that's not my way of listening to music or podcasts. The cheap Motorola headphones I use are traditional "headphones" and not earbuds. I prefer headphones over earbuds. But even if I used earbuds, I'm not interested in single-ear listening.
Carrying case: This is a big deal? On my walks, I "carry" my headphones on my ears. When I get home, I charge via a USB cable.
Whatever; I suppose I don't begrudge anyone for being excited by Apple headphones. I just find the hype level amusing and silly.
I would agree that old Bluetooth devices (especially those from around 2005 or earlier) often sounded poor. But modern Bluetooth devices (say 2009 onward) have generally sounded fine/great. I would go so far as to say that if you're listening to MP3s and not FLAC, then Bluetooth isn't your biggest signal loss.
I haven't done work in the Bluetooth space for years now, but a big problem with audio streaming in the Bluetooth 1/2 days was that devices wouldn't reliably adjust their page and inquiry scan intervals (time the radio spends listening for connections and answering device discovery requests, rather than sending data).
The effective remaining bandwidth fell far short of what the default Bluetooth codec, SBC, required. SBC was already pretty low end, more like MPEG Layer-1 audio. Even so, for point to point streaming if the devices cooperated well there was enough bandwidth for fairly good audio quality. It's just that it was a crapshoot what any pair of devices would get you.
The other big issue is that there wasn't, at least at the time, any standardized method for synchronizing the audio sampling rates of the source and sink. This could have been achieved by slaving the audio PLL to the connection master's frequency hopping clock, which the slave has to follow to even maintain a connection, but there wasn't any requirement to do so. Plus it'd be a massive layer violation in the Bluetooth stack. We basically ran a software PLL on the sink side to try to match what the source was giving us, but packet retransmissions due to loss could gum up the timing. You could get a pitch-bending effect as a connection was starting up, or had just suffered a lot of loss.
> I imagine they've sorted most of that out by now.
I think they have. Giving some leeway to my bluetooth Motorola headphones since they are super-aural, to my ears—and I feel I am fairly picky—they are not significantly worse than my circumaural Sennheiser HD 380 pros on my workstation. I suspect the principal reason I feel my circumaural headphones sound a bit better is simply that they are circumaural.
I believe modern Bluetooth headphones are indistinguishable from equivalent non-Bluetooth headphones. If you can tell whether headphones are Bluetooth or not—the other components being equal—then you have particularly acute hearing. And if that's you, then you are probably a FLAC aficionado.
For what it's worth, I listen to MP3s on Bluetooth headphones and they sound great.
(Though to be clear, I've not actually researched the bit rate of Bluetooth, though I suspect it's high enough for 44 KHz stereo. To my ears, Bluetooth is indistinguishable from an analog 3.5mm connection.)
The quality has nothing to do with Bluetooth, it has everything to do with the digital-to-analog converter. A $25 headset is going to have the cheapest chip the manufacturer could find. Non-Bluetooth headsets don't process digital signals and don't have to do this conversion, it's up to the device you're listening on.
Again, that's my point. Bluetooth has a undeserved/outdated bad reputation for adversely affecting audio. I contend that, all else being equal, I could not distinguish a modern Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired headphone.
Yes, as you point out, they also need a DAC. So I will clarify my contention: all else being equal, I could not distinguish a Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired USB headphone that uses the same DAC.
It's not all about the codecs. On my Sony MDR-1RBTs — which are admittedly a few years old at this point — you can hear the radio buzzing when there's nothing playing. I don't know if it's possible to design a pristine, noiseless set of Bluetooth headphones when there's just so little room in the earcups.
Just go grab a pair of BT headphones with aptX support and you should be fine. Unless you are a tube amp and $1.5k headphone kind of person - then you most definitely aren't in the target segment.
I had a pair of wired Sony's wayyyyy back in the day in this wrap around ear/neck band form factor that I really loved when I was a kid. Lately though, I find anything that covers my ear too warm and uncomfortable. This is why I'm excited about the AirPods. I wouldn't really classify these Motorola's as truly wireless because of the connecting band.
That's cool with me. A sense I have picked up from your reply and another message in this thread is that Apple is attempting to evolve the definition of "wireless headphone" to require no bridge between the two ears. I think that is a vocabulary change that is causing a lot of us to scratch our heads in confusion. Conventionally, "wireless headphone" has meant no wire to the device—no headphone cable and no 3.5mm connector. And by that definition, wireless headphones are old and boring.
That said, I'm not a fan of earbuds, wired or otherwise. So whether removing the bridge wire is a revolution is lost on me since I'm not interested either way.
Yeah... My bad, agree on the terminology. I think a more appropriate way to refer to them would be 'wireless earbuds'. In that case, I would say anything connecting them would be cheating and taking away from the truly amazing feeling of having audio delivered to your ears with no connecting wires to get caught on things, pull, vibrate when turning your head etc etc.
I could buy a dozen of the Motorola wireless headphones I use and I expect the results would be consistently satisfying. In fact, a couple years back I did buy two spare pairs that are new in box in case I ever lose my current pair. At $25 a pop, I figured why not have some insurance.
But I understand you. If you've not previously used wireless headphones and you're satisfied with Apple quality, this new offering is a known quantity. I'm still not really feeling the innovation. Except of course, as someone pointed out, this is a subtle redefinition of "wireless" to mean not just removing the wire to the device, but also any bridge between the two ears. For me, that bridge isn't something I care to remove. But okay, that's cool.
It's Apple. Pretty much anything and everything Apple does right now gets lots of press, much of it of the fawning variety. Apple has a strong brand affinity, so people will shower love on anything Apple-related.
It's like calling a Tesla "an electric version of the same cars that were on the road for decades". Each headphone has a new chip that could probably run a whole smartphone few years ago - but I mean, if the fact that they are wireless is not impressive, then I don't think we can convince you.
He's probably not impressed by the fact they're wireless because wireless headphones aren't new. I mean, even stodgy grumps like me have a pair that works well and cost $20. Wireless headphones just aren't impressive technology in December 2016. They've been done. Again and again. This isn't a Tesla situation by any means.
Apple might have executed particularly well, but I see his point.
I'm not saying they're the greatest ever, but sync was easy, they play music without any problems, they hold a charge for a few days, and they haven't broken. What more does it take for a pair of Bluetooth headphones to work well? My expectations are pretty low.
They could absolutely be better, if for example, the charge lasted two weeks, or the sound was higher quality (I'm no audiophile but I'm sure if I was I'd find they could be better) but they're Good Enough.
Wireless headphones aren't new. Wireless headphones at that size/feature set/price point seem to be. The only comparable thing I know if is Samsung reportedly had some similar but they only had like 90m of battery life.
I'm curious how well the battery life claims hold up. It's impressive but sometimes the real world battery life doesn't measure up. The new MacBook Pros are a good example of this (even if the current battery life is temporary and may be fixed by OS updates).
Eh, you said it... YOU believe them. A lot of people here don't anymore.
Let's wait to see what real world use looks like. I mean, if you take the emoji touch bar at face value it's the coolest thing since sliced bread. However, real world use indicates that it might not be as useful as Apple wants it to be.
I think you misunderstood me. What I said is that Apple's numbers are highly accurate FOR WHAT THEY TESTED.
The problem here is that Apple hasn't given numbers about what it's like under heavy load. Or really any load it all. If you stick to doing the kind of things Apple does in their battery life test you WILL get what they say.
Unfortunately as we seem to be finding out if you go outside of that you're screwed. Obviously harder workloads always hit the computer more, but this year the delta seems much much higher. They are cherry picking tests that make their battery life look reasonable.
I should also note that this is not the first time Apple did this. The quoted battery life on the iPhone 7 is basically the same as before, but they made a slight change to the wording. This year there tests are all with wireless headphones. This is likely because it's always been down that using the speaker on an iPhone to listen to music will lower your battery life pretty significantly, and now that the new iPhone 7 has a double speaker arrangement it's likely an even bigger effect than before.
Apples not lying like so many PC makers used to do, they're playing lawyer games and choosing their words incredibly carefully.
This is not a good turn. Apple giving real life accurate battery estimates used to be one of the things that put them above PC makers in my mind. If they're going to start redefining the workload to doing nothing on your computer... why bother?
Honest question: can you point me to some other earbuds of the same size that are totally wireless (not even a bridging wire) and that also include a microphone, etc.?
The AirPods honestly do seem like a somewhat unique entry into the market to me, but it's such a crowded market that I could have easily missed a competitor somewhere.
That said, the lack of any sort of wiring is actually a negative to me, because that's primarily what makes it seem like these will be so easy to lose.
The Bragi Dash and the Samsung Gear Icon X both do this, and also include fitness tracking functionality. The Samsung ones can even be loaded with music and cache your fitness data so you don't need a phone with you.
I think this is hilarious, even as someone who owns multiple Apple devices. "This is revolutionary. Nothing else does anything like this." "These do." "Well they cost more!", or "doesn't look as cool". Moving goalposts.
And eh, I realize that Apple almost never goes below MSRP/list, but don't act like the "after $50 off" is some special promotion. It's not a rebate, even an instant one, just 'cheaper than list'.
Your lack of awareness of the market does not mean that it does not exist. It is not helpful to pretend that your unwillingness to do simple research on the matter makes you an expert.
- Apple Airpods ($160) W1 Chip to quickly switch devices+, Can use either headphone independently+, 24 add hrs of charge in case, only comes in one size- -- 5 Hours
yeah this falls under "that isn't exactly the same product," above. I'm not sure, for instance, why you left 'can use either headphone independently' off the Gear IconX entry, because you can. I'm not sure why about half of these entries leave out the charge-case entry, because a lot of them have it.
But it's irrelevant. You can say "apple's product is better." You can say "these other products are terrible." You can even say "I hate everything that is not from Cupertino." But the claim here is that these things are some kind of revolution. The claim we are trying to rebut is not "apple airpods suck and are not worth buying." I, and many others, are merely explaining that there is nothing magical or even particularly new about airpods. They are an iteration on an existing product segment.
You, so far, have done nothing to demonstrate otherwise.
> A pair of headphones a month later than they should be that look exactly like their old headphones
??? Maybe we have different standards on what 'look different' should be, but these are functionally and design-wise worlds apart from their existing headphones.
What are some of the things you hate about iOS 10? I've also disliked a few changes they've introduced, but after spending more time with the OS, I've discovered that some changes were not as bad as I'd initially considered. It was more a matter of getting used to.
I guess people don't like changes to the things they've grown accustomed to.
There are a lot of small things that are making me hate iOS 10.
1) Unlock process: When the fingerprint reader fails it now takes several presses on the home key to get a keypad to pop up so I can input my code. With previous versions I could just swipe when I knew the fingerprint reader would fail (e.g. wet hands).
2) App updates: When apps are updating on my phone it decides it really wants to stay on the home screen. I can swipe to get to the other screens, but it goes back before I can tap any apps. Also, when I can get into an app they tend to lag and crash more when updates are happening in the background.
3) Control Center (bottom menu): Trying to slide the brightness or volume controls on the control center menus usually gets interpreted as a swipe to the next control menu. I have to be very precise when touching them for the sliders to actually work.
4) Safari: Auto-hide of the control buttons does help page visibility, but showing them seems to be glitchy as hell. They appear and then disappear before I can move my finger to tap them.
5) Crashes: At least daily now the whole phone crashes to a black screen and then comes back to the lock screen a few seconds later. Seems to involve location services.
Also, not exactly iOS 10, but the new Watch OS completely broke the usability of the Weather app for me. Something that was fairly intuitive and useful is now cumbersome and basically useless to me.
I'm really glad that I'm not the only one who's been frustrated by iOS recently. Their user interactions have become so inconsistent and there are so many places (like control center) where simple tasks like pausing music playback have additional friction for really no reason. Why would they split it into 2 screens when one worked just fine? Why did they eliminate slide to unlock? (My conspiracy theory here is to upsell people new devices because the home button unlock is absolutely horrible to use on anything < iPhone 6s). There are lots of places where things are just downright much more difficult than they have to be. In the end, I switched to android after using iOS for the last ~5 (maybe more?) years and I have to say my phone actually feels smart again
Good news/bad news for 5. Try backing up and restoring. It's a huge pain and shouldn't be required, but it does tend to fix outlier issues.
A friend has a 16gb iPhone and has managed to deal with that little space until just recently. She'd run out of space completely, I'd hand-update apps one-at-a-time trying to free up temp download space. Deleted her local music. A few weeks later deleted her local photos. iMessage claimed 1gb of space, it's a little opaque and manual to clean delete things. I finally convinced her to delete all messages older than 1 year. She got 500mb back. The next day her phone was full again without an obvious reason. Backed up her phone and restored. Everything seems to be there and now she has 5+gb free.
I was having the battery issue they're fixing the 6s for. Because I knew they'd ask I restored my phone (and grabbed yesterdays update because that had a fix related to this, too). It seems to be fixed as well by restoring.
...but all of this is souring me on Apple. I wish I was more confident about other options.
You can clear out a lot of space by trying to download a huge movie from iTunes. Just trying is enough. It will first purge all accumulated cruft before telling you you still don't have enough space.
Even though people disagree, what Apple does there makes sense to me. It's like all of my kind of tech savvy friends always complaining they're out of RAM. It gets freed when you need it. Having empty space does you no good, deleting caches prematurely wastes resources both deleting and regenerating it. It does suck not having an accurate count of how much free space you have when you're making sure you have space to download an app or take pictures for your trip. I think it's terrible for so long Apple only sold 16gb phones and the next size up was 64gb. They're also so stingy on iCloud space that most people I know can't keep an iCloud backup.
However, in my case had I tried this and it didn't work.
I also had your issue 5. I can't say for sure, but taking a fresh backup, then restoring from that backup seemed to have fixed it for me. Best of luck!
2 & 5 don't appear to be happening here, and 4 only seems to happen with the embedded browser view in some apps, not the 'normal' browser. At least, that's how it is for me.
Not the OP, but I hate the 2-page swipe-up screen. I can't get used to it. Having so much real estate dedicated to crap like AirPlay, AirDrop and NightShift makes zero sense to me.
I'm not in love with "click to unlock" either, although the 7 makes it bearable with raise-to-wake (it's just stupid on my 6, though).
There's an option for the home button under "Accessibility" called "Rest finger to open". Turn that on, and you'll be able to unlock your phone with no clicks. It probably doesn't work for non Touch ID phones.
My lil complaint is that the "notification actions" are much less smooth then they were in iOS9. This is the feature where you can reply to a text or snooze an alarm or whatever directly in the drop-down notification while the phone is unlocked.
Also I've found that apple music CONSTANTLY loses my place if I pause my music for more than a couple minutes. This never used to happen with the old music app.
This is exactly what I meant by apple pushing their own agenda instead of making user experience the priority.
They are pushing this new notification thing which is pretty out of touch with how people actually use the phone--they think interacting directly from the notification is how people want to use it, when most people feel claustrophobic and would rather see the whole thing before making any action--and because of this, it introduces another step for people who just want to open the app and do the damn work
> I guess people don't like changes to the things they've grown accustomed to.
Trust me I used to be one of those people who would say the same thing you're saying. I was like "What's the big deal? These people just don't like change. They'll get used to it."
Except that you don't anymore.
The reason I hate these changes is because things just don't work smoothly and disrupt your workflow, not to mention the UI being messy design-wise (I have NEVER complained about Apple's design changes ever since the first iPhone).
And this is all because of the new features they introduced they're trying to shove down user's throats. Most of these features are built to satisfy Apple's agenda instead of making it easier for users to use. Just read what others have already said, these are features built for Apple, not for users.
What is "Apple's agenda"? It seems to me you just dislike the changes (which is fair) and are dressing up your dislike as a conspiracy theory. Have you considered that the designers simply thought they were making it better?
Yes they are. Apple forces you to upgrade all the time. They keep sending push notifications until you find the option hidden somewhere in the settings and turn it off.
You're assuming all changes are progress. They are not.
How the hell do you turn that off? I'd love to know, because I'm not going to upgrade to iOS 10 until I'm sure it won't hose my phone, and I'm sick and tired of being bothered about it twice a day.
Perhaps, considering that I don't recall having ever had Automatic Updates turned on, and yet my phone had downloaded 10.1.something and was nagging me about installing it. (Automatic Updates already wasn't turned on when I followed the steps to disable it.) Deleting the update from the storage UI is a piece I hadn't previously run across, and I've gone ahead and done it.
I'm now seeing the 10.2 update available, but it hasn't (yet) been downloaded; if a day goes by and it still isn't, then I'd have to say I owe you a beer, or several, for pointing me at a way to relieve what was getting to be a real pain in the neck. (Although why I failed to find this clue for myself is a curious question in its own right - it's certainly not for want of looking! In any case, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to point it out.)
Update: Looks like I owe you a beer, or your preferred alternative beverage! The email address in my profile is a good place to send details of how I may remit the requisite funds; or, if you're in the Baltimore area and want to pick a bar, a day, and a time, I'm good with that too. (Preferably not Fells, though; crowds of drunk twentysomethings and the occasional mugger aren't really my idea of a good time.)
Thanks again! That was really getting on my nerves.
Having long since ceased to trust automatic app updates in any case (cf. Uber location awareness creep and YouTube's perennial UI brokenness du jour), I see no problem there.
On the other hand, I'm increasingly sure I have never had automatic updates enabled on this device, yet I had the iOS 10 update downloaded regardless. Perhaps I forgot having done that by hand, or perhaps the setting doesn't apply to OS updates; in any case, time will tell.
The things mentioned by other people - message notification lag, stupid slidy cards for brightness and volume, lockscreen press home button to jump through hoop. Also
- Photos. Wtf is the distinction between 'photos' and 'albums'. Why does Photos pretend to be a chronological hierarchy of Year -> Month -> Day but then drop to Tumblr style 'related' links, while Memories contain your grouped photos in any order, but so does Albums. Albums also try to dynamically group things by 'location' and 'selfies' and 'video' and 'camera roll'. Oh, they're all showing the same thing - the last thing I recorded? Useful. It's a complete mess and super frustrating to use.
- The changes to take and send photos in iMessage. Used to be that taking a photo meant pressing and holding the photo button, sliding up to take a video. Now it's more steps, and the camera shutter button is awkwardly at the bottom of the screen, then there's another slider to the left to reveal another camera button, to switch to the camera app, to take a video. More steps for everything, which also displaces 'insert a previously taken photo'. Who benefits?
- Video editing (trim) was glitchy in iOS9 and still is in iOS 10. Seriously, take photo, play with trim, randomly the video stops changing with the slider position, then the screen goes black, have to task-end the Photos app and try again. Video playback in Safari, also glitchy - pause somewhere, or skip forwards, get it playing from the start at 10x framerate (or more) with no audio, to 'catch up' to the new seek location. Seeking is still fiddly and often doesn't work well.
- Still need to care about WiFi vs. Cellular because "we changed our App icon to a Christmas one" still means tens or hundreds of download.
I hate the apple apps. People have loved to hate Apple apps for years but I've been ok with them.
However, more and more I'm running into things that are just stupid or buggy or both.
The TV app is the latest annoyance. All our purchases are under my wife's account, and there seems to be no way to view family sharing purchases with the app.
I'm using a beta of iOS and I keep hoping it'll be added, but this is the seventh beta I think, and I've pretty much given up.
im using the previous version of ios 10 (one before current) and it has some weird battery draining bug and will shut off my iphone 6 plus at 30% and it's very hard to repower on without a charge source (e.g. ext charging battery). it also drains my battery heavily.
the current version supposedly fixes the battery drain (not sure about the shutdown bug) but introduced a bug into another app that i use and don't want to risk upgrading for either.
and this is the problem. apple charges premium prices but their software has gotten sloppy. macos and ios10 included. i upgraded to the latest macos version, sierra, and my escape key would not work for some reason (i was using vim and ended up doing ctrl-c? to activate) then i find out that killing siri on mac would fix the problem. then i found out a couple days later that their new macbook pro would not have an escape key. gee i wonder why they never caught this bug in testing?
Brand new mbp on 10.11.6. Opening new tabs in safari then cmd-L to put focus in the location bar would beachball safari for multiple seconds.
The solution after much debugging was to disable com.apple.imklaunchagent
These lazy engineers really should be ashamed of themselves. This was an out of box install on a brand new laptop on their browser with minimal 3rd party software installed (chrome, brew, intellij, but nothing that should interfere with the os.) I wasted 5 free hours trying to make the damn browser work.
thanks for this. i don't have a 6s. either that or it thinks i've already had a battery replacement. which could be true? this is my third 6 plus.
my original's lcd screen had the touch disease, since it was just inside warranty they "replaced" it by just giving me a new phone.
the replacement died within a week. serious wtf. so i went in and got yet another one.
this one has been fine, mostly. but i'm probably not going to get a iphone for my next device. not saying no other devices do this but that touch disease should be fixed even if you're outside warranty and not be charged with the $329 it cost. my original phone was susceptible to it and only by sheer "luck" did it happen within my warranty.
I hate the control center. Its almost impossible to control the screen brightness. Whenever you try it, two-third of the time it takes me to the music control. It was something which was perfect in ios9.
Atleast they could have given an option to choose if you don't want the separate music tab in the control center.
Health: The iPhone 5s+ automatically counts my steps anyway, so I started entering my weight and blood pressure every few days. It felt really satisyfing to look at the Health dashboard every day.
I could probably buy (and trust!) third-party dashboards that use HealthKit. But instead I just stopped using Health. Chances of me getting an Apple Watch for health tracking: now zero, even if it was free.
Game Center: I'm aware that people hated the old and the new design, but Apple didn't kill it, they moved the invitations functionality into (gasp) a Messages mini-app. Syncing your game progress between iOS devices is a hodgepodge of Facebook, iCloud, Game Center, and most commonly, "not at all". That's not going to change if Apple cares so little about its own frameworks.
Messages is an utterly perfect, textbook example of software bloat.
There are now so many garbage features, tangential to the core purpose of the app — self-deleting audio blips if you move the phone this way, internet GIF search if you swipe that way, weird drawing pad, stupid variable-location popup to add "HA HA HA" animation, recently-played music grid, full-screen-or-sometimes-not fingerpainting applet, image editor, heartbeat monitor, fucking kiss simulator (what the fuck), and I know from sorry experience (usually when trying to send a message with one hand while carrying something heavy and awkward) that there's more shit buried in here that I can't even figure out how to navigate to right now, like a signature editor — that I have had to help my dad, my wife, and my kids figure out how to get back to where send a fucking message with it, repeatedly.
You could use iOS 10 Messages to create a 6-episode TV miniseries called Software Design Gone Horribly Fucking Wrong and surely win an Emmy award for best documentary.
Yeah, I really wonder who's in charge of this mess.
Like I said somewhere else in this thread, all these new features are for Apple, not for users.
If they designed it for users, they would have NEVER made it so that they have to tap twice to take a photo before sending. Not to mention how they don't even allow you to open the camera as fullscreen.
Isn't it really ridiculous how nowadays when you want to take a quick picture and send it while messaging, you have to close the messages app, open the camera app, take the photo, and share it back to messages? Used to be: tap the camera button. Take the pic. Send.
Except you don't have to do that. If you need the full-screen camera, just swipe right from the smaller camera view. You'll get access to your full-screen camera and any previously taken photos/videos in your library.
Thanks for the tip. I guess this will make it slightly easier.
But my point is exactly this. How many taps did it used to take to quickly take a pic and send? One.
Now with iOS10, you tap the camera button, swipe to the right, and then tap the "real" camera button one more time. That's 3 times the number of gestures it used to take pre-iOS10.
p.s.
How did you even discover that swipe feature? I'm pretty sure most people have no idea that's how it works. I am an iOS developer so I'm not exactly a laggard, either.
It wasn't that difficult. There's an arrow on the left of the screen. The first time I tapped the arrow and nothing happened so I swiped and got the camera. People complain about discoverability but that's exactly the way discoverability works, I think.
Before iOS10, you could press the little camera button from the messages app and a camera would just launch. You take the pic, and send.
Now all you get is this tiny preview rectangle at the bottom. It doesn't launch a full camera so is useless for most cases. That's why I have to open the "real" camera app and take the picture and come back.
Next to the "tiny preview rectangle," there's a gray arrow indicator that suggests swiping right. If you do that, you'll find a button you can tap for the old functionality.
So now it's tap-swipe-tap instead of just tap, but in exchange the old functionality of sending an existing photo has changed from a long series of actions to just tap-tap-send.
A lot of the time it seems like Apple just changes things on iOS just because, not because there's actually any tangible benefits to doing so. The UI changes for Messages iOS 10 is a perfect example - it feels cramped and complicated where it used to feel intuitive and easy to use.
In the past it may have been true. That's why a lot of people hated iOS7 just because it was different.
But Apple's recent updates are all bad because the root cause goes up to how Apple is trying to push their own agenda--they want to become the "Services" company, because the wall street thinks their device growth has stalled. For example their stickers is an attempt to monetize their user base with app purchases. They don't care that people would rather be able to take a photo and send with one tap, because they know users have no choice anyway.
But this is super short sighted, Apple's recent moves reminds me of how Windows lost significant size of their users with Vista and went downhill.
Messages is a terrible example of that. In fact what you are talking about makes absolutely no sense.
The reason the UI is designed this way is because they decided to cram 100 features in a space that simply can't accomodate it properly. Stickers, Apps, Photos, Animations etc all of that takes space.
In 1/10 cases, it takes me over 20 seconds to unlock my phone. The new "click twice to unlock" feature combined with apparently hard-to-detect fingerprints is really annoying.
I'm not an Apple hater. I've always loved Apple and I will always stick with Apple. They have always come through for me and they are still the same wonderful company they have always been.
In fact, it is MORE of a fad these days to be an Apple hater than an Apple fanboy. Why do you have to be a follower and hate on Apple? Try thinking for yourself.
Actually they do. What's "magical" and "reinvented" is the fact that the AirPods seamlessly switch to whatever device you're currently using, so you can switch between your desktop, laptop, iPhone, and iPad without having to actually do anything to trigger the switch. In addition, it automatically pauses your music when you take your AirPods out of your ears (and resumes it if you put them back in).
> The AirPods seamlessly switch to whatever device you're currently using, so you can switch between your desktop, laptop, iPhone, and iPad without having to actually do anything to trigger the switch.
Wait... Honest question: How?
Does it switch based on which input source is currently playing audio? What if more than one is playing at a time?
It's based on Handoff. Your devices already have a notion of which device you're currently using, which it uses to trigger Handoff (so you can resume an activity on your new device that you were just doing on a previous device). AirPods hook into that and switch input to the "current" device (but I believe only if it plays audio; that way picking up your iPhone won't disconnect you from your computer if you're not doing something audio-related. Of course, I don't have AirPods myself, so I can't verify, but I believe that's how it works).
My Plantronics headset [1] has been doing most of this for years. I keep it connected to my work laptop and smartphone simultaneously and can take calls on either device with seamless switching. It also detects when it is on my ear or not.
It sounds like that's just taking calls on both devices, right? AirPods intelligently route all audio, not just calls, and it does it based on the notion of what your "current" device is rather than whatever device is emitting audio (e.g. if you're using your iPhone, AIUI it won't switch to your computer just because your computer started playing audio).
Is it actually seamless? As in zero seconds? I have headphones that "seamlessly" switch between multiple bluetooth connections. It has about a half of a second silence between switching which is a bit annoying though. That delay is what I thought a limitation of bluetooh, or are you talking about something different?
Both the magical and reinvent I'll happily concede, but in defense of the "not possible before" I think there's an argument to be made that their pairing UX is so much better as to constitute a whole new experience versus standard bluetooth?
[Of course, I say this as someone who has been happily using wireless Jaybird earbuds with a variety of iOS and macOS devices for the past three years without many complaints. I won't be buying the AirPods since pairing problems have not been an issue for me.]
But that doesn't automatically transfer to all the other devices you own. After using them with your iPhone they would also work with your Mac, your Watch, and your iPad without having to do separate pairing.
That's what makes the pairing more than just NFC (you're right, that's been around for years).
I'll definitely grant you that. A shared pairing database would be nice.
Hopefully it's implemented well. My Text Message Forwarding still lists:
- iPhone
- iPhone (2)
- iPhone (3)
- iPhone (4)
- iPad
- iPad (2)
etc, et al. Note that I don't own four iPhones, I've just upgraded over time. I have to play a guessing game as to "Which MacBook Pro is the one sitting in front of me?"
I dunno. I bought a Sony Walkman NWZ-A829 (OK, Apple kicks their ass at naming stuff) way back in 2008, which had built-in Bluetooth, and about a year later bought some no-name $25 Bluetooth headphones for use in the gym. Never had any issue with pairing or connection dropping, used that combination for a couple of years before going back to wired.
I recently bought wireless bluetooth headphones from Sennheiser. The pairing process consisted of holding the phone next to the headphones for a second, done (thanks to NFC). Not sure how you can improve much on that.
Well, the 1st and 3rd iPhones were revolutions. The Mac screens are stunning. It wasn't BS when Apple used to use it. Until they kept the same language and dropped innovation.
In the same fashion, I was in a company whose motto was "Be the change you seek", which is really entrepreneur-minded and active. They changed their motto to "Advance humanity". Most employees said "It's ok, it's the kind of marketing bullshit that no-one even listens to". It wasn't about building something awesome together. The motto was here, hanging in the hall, just saying "We're strongly delusional, we all speak bullshit now, and we know you won't even debate about it because no-one believes it anyway! Look at us, we're kings of the universe!"
"Our vision is to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere — every person, every organization, and every community around the globe. This motivates us — inspires us — to do what we do. To make what we make. To invent, and to reinvent. To engineer experiences that amaze. We won’t stop pushing ahead, because you won’t stop pushing ahead. You’re reinventing how you work. How you play. How you live. With our technology, you’ll reinvent your world."
Seventy-seven words…to say what? How does this pablum tell an engineer, a sales person, or an accountant what the company is about, what it does, why and how?
There's enough skepticism in this thread and comments (and I concur a lot with what's been written), so I'll try to take a positive "here's what could be possible" spin with it:
I recently purchased a Bose QuietComfort 35 and I've noticed that the lack of chords + noise cancellation have made it so that I wear the headphones for the entirety of the day. The lack of fatigue while wearing the head phones is a big deal. Additionally, the lack of wires has changed my behavior in ways I did not expect pre-purchase. For example, I no longer need to take off my headphones to go to the bathroom. Or when I leave the desk to grab something, etc.
These AirPods seem like they could make this behavior even more extreme. I can imagine just keeping them on all day without taking them off. That would be enough of a behavioral change personally to warrant the superfluous marketing copy of "Magical" and "Not Possible Before".
Beyond that, if people really start walking around with AirPods in their ear all day, it could more of a fashion symbol success (new age earrings basically) than what Apple envisioned with the Watch.
But, at the price they're going for, I doubt this will happen, but you can see where the marketing enthusiasm is coming from.
>> lack of wires ... I no longer need to take off my headphones ... when I leave the desk to grab something
I usually use earphones, with the wire tucked under my shirt(it's not noise cancelling), and connected to my phone - that way the cable doesn't get stuck with things.
The cable is also long enough use the phone for surfing too.
And they're on me all day long, either in ear or on the shirt. And i prefer that arrangement to my long lasting(13 hours) bluetooth earphones.
There is remedial level Apple marketing babble on that page.
The biggest public facing change at Apple since the death of Steve Jobs is their move to terrible marketing copy and ads.
Under Jobs, that quote would be reduced to just a few words, whereas now it is a slog to get through. I've tried re-reading it a few times and still haven't made it to the end.
I'm pretty sure Apple's success is mainly due to building good products that people want and are willing to pay high prices for. Wacky marketing language may be part of their corporate culture but I don't think it's much responsible for their success.
Pick up bluetooth device. It's dead. Press and hold buttons.
Wave phone around. Turn bluetooth off and on. Press and hold buttons again. Blue lights appear. Stare at empty pairing list. Wonder why it's not working. Curse at it.
If they can make wireless not-be-shitty, that will count for 'magical' and 'not possible before' afaiconcerned.
Except, Apple laptops are plagued with "wifi broken after sleep", so I have no hope that they can.
Not to mention that AirDrop has been a disaster since its inception, and I haven't heard a single good thing about unlocking Macs wirelessly with the Apple Watch.
Nice refinements? Sure. But it also likes to compare itself against a Bluetooth world that frankly, hasn't existed in several years... "poor audio quality that skips and cuts out", and "pairing that is constantly problematic, where users don't know whether they will re-pair the next time" (https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/12/apple-w1-chip-how-it-works/ )
That's great, but also not the same as Bluetooth earbuds. I don't have trouble either with any kind of receiver that doesn't sit within my actual ear - presumably it's something to do with either additional signal attenuation, or lack of space for a sizable antenna, or both, but whatever the reason, getting rock-solid reception in a truly wireless earbud seems to be a very difficult problem to solve.
(If you're not sure what kind of device I'm talking about here, the Rowkin Mini is a good example - note the complete lack of protrusion beyond the pinna. I suppose the AirPods themselves don't really qualify by this standard, since they seem to have their antennae in the microphone boom which protrudes below the ear; on the other hand, I'm willing to tolerate such a protrusion if it's the only reasonable way to get good signal, and improved microphone pickup is a pretty good bonus besides.)
The most profitable company in the world doesn't need us to carry their water for them. Let Gruber take care of that. You're literally trying to defend Apple for using the term "magical" to refer to a pair of pedestrian wireless headhones. Come on.
To someone that uses headphones for many hours on a daily basis, useful innovation in the space definitely feels magical to me considering how long I've been using the same old dumb wired headphones.
The point is, if you want to convince others why it is so, you have to play by their rules. Your opinion is simply your opinion.
I do like _some_ of Apple's products, but I would never spend 150 dollars on these headphones. I'm hoping that Apple cheerleaders will drive down the cost so I can get the version 2/3 for cheap when all the bugs have been ironed out.
Is colorful language in marketing new or unique to Apple? Are there people that actually mistake the term 'magical' in this context to mean, 'these headphones actually have supernatural forces working inside them!'
I agree with what you said, but like I said, the act of persuasion isn't merely stating facts.
Surely you can see that comments could have different moods. Some might simply be sarcastic, others cynical, or maybe people just venting at Apple for a bad experience they had with some other Apple product, etc, etc.
This one is literally true though. They had a semi-custom chip designed to implement features/performance that don't exist with Bluetooth 4 yet.
I think Bluetooth 5 will catch up. In fact, I'm betting that what they have is basically a radio chip designed for Bluetooth 5 (it's basically just Bluetooth LE with higher bandwidth and range) with some extra features for their pairing tech, but since the spec wasn't finalized, and they couldn't wait, they just rolled it out as proprietary tech.
It's almost as if it's marketing material and not an objective third party review. Sickening they'd put something like that on their own website. No other tech company would ever say good things about their own products.
I'm genuinely curious to see how often Siri is used, and in what contexts.
Not to be cynical, but to re-calibrate my barometer. The only person I know who uses it is my partner's nine year old daughter, and even then not often.
Sometimes I accidentally use it to search for directions, then switch to Google's voice interface when it (inevitably) fails and I realize what I've done.
I don't like the errors voice messaging causes (you can tell when someone's sending texts with it), so I never use that.
It's OK for setting alarms or timers but I've only done that a couple times because I always forget about it and do it manually instead, or (for timers) my phone's farther away than a microwave or something.
Tried using it to record notes by voice once. It was entirely terrible at that task.
My phone would be at most 1% worse if Siri were simply gone.
All the ones I've had have a timer mode that doesn't run the microwave itself. Handy when you need to time something in the oven and something on the stovetop.
I have an Apple Watch and I use Siri multiple times daily. Most frequently to set timers, but sending iMessages to friends and family is a close second. I also frequently use Siri to control music while I'm washing dishes or my hands are otherwise busy. If there's a faster way to skip a track when my hands are soapy, I don't know of it.
Also, FWIW, I've gotten pretty good at discreetly talking to my wrist in public. In any moderately loud area I don't think anyone even notices me doing it.
That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to AirPods. I can use Siri with the earbuds I have, but their microphones are crummy enough to require I do so somewhat loudly. While I don't always mind seeming like I'm talking to myself in public, and indeed there's the odd occasion when seeming unpredictable and potentially dangerous can be positively beneficial, having the option of greater discretion would be nice as well.
I frequently use Siri to create reminders during my commute, because it's more convenient than pulling my phone out (especially in winter!) and I almost always have an earbud in anyway. If a quicker, lower-friction method exists of capturing stray thoughts before they get away, I haven't found it yet.
I also occasionally use it when I wake up in the middle of the night and don't want to abuse myself with a bright phone display in order to find out what time it is - I don't keep a clock on my bed table, but my phone always charges there. "Hey Siri, what time is it?" is handy in that circumstance, unless the "Hey Siri" part decides not to trigger, which happens often enough that I don't really find it reliable. (I think that must be because a half-asleep voice sounds different; this isn't a problem I generally have at other times, even when using a $15 Bluetooth earbud which can't possibly have a very high-quality microphone.)
I plan to use them as a remote interface to my iPhone, especially when at home (iPhone lives in a drawer while charging). Things like setting timers, creating reminders or let Siri read out received messages - basically what Echo does, but not bound to one room. "Hey Siri" does not really work for me, I stopped using it almost completely.
I and my parents use it all the time. setting timers, directions (Apple Maps is inferior to Google maps but is often good enough e.g. "take me home"), call folks, basic operations is often easier with Siri than unlocking the phone - esp. if you have a BT headset and the iPhone is in the bag or on your table.
I find this headphone war discussion a bit boring. The AirPods are much more interesting as Apple's first foray into augmented reality.
If they add positioning, this product becomes Magic Leap without the visuals. I don't think they see this as a music device, they see it as a new platform for audio. Interesting things start happening when people start leaving one or both in their ears all day. Arrival times in your ear at the bus stop. Ask Siri for a price check while at the store, etc.
A cable to your phone makes the earbuds hard to forget. This makes it easy, but the design details have to be right for you to truly forget they are in.
I know "forget they're in" doesn't sound like a groundbreaking feature, because it's not connected to any obvious technical challenge, but I think if they succeed at that it would in fact put these in a new category.
Positional audio would seal the deal. You can walk around your kitchen and it would feel like your invisible conversation partner was in the room with you.
But what about the possibility of losing the earpieces? They don't have a cable and don't secure into your ear like a hearing aid or even a normal bluetooth device. If they are so comfortable to the point of the user "forgetting they are there" the rate at which people will lose these things might be huge.
They don't dangle from a cable when falling like normal headphones or Bluetooth headphones that have a cable between each earpiece. Since it's also so comfortable, the user might not even notice they lost an earpiece immediately if they are not listening to anything. (which will specially happen if the user has incentives to use it day long).
And more annoyingly, you will most likely lose just one of the pair. Will you be able to buy just one eapiece and pair it alongside the old pairless earpiece? I don't think so...
>But what about the possibility of losing the earpieces?
It's interesting to see how many people seem want to stop the conversation at "you're bound to lose one so what's the point."
10-15 years ago people the argument could have been made about cell phones, "why carry a phone you're bound to leave at a restaurant or on a train..."
If the AirPods or wireless mini computers in your ears become so integrated into our day to day lives one falling out will become obvious pretty quick. And the price will drop, maybe not for the Apple versions, but what about Google Now in $40 wireless earbuds in two or three years?
Ultimately that's what is going to limit the success of this product. It's not just one issue, you also now suddenly have to manage 3 pools of battery for a single device with that unnecessary dental floss container thing. I don't think this is good design, at least not in the function over form sense. If apple wasn't so stubborn they could just have linked both earpieces with a cable and a small battery in the middle eliminating both, the extra battery pool and "losability" problems. The price could also come down since there is no need for the dental floss device.
I don't want more batteries and dongles to carry around. A phone and a headphone are already cumbersome in my pocket.
Eventually we will have batteries powerful enough to eliminate the need for that dental floss thing, and the industry will finally standardize induction charging making charging the earpieces anywhere a reality.. but until then, apple is just ahead of the time.
But in a bad sense. Instead, they could just have made a product that is more realistic with the technology we have.
"Ultimately that's what is going to limit the success of this product." in reference to losability due to lack of dental floss between the earbuds
I will politely disagree. If the automation/augmentation/functionality provided is good enough then losability is a non-factor. If the capabilities afforded by the wireless W1 chips don't live up to the hype then dental floss ain't going to save them.
> 10-15 years ago people the argument could have been made about cell phones, "why carry a phone you're bound to leave at a restaurant or on a train..."
Could. But it wasn't because they were big and exciting so you would look pretty stupid saying that.
Losing those cigarette buts though is not a big problem. I have some Plactronics for some years now and there is a reason why they still hang at your neck.
But I guess, people who jump on that right now will have no problem spending that money again and again and...
That’s the genius of the tic-tac case they come in.
My particular form of obsessive-compulsive behavior revolves around finding and losing things. One of my big life lessons is that things don't get lost when you have a place for them — the keys go here, the wallet goes here, the phone goes here, they never get lost.
If the Airpods never needed to be charged, or could charge wirelessly by being dropped on a magnetic pad or something, I fully expect that they would get lost all the time. But the tic-tac case is an integral accessory — when you're wearing Airpods, the case is in your pocket, and when you're not wearing Airpods, the the Airpods are in the case.
(I was sad when Apple stopped including docks with iPhones, those solved a problem that most people don't realize they have)
I think the number of people who lose these things will be surprisingly low.
I would imagine that the cable itself contributes more to the headphone falling out than the weight of the headphone itself.
Also, I imagine you mean "likely lose just one of the pair", as losing one pair means losing both of them (not intended as a dig, just helping to clarify; your intentions seemed clear)
In retrospect the fact that the cable is responsible for making headphones fall out makes so much sense, and I've even experienced it while running, but I hadn't thought of it. Thank you!
I don't think I'm alone in that though, which is great for Apple: if they're working better than expected, then consumers will love it. Expectations are everything.
You can rest assured that there will be an aftermarket of artisinally crafted earpods, hand carved and remolded to fit into your laser scanned ear canals.
As a musician who uses in-ear-monitors weekly, I very much wish I had custom molded ones.
It's not a hipster 'artisinal' thing as much as they ostensibly work better, and they aren't "hand carved"... there are refined process for this.
But they are supposed to be much more comfortable and sound better. I can't comment becasue I don't play enough (or make enough playing) to justify spending $500-800 on them.
Seems like the pinna+upper ear-canal could be moulded very easily with dental alginate? The issue would probably be that you'd need to insert some form of tethered plug to stop the alginate going in too far, perhaps a bead on nylon thread. Then it's just a hack job to pair it with the earphone. (Or you could produce a mould, etc.)
As far as I know, there is an existing process that can do this fine.
And I believe (but am not sure) that there are existing bluetooth solutions, though I couldn't imagine using those in a professional music monitoring context.
So I can easily imagine that there will be custom refitting of these devices. However, custom molds often cost $200-300 (or more) by themselves, plus the drivers, so not in my proce range.
I do use my "cheap" (Shure se215 ~$100) wired IEMs with my iphone now when I want more isolation than open-backed earbuds like ones that came with my phone. They are great for mowing the lawn.
But maybe the airpods are more reliant on the ambient sound, so I dunno if there is much to gain from custom molds.
A large part of the reason they fall out is that the weight of the cable pulls them out. It's not 100% of the cause but it's definitely a major factor.
Good idea. The iPhone could vibrate/ring when it detects an earpiece is getting out of range (ie. fell behind when walking). Or the one earpiece left in your ear could tell you "you lost the other one" :)
It's possible we'll stop buying earbuds in pairs, and start buying them in ten packs. Some for your pocket, in your desk at work, at home, spares in the car... maybe some genius will figure out a design that fits in either ear, and uses compass measurements with the other bud to figure out whether it's in the left or right ear.
I assumed that was a large part of Apple's idea here. And as it's only an accessory the cost won't get factored in to people's phone purchasing decision.
Western women are comfortable clipping far more expensive diamonds, pearls, and gold to their ears. Sometimes they fall off and you look for them. Sometimes you lose one. This is sad. Life goes on.
(Apple has already said there will be a way to replace a lost single unit.)
This analogy is pretty bad because most people who clip expensive accessories to their ears don't usually go jogging or commuting through very crowded trains/buses. I don't think losing them is going to be the main problem of the airpods though. I think they're too early for their time but have potential in the future.
Do people really wearing expensive jewelry on the crowded trains? If so I stand corrected. However, I'm not talking about studs or chains that don't fall off easily. I'm referring to dangling earrings that I consider "dress-up" accessories. And I know there are people, but I said generally don't.
“This analogy is pretty bad because most people who clip expensive accessories to their ears don't usually go jogging or commuting through very crowded trains/buses”
Have you never seen anyone jogging or on a train or a bus?
I'm referring to more expensive earrings and necklaces that are used for parties and special occasions. Most people don't wear $600 earrings while going on a jog. The ones who wear expensive earrings to work generally don't have a commute on a crowded bus or train either. There are plenty of exceptions though.
I've seen plenty of men with the stud earrings that are probably upwards of $400 that go jogging and do everything as normal but I've never heard of those falling off.
They also have, as far as I'm aware, a pretty lousy battery life. They simply cannot be left in the ear all day; they'll need to be charged a couple times during the day.
That's what's going to hold up adoption. If we can't get a days usage out of it then many will hack together a wired solution, even if it's a battery on the other end.
I don't think they see this as a music device either. I think they see it as a way of making money from their decision to remove the audio jack from the phone.
That said, you're spot on with your forecasts of how great this could be, the AR of audio is potentially awesome.
That's such a cynical, boring view. I'm sorry, but it is.
You really think that Apple removed the headphone jack to make a bit more cash? Seriously? Hand-on-heart honestly, you think that's why? Come on.
I think it's because they love cool new things. Thank fk they do because, frankly, nobody else seems to be doing anything interesting. I know, I know, they're not perfect. AirPods are late. They're expensive. I know.
But I guarantee you that, come 2020, you will be hard pushed to find a set of wired headphones that resemble those we wear today. I would bet my current net worth on it†. The time has come to do new things with headphones. You want to call them "magical"? Maybe not. But a tiny thing that sits in my ear, Star Trek style, that I can tap and talk to Siri, that detects when I'm talking, that mutes itself, that swaps between paired devices seamlessly, that charges in a little tic-tac case, that's cool. That's what the world wants. It's certainly what I want.
But hey, I guess we can just assume they're trying to scrape a few more dollars out of everyone. Yep, that's probably what this is about.
> You really think that Apple removed the headphone jack to make a bit more cash? Seriously? Hand-on-heart honestly, you think that's why? Come on.
Yes.
And honestly, if you think a big company like Apple does anything without the motivation of making money, then frankly you're being starry-eyed and naive.
Maybe if they were a little start-up or something, sure, I could buy that argument. But yes, I entirely, whole-heartedly believe that Apple is doing this for money. If not, why not release the air pods first, then release a few generations of iPhones with audio jacks? It's not like having that little hole in the bottom of a phone would stop Apple from generating more "magical" technology.
I don't doubt Apple thinks that air pods are cool, but come on, seriously.
Of course apple is motivated by making money, but their profits come mostly from selling new devices, not pissing off existing customers by building features to squeeze cash out of existing customers.
So do you really think they will jeopardize sales of their most profitable iphone devices to squeeze some extra cash from a niche earpod device?
Apple's justification for removing the headphone jack is that it helps make the iPhone 7 water resistant and thinner (so increases the premium feel). Both of these features add value so potentially raise the selling price. The lack of headphone jack makes a wireless audio solution necessary. Apple have attempted to turn this weakness into a strength with their new class of headphones (earbuds). Apple may seek to make these distinctive earbuds fashionable like the original white earphones of the iPod. Apply must surely have calculated that the additional profit from customers that gain value from the iPhone 7 plus earbuds outweighs lost profit from irate former customers otherwise their behaviour is irrational.
Your analysis is basically correct, but it should also include a time dimension. Apple likely has a version of the iPhone in development 1-3 generations out that absolutely will not have space for a wired headphone jack. They probably have also reasoned that future AR capability will require wireless to be usable. Apple has in the past reasoned that kickstarting an ecosystem of accessories and consumer behaviors earlier than they technically need to has long term benefits to the sale of future devices.
The iPhone 7 does take advantage of the saved space. I was envisioning very thin, by today's standards, devices, or eventually full AR, where maintaining a wired connection to the main device would be impossible or extremely cumbersome.
But I guarantee you that, come 2020, you will be hard pushed to find a set of wired headphones that resemble those we wear today.
Yup, commenting just in case I really want to see if this prediction pans out in only three years: wired earbuds will no longer be sold. Oh! You said, "found". Oh, OK, "found"
I'm biased. When I want to put on earphones, I want to hear, not be heard. That's the primary function. Not to be some bizarre com. THESE Airbuds are totally useless to me, even if I have a device that supports them. Can I take them running, or cycling? That's a good majority of my "not sleeping, not working" time. I don't need another attempt at augmented reality, I need to remember I used to go to places to talk to people, not manipulate a screen, or talk to a computer assistant.
I remember when Bluetooth headsets came out. They were decidedly not cool. Like, "look at the crazy person talking to themself while walking" not cool.
Oh, I still fully expect to be wearing the updated version of my Audio Technica ATH-M50s in 2020. When I'm sitting at home, listening to music.
But when I'm out and about, cycling to work, listening to a podcast on the train, at work on a conference call? The AirPods are going to be amazing for that sort of thing. That's what I mean by "hard pushed to find a set of wired headphones that resemble those we wear today".
I wasn't clear in my frothing rage, for which I apologise. ;-)
There is nothing wrong with cynical view. I have zero problems with bluetooth speakers and earbuds... yet many people find them irritating to pair and not very user friendly.
Siri sucks. Once you've spoken to Google via "Ok Google" you quickly realize how bad Siri is.
The world doesn't need Airpods. I get that you want them, but the overwhelming majority in the _world_ can not afford Airpod. I would bet that sales of Airpods will be as transparent as the iWatch... as in completely opaque.
Apple doesn't make products for "the world", they make products for well-off people who have the cash to spend. "The World" still uses sub-$100 Android phones or dumbphones and will do so for the foreseeable future.
No one I know uses Siri, by the way. I've literally never heard anyone in the office ask Siri a question. Never heard it in public, either. It's not really a thing outside of the tech bubble, I reckon.
I'm positive most people will still be using cheap wired headphones 3 years from now. If you're willing to lay money on it, I'll take any bet you offer.
"Hey Siri, remind me to call Grandma when I get home" (while driving and I remembered something I need to speak to her about)
A simple press of a button on my BT headset (Sony btw, not Apple) and "Call my wife" is a lot easier in the winter than digging out my phone, removing my glove for TouchID and browsing to my wife's contact in the phone app.
A quick shout of "Hey Siri, set timer for 12 minutes" while cooking is faster than fiddling with the kitchen timer - which I had lost. Again.
Also "What's the weather like tomorrow morning" when I come home to see if I need to plug in my car heater for the night or not.
There are just some things that are faster spoken to a digital assistant (Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant) than done by tapping on a screen.
On the other hand, tapping the screen is a lot more appropriate in public than asking "Navigate to my proctologist appointment" :P
I'm not a morning person so I usually have 6 alarms on my phone. So every morning I ask my Siri to "turn off all the alarms" before I jump on my shower.
There is like 4-5 others simple interactions like that that I do in private every day and it's totally worthwhile.
Fun fact, siri happily does this when the phone is unlocked so you can happily screw with someone who has M-F alarms set up and doesn't usually turn them off.
Counter: do you think if removing the headphone jack made the product better but net cost Apple money do you think they would have done it? Of course not. It can be both.
I'm very interested in buying these and I have a headphone jack so I don't think it's purely a money thing, but obviously 159$ is quite expense (though so are most bluetooth earbuds that are likely not as nice as these in some ways)
Both suck for certain things. The things Siri knows how to answer, she does so really fast and accurately. And if she doesn't know something, the fallback is a search engine.
The best thing about Google Assistant (not Google Now) is the context sensitivity. You can ask "how tall is Tom Cruise", get an answer and then ask "how old is he" and Assistant will pick up who you're talking about. Siri will just get completely baffled.
Forget that they are in?! For my particular shape of ears their hard shell design does not work at all. Every time I have to wear apple earbuds because I cannot find my day to day earbuds, I want to rip them out immediately, and my ears hurt after few minutes of using them.
Unless the came up with better design there is no way I am forgetting I am wearing apple earbuds.
My problem with apple headphones is that my ear holes are apparently different sizes. The right ear is always fine and the left is always less comfortable (if only just). I switched to over the ear bluetooth headphones a while ago and haven't looked back.
Edit: I should add that with in-ear headphones, I was always able to get a good fit by using the one-step smaller rubber ends for the left ear and the default one for the right ear. Never had a problem that way. Still, I prefer over the ear these days, and they also double as earmuffs in the winter time!
I have this problem too, but I love the compactness of earbuds, especially with Bluetooth. Whatever are my earbuds of the day, I order complyfoam tips for them (not affiliated, just love their product).
I hear you (my wife has a similar problem).
The sad answer is that Apple and others don't care for your business. If Airpods work well for the majority of potential customers, that's good business for them. Products don't need to be 100% accessible to be profitable, and while Apple software has been better than many in this department, on a new hardware product/platform such as this, your concerns probably fall quite low down the priority order.
I have to echo what others are saying. I don't see how you could possibly forget they're in. I've had issues with every Apple earbud design falling out when I lean over or even just move the wrong way. I'd be constantly worried these would fall out and be damaged. If anything, I'd be constantly reminded I'm wearing them.
Peoples' ears are all different. Apple's earbuds aren't comfortable for me, but they're the first choice for many people that I know. I can easily believe that the AirPods will be so comfortable that some subset of the population will forget they're in.
Until looking just now, I thought headphones were either "earbuds" or the full headphones. Earbuds are the kind Apple sells, while "in-ear" headphones are the ones I find comfortable for hours at a time. The cheap kind I like now are Skullcandy's Ink'd 2 which have a silicone ear-tip. I think I just lucked out in getting an ear-tip that's finally the right size. If you haven't tried in-ear headphones yet, I definitely recommend trying some out - maybe you'll find a pair that works for you.
I'm not clear what you are saying. It seems you are defining "in-ear" headphones as ones that are comfortable for your particular ears, and "eaebuds" as those that are not comfortable for you.
I think the distinction is the ones with the squishy tip that mould to your ear cavity (so there are no gaps), versus the ones that are mostly hard and sit relatively loosely
They've also removed the headphone jack from the newest model iPhone. You can get an adapter that adds it back, but obviously this is fairly inconvenient. Apple's counting on this to get people to toss their old earbuds/headphones. Maybe force is too strong, but it certainly seems physically connected audio devices are now deprecated
You can use some plain old bluetooth headsets like most people have been for years.
If you really dislike wireless for some reason, you can also get lighting earbuds (I think the iPhone 7 actually includes some).
Finally, if you like all these ideas so much, you can avoid purchasing the product you dislike. It's not like they're forcing this onto existing clients by disabling the existing 3.5mm jack.
Apple sells wired headphones for the lightning port. I'm personally not interested in upgrading because I don't want to use their headphones or get a lightning port adapter just for the phone. You're not forced to use the AirPods, but you are forced to use the lightning port (bleh) or bluetooth (meh).
Apple isn't going to be the first company that comes out with audio augmented reality or any new technology, really. Apple doesn't invent new product categories, and never really has. They wait for someone else to come out with an early, terrible version of something, see if there's a market for it, and then come out with a new take on it that doesn't suck.
Where is the augmented reality device they're going to be targeting with this?
If anything you'll see them take on something like google cardboard or oculus directly before they do something really left field with headphones. But even that is a couple years away.
Hololens, Google glasses, Couple of other uber-successful kickstarters[1] fully fit the bill of half-baked products with middling success that Apple can now supercharge. AirPods definitely seem like the start of an augmented reality strategy. Couple of different rumours indicate this [2][3]
This is my view on this as well. I don't really see Apple opening up into this space unless there's an experience to be had from it. Apple likes to take lackluster experiences that end-users "just deal with" and make them into something excellent. They like to use the word "magical" but I think that's a bit overboard.
Just look at any product in their history - they took music players that were fine but bulky and time-consuming to use and turned them into a single intuitive device that could fit in your pocket, carry your entire library, and sync to the computer without any user intervention. I know a lot of tech people are annoyed with iTunes and want to be able to manually drag and drop the files that they want, but, for the non-tech user, iTunes (which already had all their music organized) would just let them sync their music by plugging in without any intervention at all. Apple may have made an assumption for the masses by assuming everyone's music was organized on the computer they were syncing from (and in iTunes, no less), but, when it worked, it was amazing from an experience standpoint.
That's what these headphones are. Just think about the list of things that suck about headphones in a perfect world - cables and wires suck on anything, wireless is more convenient in every case, pairing bluetooth headphones sucks when they get disconnected, the batteries on wireless headphones suck. These are their answer to those complaints - headphones that last much longer than others with a charger that is also a case that syncs to all your devices and intelligently plays wherever from whatever device you're using. Whether they succeed is another story, but the explanation for this product is there.
Except this comes back to same problem most things do these days: battery life. You're going to need to return these to their case every few hours, so no one is going to wear them uninterrupted for a day.
That's five hours of continuous audio. OP is talking about a world where you leave them in all day and get periodic audio. Not everyone listens to music 24/7.
Having watched the industry for 25 odd years, it just feels like the tech is not there yet. The short battery life, the less than stellar looks (cigarette butt ears) and whatnot.
Two extra months isn't going to fix that IMHO. If you are struggling to get a minimum viable product, it's worrisome.
Who knows though, maybe the problems they had were in the actual manufacturing of them.
I had a pair of Sony HBH-IS800 and I gave up on them after a week. Apple's product has the same drawbacks (charging, troubleshooting, ease of misplacing, price).
This product category is not worth the hassle for the average user. Very few people will buy a second pair of wireless earbuds. Not enough to warrant building all the features you mention.
I bought a pair of reasonable quality Bluetooth headphones for running two years ago. Since the first time I used them, I haven't used any of my old normal ones again. The convenience and ease with which they're always in, even if not always on has just blown away the fact they're not particularly high quality. I plug them in at night when I plug my phone in. Yet to misplace them.
Everyone's different. For me, and possibly most people, buying wireless earbuds just taught me I care more about phone earbuds in theory than in practice. In practice, it isn't actually worth it for me to worry about whether they are paired, charged, and not misplaced. Life is less hassle with boring $15 earbuds.
I have been using Sony MDR-XB80BS for a few weeks now and they are utterly flawless for me. They can't fall out. They are pretty low profile since they hide behind your ear. Long battery life. Water resistant. No dropouts and amazing sound. I am really impressed by these headphones.
1. I would hate to talk to a person with those things in their ears.
2. I use my bluetooth headphones the same way I use my wired headphones.
3. I don't feel comfortable talking out loud to nobody in public. It doesn't feel right to talk the phone, I will probably never talk to the air. I'm not a self conscious person, but I care if people think I'm crazy.
I remember people saying #3 about mobile phones. And thinking it was odd myself the first time I heard someone near me talking, turned round and there was only one person there. Bluetooth earpieces for calls are already fairly well accepted.
I think we're already past the point of that being a barrier.
These things are probably the (nearish) future. I thought the Moto Hint was great a year or so ago and with Apple stepping into the market it should encourage the competition.
#3 feels analogous to saying: "I would never walk down the street reading a book without looking where i was going." (or something similar) Makes sense until everyone has a smartphone and then this: http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructur...
I regularly use the 'one side' earphones for a while now and people are initially a bit setback but realize quickly that I am fully focused on the conversation and move along with it.
Exactly. Device that will whisper important things into your ear is more elegant solution that weird looking glasses with camera. For now at least.
I think they will try to push it as kinda lifestyle or fashion accessory and make wearing one piece as natural as wearing watch or jewellery.
I don't see how heavier than normal, wireless earbuds would be any easier to forget than normal earbuds.
I don't have a problem with a cable. I actually don't understand why people would want to replace a cheap, robust, simple technology like a cable with non-replaceable batteries and signal-degrading wireless.
I'm going to disagree with this "forget they are there" bit. I interact with my grandparents every day. One of them needs a hearing aid, which they will never wear.
I'm really hoping that Apple opens up an API to them. They have built in mics like here-one and the new Bose headphones. I would really like to see what app developers can do on a (somewhat) open platform. Intelligent noise cancelling, lowering the volume automatically when it detects someone talking to you, etc.
Binaural audio just allows changing the (virtual) audio source relative to the ears; the novelty would be to track their location, so that you can use the binaural audio to keep the sound coming for a fixed place while the user moves around.
But the core mechanics of the audio method is flawed. Binaural has distinct sound characteristics, rather than a neutral canvas to project audio in whichever direction.
I feel like a lot of this mess with needing a different dongle and special wire for each product would have been less of a big deal if everything they did just moved to USB C all at the same time. Now if you want to charge your air pods with a macbook pro you need a cable to go from usb C to thunderbolt (not included) or an adapter to use the previous-gen-usb to lightening cable it does come with.
It feels to me like the different product development teams at Apple didn't communicate with each other at all w.r.t. what ports to use.
All of Apple's "accessories" (things that will request charge from a host over their cable: phones, tablets, keyboards and touchpads, and now headphones) have a Lightning port.
All of Apple's "computers" (things that won't: computers that are wired for power, and devices that are wired for power like the Apple TV) have, or will have, USB-C ports.
The vague middle case is laptops, like the new MBP: they do charge over their USB-C cables. But they'll only do this from a wall-socket power adapter; they won't attempt to drain the battery of a peer device they're connected to.
Besides that HCI hint of charging semantics, though, Lightning is just physically different in a few important ways that Apple relies on: for one, the connectors are solid metal, so an upward-pointed male connector can be used as a freestanding dock. That's not true of USB-C. Apple isn't going to converge them.
I've been wondering this for quite some time. Thanks for the clearly explained response. Is this documented somewhere or just something you've observed?
Any battery with USB-A and USB-C ports (or just USB-C ports if you go out and get the USB-C to Lightning cable) that also supports USB-PD should be able to charge both your USB-C laptop and phone.
I ended up getting this battery [0] from Anker, and it's done a great job with my 2016 skinny Macbook and iPhone.
I believe the switching from charging a device and charging your laptop is done in software. The spec allows any USB C device to charge any other in either direction AFAIK.
The dock connector lived for 13 years, ADB lived for about as long, and both were obsolete and replaced by better ports.
I don't doubt that one day iPhones may use USB-C or whatever replaces it, but the lightning port is going to be around for a long time - it was designed to last at least a decade, and I don't doubt that it will.
Nevertheless, the phone these are designed to be used with (the same one you mention on the 2nd to last line of your post) still charges via a Lightning port. They may be merciless about the whole planned obsolescence thing, but they aren't stupid.
> "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." -- Slashdot creator CmdrTaco/Rob Malda about the iPod in 2001.
I'm not saying these will have the impact of an iPod, but I am entertained by the amount of naysaying here.
For one thing, how often have you fiddled with the knots in your headphone cord? It's frustrating enough to prevent me from using them in situations where I otherwise would.
This quote is so overused it's basically a tech trope.
The point is that, at the time, the iPod was a niche product, with several huge flaws. Subsequent iterations of the iPod fixed those flaws, but that doesn't mean you should have bought a v1 iPod. It made much more sense to wait.
Exactly the same logic applies to the Airpods. Suggesting that people can't criticise them because at some point in the future the product line will become successful is asinine.
> This quote is so overused it's basically a tech trope.
OK, how about "The only problem is that you have to install something. See, it's not the same as USB drive.", the top comment in response to the Dropbox announcement on HN, 9 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
It's a cliche because we techies are particularly bad at recognizing the mass-market appeal of products. What seems easy to us can be an unsurmountable hurdle for the target market, and what we may perceive as an unnecessary flourish can turn out to be an essential quality-of-life feature. It's a cliche because we keep doing it.
No, the iPod took what was a technically good-enough product category and slapped on a UI that didn't suck. UI is often the most important part of a product, and basically only Apple really got it when it came to MP3-players.
But the first device still had huge weaknesses. Firewire-only, Mac-only, and small storage compared to the competition. Not only that, the first iPod wasn't a success, it took a few iterations for Apple to get it right.
My point is that this initial criticism of the iPod was not wrong. It was a flawed device. It was eventually improved into a successful device, but using that logic to shut down any criticism of future products is just silly.
> The patent covers an interface that lets users navigate through a tree of expanding options, such as selecting an artist, then a particular album by that artist, then a specific song from that album, said Phil O'Shaughnessy, a Creative spokesman.
The software UI (especially as described by that spokesman) is somewhat obvious. That said, the hardware UI of the iPod (click-wheel) was miles ahead of what Creative and others were offering (D-pads).
I find it interesting that you use that quote as an example of naysaying. Within a few months of the iPod's introduction, they introduced higher storage options. Though the Classic line never got wireless, the HUGELY popular iPod touch had wireless. Both of his complaints were eventually rectified by Apple in the iPod line.
The iPod touch doesn't really belong here. It came out long after the iPod enjoyed massive success, and despite the name it wasn't really an iPod, but rather an iPhone without the phone parts. It's still called "iPod" but in terms of its functionality it's completely different.
Was it an immediate success? If these graphs are true [0,1,2], it looks like it took several years for it to really take off. It didn't really become a huge success until the end of 2004, the same year they increased storage capacity (for the second time), moved iPods to the click-wheel, and added the iPod mini. Also the iTunes music store was released in 2003, and added Windows support in late 2002.
"Apple’s total iPod sales climb past 10 million, with 8.2 million units sold in 2004 alone" [0]
It was an immediate success with Mac users. Some PC users tried to use them, I remember companies making combos of a FireWire PCI card and special software to try to use it. I almost did it myself.
The sales explosion really happened when they released it for Windows. All of a sudden a HUGE market was there and it snapped them up as fast as they could.
Yes, they introduced higher storage options, but not until component prices dropped low enough for Apple to maintain their margins at the same MSRP. The iPod had already became a gigantic hit in its own right during the 6 years between the introduction of the iPod 1st Gen and when the iPod Touch brought wireless to the iPod family.
So other than some non-sequitur facts, what's so interesting? CmdrTaco's take is the classic example of tech spec-naysaying by pundits completely misreading demand in the market. Meanwhile, AceJohnny says that it may very well apply here, which remains to be seen.
> If you're running and they fall out, you're screwed.
On the other hand, this is a silent failure mode in a good sense: if you lose them, then you'll know instantly (because of no music), so at least have a chance of looking for them nearby.
Where they will be discovered conveniently ensconced 15 yards below a subway grate. For those of us that live in cities and commute via public transit, having them fall out is probably 70% as problematic as vanishing entirely.
Knots occur in headphone cables because of how people wrap or store them. If you take each end of the cable and fold it in half a few times (I do it 3 times) then you're far less likely to get any tangles than if you wrap them around your fingers in a continuous loop.
The reviews I've heard of these and the Beats Solo3 (which use the same chip) indicate that the wireless connection on these is absolutely rock solid. This includes a very picky friend of mine who got a set of Solo3 headphones; he's blown away. I'd like to see the AirPods in the wild for a month or so before I totally believe this, but early indications are good.
Until, of course, they start to produce some of the same little pops and interruptions I always get from Bluetooth earphones when I'm walking. I don't seem to get quite as many with the AirPods, but the skips and interruptions, when they happen, make me wish for something wired.
Did they stay connected?
Mostly, but I still heard audio pops from time to time. Not as many as I usually get with Bluetooth headphones, but they were still there.
I have used cheapo sub-$20 SoundBot headphones for almost a year and a half now, and have literally never had an issue with wireless connectivity.
EDIT: Ah, throwanem (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170546) points out the crucial difference between headphones and earbuds. For me, earbuds are undesireable, so I didn't realise that the form factor was meant to be a selling point.
Headphones or earbuds? The former have considerably more space in which to put an antenna that extends past the side of the wearer's head; earbuds have a pretty strict limitation in this regard, and indeed all the ones I've tried (ranging in price from about $10 to about $60) have at least occasionally dropped signal with the phone in my front trouser pocket on the same side as the earbud. For AirPods never to do so would be a significant differentiator in my experience.
Not airpods, but I've gotta plug my amazing Bose QC35. I've never owned (or seen the need for) noise-cancelling headphones, never thought I'd use wireless headphones. But the QC35 caught my eye with the built-in mic (probably on a day I had a phone conference). I bought them despite the steep $330 price, and haven't looked back.
They're amazingly comfortable, the noise cancelling is best-of-breed, the battery lasts AGES (far beyond the rated 20 hour (!!!) life), the sound quality is epic, they play plenty loud, handle bluetooth handoff better than anything I've used.. I just can't stop talking about them.
It seems like just a year or so ago bluetooth was still an impossible-to-pair never-works-right pile of crap, and now it's turned a corner. I've always got my FitBit, Apple Watch, and often my headphones paired to my phone. Everything just works. I can be on a call on my headphones, hop in the car, and the call seamlessly transfers to the audio system in the car (2016 VW Golf).
My phone and laptop both play sound through the headphones just fine, it keeps both paired at the same time.
And they don't even support whatever high-resolution codec Apple uses (aptx or the other one, I can't remember). But the sound quality has to be heard to be believed, the noise cancelling makes tiny details in the music way more audible than ever before.
I'm not in the market for AirPods, but I'm a total believer in wireless headphones now.
The built in mic is terrible to the point I couldn't use it for video conferencing. Had to switch to the mic on my MBP to be intelligible.
I haven't figured out if I like the noise cancellation or not. It leaks voices a lot, and when it's quiet there's a very faint constant background noise. Feels like I just replaced one noise with another. It also gives an illusion of a change in pressure in your ears when you put them on, but maybe that's something you get used to.
Sound quality is ok at low volume but it's very uninteresting overall. Maybe I've been spoiled by my other headphones.
Also, my head is really big, and they aren't really comfortable for me longer than and hour or two.
I'll agree that the bluetooth handoff implementation works great though.
Overall, if they were < $200 I'd kept them around, but $330 is just to pricey for what you get.
I'll be keeping a close eye on this space in the future though. I'm expecting some great innovation in the coming years.
I haven't heard what my own voice sounds like on the built-in mic, so I can't disagree with you there-- however, I've been able to use them without (apparent) problem in loud datacenters, which frankly surprised me.
My 'main' headphones are Audiotechnica M50s which are, of course, cheaper, but damn well should be without noise cancelling or BT. I use them with an external DAC+headphone amp, but I prefer the QC35 at all volumes (short of ear-splitt, which the Bose won't do-- but at least they don't clip, ever!)
I sorta agree on noise cancelling tech. Of course voices leak, that's normal. But I, too, sometimes wonder if I'm just replacing one set of sounds with another. Where I really like them is in addition to music. Just by itself, meh.
Some people like them because they leak voices a lot, so they cut out annoying background noises without getting in the way of conversations. Depends on your application, I guess.
Who said they couldn't be used with non-Apple devices? The article points out that they can be synced with any other Bluetooth device, because they're Bluetooth.
I think that's the W1 chip reference - when you have multiple devices signed to one iCloud (mac, iphone, ipad?) you pair with one of them once, then for other devices they are "just there", in list of available devices. You don't need to separately pair with each one. Tiny but useful.
Other than that they are normal BT headphones (I believe)
Yes, for Apple Homekit for example the long term keys for bonding are stored online, so this means you can access from a different device without the authentication process.
For headphones it doesn't make much of a difference. However, if you're manufacturing more devices that all needs to be setup and shared with multiple people it's a pity that the key deployment is Apple-only. That is, I don't know of an official way to get to the keys to get a seamless experience across vendors.
A lot of people here seem to be complaining about them falling out of their ears, while non of them actually tried to wear them first. Also everyone is stating things like this "I will use them two or three times during rush hours in London, bump into a couple people". But for me personally - I only use headphones while at my desk and I love current EarPods because unlike many other in-ear headphones they do not create any pressure onto my eardrum, I can wear them all day without any fatigue whatsoever, having a wireless version so I can stand up and walk around often sounds perfect to me. Also the only time when current EarPods are falling out of my ears is when the cable gets pulled or tangled on something, without a cable I don't see how they can fall out easily.
this is a ridiculous suggestion price wise, but check out custom IEMs. They are expensive as hell, but I have no issue spending money on something I use for HOURS every single day.
Those are regular IEMs. By custom parent comment means ones with a casing made specifically to fit inside your ear. Random example: http://vaiopocket.up.seesaa.net/image/sleek5.jpg, these can cost 3-4x more than a regular pair.
Have you ever had an earplug that fell out after 5 minutes?
The main reason earphones fall out of your ears is the wires. Most existing wireless earphones have some sort of wire attached to them. They're called "wireless" but that's technically not true because they do have wires, and these wires are what pulls the earphones out of your ear. It's physics.
If you have a set of headphones that put pressure on your eardrum, you either have them turned up way to loud, or some other really big problem that you should see a doctor for. No headphone should put pressure on your eardrum other than the sound it makes.
I'm very curious how this product will sell. Considering that I routinely lose or break ear phones and occasionally put them through the clothes washer, I'm very unlikely to invest $150 in a pocket sized pair (I do have some high end cans that i use now and then which are too large to be easily lost or accidentally submerged).
As the owner of an iPhone 7, I have encountered some frustration from not being able to charge and listen to headphones at the same time. I realized that if lightning cables were USB, I could just use some sort of hub.
But it seems that Apple has declined to offer a splitter, leading to many shoddy attempts for sale on Amazon, most with fewer than three star average ratings.
Viewed as an independent gizmo, these are a great idea and will appeal to some people. But viewed as an alternative to the convenience of the 1/8th inch jack on the back of the phone, a lot is left to be desired.
The picture of the futuristic woman wearing them evokes the single-ear bluetooth headset, only worn over both ears.
I don't know the best place to say this... I'm always a little sad whenever Apple announces earphone related technology -- their earphones simply do not fit in my ear; they simply fall out. I wonder if anyone else has the same problem? Or problems with other specific pieces of technology?
I recall reading an article on this from a while back (maybe up to 3 years ago) I think the conclusion was that EarPods fit extremely well for 60-70% of people - worthless for everyone else. Spent a few minutes looking for the actual article and couldn't find it, so take it fwiw
I'm in the same boat as you -- they just don't fit me.
Check out "earhoox" (or, if you prefer a non-branded item, just search for "earpod covers" on Amazon, etc.).
I have no connection with that particular (or any) brand, but I did the thing I tend to do which is spend $50 buying every single model of silicone earpod cover on Amazon, try them out, and figure out which is best. Earhoox won.
Solved the problem perfectly, and I actually enjoy wearing my earpods now.
I have the same problem to a lesser degree, but the bigger problem for me is their form factor causes sharp pains in my ear after prolonged listening (30+ minutes).
I have the exact same problem. They just aren't a great fit. I walk my dogs every night for 1 hour and enjoy listening to podcasts during this time. I tried some Mopow bluetooth earbuds but they weren't any better. I'm considering some large headphones this holiday season.
On a lighter note, I live in Canada so for 6 months of the year, my toque holds the Apple earbuds in my ears.
which are in ear and noise blocking. They also have different size attachments so you can get a good fit, although they cause ear fatigue sometimes if you keep them in for extended periods (i.e. hour plus).
Over ear headphones are better for your ears and don't have the issue of falling out. They are bulkier, though, and can get sweaty in summer (in Australia at least, might not have the same issue in Canada)
My Apple earphones fit, they just don't carry that much sound. Set at the highest volume, some songs/podcasts are high volume while others are so low I can hear everything around me better than what's playing. Half the time, I walk around almost cupping my ears just to hear.
Beats X which are wireless too seem to have a cool solution for keeping them close to the user - there is a cable which stays behind the neck. As well, you can magnetically clip them together. And... get them in red - much easier to find!
I like the idea of AirPods. Unfortunately, my main concern though is that I will use them two or three times during rush hours in London, bump into a couple people on the tube and they'll be gone.
The use case that I'm interested in is being able to have just one bud in my ear (to be able to hear what's going on around me) without the other one dangling. To me, that's worth the money.
"Optical sensors and motion accelerometers work with the W1 chip to automatically control the audio and engage the microphone, giving you the ability to use one or both AirPods."
> AirPods to deliver high-quality audio and industry-leading battery life in a completely wireless design. AirPods deliver up to five hours of listening time on one charge
5 hours and then I have charge them? That won't even last me a work-day.
Ordered, delivery in a week. I have a couple of Bluetooth earphones that are all pretty poor in UX department and not-so-horrible-but-still-subpar in the sound quality department. I am hoping these will prove to be much better in both.
For someone who listens to mainly podcasts, I found them to be really really convenient. And the wire between the two pods makes it seem a bit harder to lose compared to AirPods.
To me these seem pretty stupid. Major features (to me) of ear-buds with wires and 3.5" jack are: 1) being attached with wires means I don't easily lose them when they slip out of my ear/hand/pocket. 2) the 3.5" jack actually keeps them pretty solidly attached to my phone (again, less risk of losing them). Walking around with two loose tiny objects seems less than ideal - at least to me; I'd lose them within days.
You've never used an entire product category and you want to call it stupid? The first step to building good products is to understand how people use them.
Wireless headphones are about as stupid as wireless Internet.
Just like wired Internet, wired headphones will continue to have a place for people who need certain capabilities or ruggedness or etc., but for most people, wireless headphones are the way to go. Let me walk you through some of the advantages:
1. Working out. Wired headphones constantly get caught on things and sometimes get violently ripped from your ears.
2. Related to point one, any activity or job where you could risk a loose wire being caught is perfect for wireless headphones. It very well may be significantly safer.
3. Wireless headphones have bigger range than wires. You don't have to place your phone in your pants pockets, for instance, to use wireless headphones. You could even have your phone in your bag, and everything will still work. Much of women's fashion either has no pockets or pockets of little value. This is a major reason women carry around purses. But you can't use headphones with a phone in your purse, hence why women are often physically carrying their phones in your hands. With wireless headphones, they can keep their phone in their purse or jacket and still listen to music or respond to calls.
5. Or if you are doing something around the house, you don't always have to have your headphones on you at all times. This could be particularly useful if you are doing something like washing a car where you might get your pants wet and don't want to have your phone on you.
6. With this new class of wireless earbuds that are small and lightweight, you could keep one of two of them in much of your day to answer phone calls or ask Siri or Google questions.
I don't disagree with any of those points. But to me all of them are dwarfed by one thing: sound quality. Listening to the crap quality of apple buds is like connecting to a shitty CRT. Paying $160 for the privilege is just an added insult.
If you cared about watching beautiful movies, would you downgrade to a wireless display with grainy definition, because "no wires"? That's how I feel about audio quality, and why I'm not an apple or beats customer (and why I lament the iPhone7 headphone jack changes).
Of course time will help, and in a few years the sound quality streamed over wireless should be transparent, at which point I'd gladly convert.
None of the reviews I've read say the quality is "crap".
Or are you correlating your one experience with half a decade old BT headphones to current top of the line wireless? That's like saying all Wifi is shit because your PCMCI 802.11a Wifi card in 2005 had shit speeds and range.
I used to think this way until I bought a pair of JLabs bluetooth ear buds. Now, I hate using wired headphones because the wire is literally always in the way. I hate being forced to keep my phone right next to me, and snake a wire around.
Now, in the gym, I can throw my phone in my gym bag and not worry about it while working out. I'll never go back to wired.
Don't think one can be too active with these ones, though. Looks like shaking your head will make them fall out. No silicon that shapes it to the ear, no over-ear stuff or anything that should make it sit.
Many reviews have stated the opposite: that, despite the reviewers feeling like the airpods would fall out when in motions, they stayed in just fine despite shaking heads and jumping up and down.
> Exactly, doing anything active with wired headphones on isn't fun.
I do active things with wired headphones all the time, and they rarely get snagged on anything or pulled from my ear.
That said, not having to carry the device that provides the sound source is a convenience that's worth something (though nowhere near the additional cost of these over wired earbuds.)
I still use my HD558s on a very regular basis, including with my phone, but for mobile use that's actually mobile, I'm right there with you - Bluetooth devices do occasionally misbehave in ways that annoy me, but the enormous convenience of not being festooned with wires more than makes up for the occasional transient signal drop. Especially when I'm bundled up in three layers with my phone in my pocket, gloves on my hands, and a beanie or a balaclava on my head. Routing wires is a complex topological problem in these circumstances, and it's nontrivially convenient to just pop an earbud in my ear, start a podcast playing, and go.
Bluetooth headphones are great. You don't have to worry about the wire snagging on things and getting in the way. Wires have been progressively eliminated everywhere else e.g. wireless networking, wireless mice, wireless keyboards, wireless phones...I'm not understanding why people are clinging to wireless headphones so hard.
Your risk of losing your headphones is really that high?
For me it comes down to a few things. Bluetooth has some major downsides: First, you now have to charge your headphones or you can't use them. This is a HUGE downside when coming from something that literally never needs to be charged, I mean considering nothing else, would you rather have something that needs to be charged daily or something that never needs to be charged? Second, transmitting audio over bluetooth requires digital compression, which affects sound quality. For some this might not matter, but when I listen to music on headphones I want the highest level of quality. This is probably less of an issue for anyone considering airpods, as apple's headphones, even the wired ones, have never been great. Now the classic response to these points is "But just charge them at night, I never have to worry about it!" or "I can't even tell the difference in quality!" and these things may be true, however for me, if I'm sacrificing sound quality (even if it's minimal) and sacrificing unlimited "battery life" (in quotes because there is no battery life for wired headphones but you get the point) I better be getting something well worth it in return. In this case, that something is what, not having to plug my headphones in? Not having a wire connecting me to wherever the sound is coming from that literally never gets in my way except MAYBE very occasionally when working out? I'm sorry but that is absolutely nowhere NEAR worth the tradeoffs. It's not that I'm against bluetooth headphones, it's that the benefits do not outweigh the costs. How many times have you really found yourself genuinely bothered by wires on your headphones? I know for me the answer is almost never (realistically only when working out, which is the only situation where I'd even consider wireless headphones)
When you can get bluetooth headphones that last 40 hours I don't see battery life as an issue.
Quality sounds fine to me as well. Are there any blind tests that show people can notice differences with Bluetooth? Even if the difference is slightly noticeable I doubt you would notice wearing headphones on the move, at the gym, in the office etc.
> How many times have you really found yourself genuinely bothered by wires on your headphones?
Multiple times a day. Any time you're doing anything active besides just walking (e.g. reaching for things, carrying something) or putting on a jacket the wire gets in the way. Getting them caught on a door handle and having in-ear headphones ripped out of your ears is really unpleasant.
Which is better, unlimited "battery" or a 40 hour battery? It may not be a big issue for you, but for me that's a very significant tradeoff. And I haven't looked into studies but I have personally done multiple side by side comparisons of the same headphones/speakers connected via bluetooth vs wired and have yet to find a set where I was not able to notice a difference in the sound quality. For me, that's enough, but I'd encourage you to try it out yourself or seek out some studies (I haven't even bothered looking).
In the end it seems more of a question of which bothers you more:
1. degraded sound quality and drastically shorter (since one is unlimited) battery life or
2. having a wire from your headphones to your audio source.
For me, there's no question that 1. is more of an issue, for others, 2. is a bigger problem. I consider bluetooth an alternative to wired headphones but absolutely not a replacement since both have tradeoffs
I think an apt analogy for the transition towards wireless audio is that of desktop to mobile computing. In the same way that mobile isn't an end-all to desktop computing for professionals, wireless headphones aren't meant as a replacement for everyone, such as audiophiles.
That said, I've personally tried a half-dozen wireless headphones over the past few months. I strongly feel that the technology has progressed to where the tradeoffs of battery life and sound quality are minimal for the general consumer.
Right now, price is probably the limiting factor in adoption. However, as the price decreases over the next 3 years, I think you'll find that wireless will become the primary means of audio consumption for the average Joe.
I would happily bet any amount of money that I can tell the difference between my nice pair of IEMs and the stock apple ones every time. It's not the bluetooth transmission that's the problem, it's the actual sound producing hardware. Customers like you dwarf customers like me, so Apple and Beats don't bother to produce great sounding phones beyond a certain point--it even appears AirPods have basically stock earphone sound quality.
I would love the convenience of AirPods, just upgraded with nicer drivers, and would be willing to pay $400 for them. There just isn't a big enough market, so I'm left feeling the pain of people that fall outside of Apple's inner circle.
This is even more perplexing to me because Apple consistently puts screen quality as a very high priority. I'm just flabbergasted at how much they could be dropping the ball for audio.
A deaf person can tell the difference between nice IEMs and the stock apple ear phones. I don't think anyone is disputing that. Now take some nice bluetooth IEMs and compare them to similarly priced wired IEMs, then it gets a little more difficult. Bluetooth transmission is very much a problem when it comes to sound quality, since the audio needs to be compressed to send wirelessly.
I like wireless headphones for the simple situation that I switch from podcasts on my phone to video on a kindle fire and back during my commute, and pairing with various devices from a variety of manufacturers seems like it would be very slow compared to popping the jack. Though, to be fair, I've never used wireless headphones (other than xbox), so don't know what the pairing process looks like. I just know that in the past cheap bluetooth speakers have been slow to match and sometimes forget that they're friends with my phone.
My headphones (Plantronics) will connect to two devices at the same time. The controls interact with whichever was playing more recently, and an existing stream takes priority over a new one. So I can quite happily stop my music from my phone and start up a call from my laptop, then switch back, without re-pairing at all.
If I did need to re-pair, it's as simple as picking the phone from the phone or laptop's recently-used devices list. I usually only have to do that if the phone has decided it wants to keep talking to my headphones while I'm in the car. Pairing from scratch with the phone is as simple as holding the phone to one of the ear cups, but I've only had to do that once and I can't remember which one now.
It's less about the process of pairing being painful and more about the amount of time it takes to pair. I also use a plantronics headset sometimes and it usually takes somewhere from like 15-60 seconds to actually pair up and have audio coming through. Vs the 2 seconds it takes for me to plug in a wired pair
The Backbeat Pros have a "nice" start-up chime. If you push the play button while it's playing that, it'll start playing music once the chime ends. Less effort and delay than untangling the cable and plugging it in (which is an option: I still keep the cable in my bag).
I'm also enjoying auto-pause when I take the headphones off -- no more fiddling for the pause button when someone wants to talk to me.
1) I love it when that cord gets hooked on something and damn near rips my ears out.
2) I don't lose things.
This is like a guy leaving a negative review of feminine hygiene products. When a product designed for people with different needs and desires than yours, it’s not necessarily “stupid.”
Makes perfect sense to me. I run about 4 days a week with my phone strapped to my arm. The current headphones cable wraps around my arm once or twice, and sometimes gets tangled mid-run.
It's a pet peeve of mine. Wireless is a good thing.
I don't need more than 2 hours tops when running, so the 5+ hour battery life is great.
I never had any problems with the current earphones slipping out of my ears while running - rain, wind, or shine. Airpods seem to follow a similar model, so I don't anticipate issues there either.
I don't really see what these offer over say my Plantronics BackBeat Go 2 which lasts 4 hours. They're also connected to each other, going behind my neck. You may think that is a disadvantage, but I can easily have one in and one out if required. Besides, these Airpods don't solve the quality Bluetooth lacks. A disadvantage is you can already lose these easily (if disconnect both and keep hanging around). I don't even wanna think about Airpods and how easy they will be to lose.
Try putting your smartphone in a safe place, and have wired or wireless headset, and use some kind of smartwatch to control your phone and receive feedback on your performance. I use a Pebble 2 for that, but there's other alternatives available.
Bonus points is my phone is stored safely without saying to random strangers "rob me".
I did 4 marathons last year along with 2,000km of running mileage, and if music is a must while you run, then at x4 a week, it's worth looking into for a better setup. Even a basic GPS watch with a separate cheap music player (look for a clipping one) and you'll be much more comfortable. Granted, this won't allow to send/receive texts or calls, but hopefully you can manage to disconnect from the world for 1-2 hours.
I don't come across too many even semi-consistent runners who take their phone with them. Most can't stand a big iPhone 6/7 or Samsung strapped to their arm like a piece of armor. I don't think these AirPods will improve the running-music duo at all. The technology doesn't quite cater to us yet. Lightweight, sturdier earbuds (check out yurbuds) with a cord under the shirt down to the waist isn't noticeable and is hard to beat.
How do you think you will view this comment in 5 years when 90% of new ear buds sold are completely wireless? I'm guessing it will be similar to how people view Steve Ballmer's comments on the original iPhone.
On the other hand, I signed up instantly because I need these things to go to the gym.
Right now I have some cheap headphones I bought at Ross and even if they're wireless, the little rubber headband is uncomfortable when I'm bench pressing.
Can't speak about 1). Can't speak about 2) either; but HNers told me Apple did extensive testing to ensure pods would not fall while being in your ears (the physics hints that earplugs fall mainly because of wires).
Still 1) is a good question. I thought they came with a tiny casket, so they wouldn't fall out of your pocket like that. Still subtle when you remove them from your skull.
They come with a charging case which looks to be about the size of the little plastic spool-box of dental floss with which some here might be familiar. It's not very large, but shouldn't be small enough to easily drop out of a pocket without being noticed, either.
I'm not sure what I expect with regard to staying in ears, though. They appear to be closely modeled on the wired EarPods, which in my experience don't reliably stay in the ear on their own, to the point where they are best worn with the cable wound around the crease of the pinna - both for strain relief, and so that they're easier to recover and less likely to be damaged when they do inevitably pop out.
I like volume control, and play/pause/skip. I like and use them a lot. On these it seems you have to ask Siri to change the volume, which is awful, and ask Siri or take 'em out to pause.
Please someone tell em if this is not the case. I really want it to not be true.
Being attached with wires means they catch on something and are violently ripped from my ear at least a couple times a week.
I cannot overstate how angry this makes me. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. It can literally ruin an hour. I'd rather be randomly slapped by a stranger.
Just out of curiosity, what type of situations cause this to happen to you? This literally has never happened to me except while working out, and workout time amounts to probably 5% or less of my headphone usage
I would like to try these, but the AirPod/EarPod form factor is just painful to my ears. I can never wear them for longer than 30 minutes at a time. Must just be my ear anatomy.
On the other hand, Panasonic makes simply the most comfortable earbuds I've ever worn, even for 8+ hour sessions, for $10: http://a.co/4ztIdDw
Has anybody got standard bluetooth headphones and found a way to reliably use them on multiple Apple devices? Mine are usually paired to my phone, and it's just not worth the hassle of unpairing and pairing repeatedly until the Macbook picks them up as unpaired and lets me try to pair with them, which works about half the time. Maybe my Macbook's bluetooth is just broken.. This is kinda disappointing though because I know it'll never get fixed, because why bother when if I just bought headphones from them I wouldn't have the problem?
I have Bose QC35s and they can be simultaneously connected (not just paired) to two devices at the same time. They can be paired to more, and you can cycle through paired devices with a switch on the headphones or use the iPhone app to select which two devices you want connected.
I almost always have both my Macbook Pro an iPhone connected. The switch from listening to music from the laptop to the iPhone (such as when I leave the office and get on the bus) is seamless. Simply stop playing music on the laptop and start playing music on the phone. I highly recommend them.
That's not an Apple issue -- Bluetooth doesn't support that. I've never seen any Bluetooth device that can be paired to multiple devices at one time without having some type of device switcher button.
Way under 100 monetary units, IP57 protection, aptX support. Integrates perfectly with iOS (I can see the remaining battery right in the header and dashboard).
I've been using these Sony SBH70's[1] paired with both my iPhone 6S and Apple Watch Series 2 without any major issues. The multipoint support just connects to multiple devices at the same time, also it can be turned off when powering up the headphonese.
Bose makes a set of noise-canceling earbuds that are marketed for all-day wear, as a general way of filtering out noise. They want you to leave them in during face-to-face conversations (to help isolate the other voices from the background) or train rides (just to silence everything).
We're slowly moving into that future tech world that we saw in movies and dreamt up when we were kids. These are wireless earbuds. My first pair of wireless headphones used IR, took two AA batteries, were huge, heavy, and sounded horrible once you started losing sight of the transmitter!
Sure, it's a small step in mass-market technology, but that's the only way tech moves forward for most of the world. It's never really existed before, it's something new!
Some of us find advancements in tech exciting, whether it's some incremental advancement in AI, or an incremental advancement for silly earbuds.
If you think in terms of small increments, you'll never see, or be impressed with, the big changes that are happening around you.
Thank you. Not sure why people are acting so jaded when we're getting all of this cool stuff that was scifi even less than a decade before. The future is cool.
Well Jaybirds have been out for years, and are pretty much the same thing with a wire around the neck, but also rather popular.
And actually the Dash was a kickstarter from two years ago which is the same as the Airpods, where each pod is separate with no wire at all. Started shipping a year ago.
People who know Apple are getting sick of them jumping on bandwagons' years late and claiming to be first.
"AirPods will be shipping in limited quantities at launch and customers are encouraged to check online for updates on availability and estimated delivery dates."
That's like "We look like fools. At least get -something- out there".
Apparently not. Which sucks, because I'd love better quality (dual drivers and all) earpod style headphones. I heard (kek) Amazon Premium has some decent ones, but they don't ship international.
Yes. I was actually fairly excited to see the Airpod announcement because it might inspire more companies to release wireless earbuds (that don't have to go inside your ear canal and block outside noise)...
The sound is good (at least as good as I've ever heard from earbuds), they're cheap, but most importantly, they TWIST into your ears instead of simply pressing.
This emulates what you'll find in really high end, custom-fit earplugs.
They absolutely will not fall out unless you PULL them out.
Why is Apple so obsessed with calling everything "magical". If anyone believes this is magic, they also need to believe Apple employs wizards & witches.
Because for the less informed customer that is descriptive, and allows those customers to enter the reality distortion field.
It is the same with "Air", "Pod", iSomething", and "Pro". Meaningless buzzwords. Then again, every company has their set ("Surface", "ThinkPad", "Yoga", "Zen"). Trust me, it has nothing to do with real yoga or zen. I'll refrain to make a comment on "Pro".
Just ignore the buzzwords, insofar that they don't tell you anything about the quality of the product and instead look at price/feature/quality comparisons and make up your own mind.
> Advanced sensors detect when AirPods are in your ear and can automatically play and pause your music.
I've been thinking about this for a while now. Whenever I'm asked for directions or something on the train/commute to and from work I wish I could just take my headphones out and they'd be smart enough to instantly pause and rewind the podcast/audiobook a second or two.
I don't get why players don't do that -- rewind a second or 10, especially when listening to podcasts or audiobooks. When you resume listening, you have no context at all!
Removing the audio jack also removes a whole market of products that were taking advantage of the audio jack for non-audio purposes (e.g. the Square dongle). Now that the audio jack is gone, companies like Square will have to pay Apple a licensing fee to use the only available port on the iPhone, and even companies that want to attract consumers of their audio products to be used with iPhones will have to get licensing from Apple as well.
> Removing the audio jack also removes a whole market of products that were taking advantage of the audio jack for non-audio purposes (e.g. the Square dongle).
Except that it doesn't. Yes, you have to use an adapter now, and that's slightly (but only slightly) more clumsy than before, but "Square readers don't work any more!" is a particularly tired piece of FUD, which it would be nice not to see spread around any more by people such as HN participants who really should know better.
OK, how about things like the Apogee Jam[1] and MIDI adaptors? As far as I can tell, there aren't any MFi-certified Lightning splitters that support both data IO and audio out. (Usually it's just audio out + charge — and poor audio at that.)
Well, how about them? That's a reasonable concern, and a major problem for people who want to use such devices with an iPhone 7. They aren't Square readers, though, or any other kind of device that uses the headphone jack for data, and it's inaccurate, disingenuous, and unhelpful to claim that such devices no longer work.
Honest question: if these become ubiquitous (i.e. the majority of OEMs remove the headphone port on phones and everyone uses some kind of wireless headphones) wouldn't the interference make them unusable in a crowded place? How many channels are available, and is that enough for a whole bus full of people using wireless headphones?
You think Apple's going to include a pair of headphones they sell for $160 in the box, when they can provide the super-cheap lightning earpods instead to incentivize you to get so frustrated that you upgrade?
Hell, I know I ended up picking up a Jabra Halo Smart because I got so annoyed having to deal with the stupid dongle to use my $10 pair of Sony AS200's and the cheap Chinese Kinivo bluetooth headphones I had had substantially worse audio quality than even these cheap wired ones.
I thought about the AirPods, but I'd lose them in a heartbeat. I'm constantly forgetting where the hell I put my headphones as is, at least my Halo Smart is big enough that I can find it easily - if I lost one of the little AirPod's I would end up tearing my house apart looking for the dumb thing.
Yes they do work alone, iPhone will even switch to mono. About the replacement, don't know yet, but I think Apple support will let ppl buy them individually.
Not that people will do it all the time (I certainly wouldn't) but the charging case thing is there for a reason. Most likely the idea is you keep it somewhere handy (desk, backpack, laptop bag, etc.) and so you put the AirPods in it while not using them.
As far as them falling out, like on the subway or something, that'll be the problem.
Since no one has production units in hand, you'll have to take Apple's word for it:
"a charging case that holds multiple additional charges for more than 24 hours of listening time.(3) Need a quick charge? Just 15 minutes in the case gives you 3 hours of listening time.(4)"
Also, will Apple include these within iPhone box to replace the clunky new lightning things?
Most of the reviews of the preproduction units said Apple's 5 hour claim was about right. That's about 1-2 hours more than I get from my current earbuds, and they can't charge one-at-a-time or give me 3 hours of use in a 15 minute charge.
I love wireless headphones. But the main downside to these for me is that it doesn't look like they will improve upon sound quality and sound isolation (or lack thereof) in the traditional wired Apple Ear Pods.
I imagine it won't happen because in some ways it's kind of backwards, but I hate running with my phone, especially because I have a huge 6+.
It seems like a simple thing to just want to be able to take some of my music/podcasts with me running, but it's not realistic unless I own a separate iPod shuffle that I then have to deal with. Adding a small amount of memory to AirPods would make this possible and relatively seamless.
I sync a playlist of my music from my 6S onto my Apple Watch rev. 1 and use a pair of beats solo 3. Works daaaaandy.
The Apple Watch is far, far too goddamn expensive, though. Let's get it down to at least $199, guys, and don't force us to pair an iPhone with it. It's what the iPod Nano turned into. Why is it so much more expensive?
If people could just buy an Apple Watch, it could convince them to buy further into the Apple ecosystem, in the same way as the iPod did (but obviously not to such a scale).
Presumably you would have to sync the iPod Shuffle equivalent as you would the AirPods. Maybe the issue is more with their syncing? (I know I find it annoying.)
DHH from 37Signals mentioned on Twitter recently that he has two iPhones - 6+ and a 6. Larger one for around the house, in bed, etc and the other when out and about. It struck me as an almost affordable luxury for some people, if you can endure any syncing hassles.
On the surface it would seem not, but going by my usage, I think there's a difference. Since getting a 6+, my iPads go largely unused. There are 3 iPads in my house and my wife and I both regularly watch streaming content on our phones. I think it's because you tend to have your phone with you as you move from the kitchen to the couch to the home office to read/watch before bed, etc.
For DHH, I guess it's a combination of that and the fact that he doesn't want something as large as a 6+ in his pocket all the time.
But in terms of having the two devices, then little different. Obviously an affordable luxury given that many households would have phones and a tablet. I just hadn't thought of it being two different sizes of phone before.
There already is a plethora of wireless earbuds/headphones on the market... and has been that way for years. No need to buy these overpriced ones to get wireless.
Your comment would be more useful had you answered his question instead of expressing your dislike for the product in question. There are plenty of dissenting comments that you could latch onto to express the latter.
$160...for wireless earbuds + mic. I mean I have the money to throw away but...why. They look ok, kinda odd, but not like call center headsets at least.
You could buy a DS for that much right? That's about how much the ps2 slim costed back in the day.
I thought the public more or less rejected hang from the ear style Bluetooth earphones because they look awkward. I don't think making them white and giving you two is going to fix the perception. Although these may work much better than the old style I am not sure it offsets the reason a lot of people do not like this type of earphone.
These look extraordinarily uncomfortable, especially if I'm supposed to have them in my ears more than usual headphones - or even as long as my current model. If Apple is trying to make an in-ear controller ala Her, I do not see these as something I'll pick up.
Curious. Will there be third-party headphones that work here?
Third party headphones should work just fine, I don't see Apple breaking A2DP just to push their own product.
The fancypants features like iCloud sync and inserted ear detection though, I suspect that'll take some manufacturers some reverse engineering or exchanges of money for details.
I will not buy a phone without a 3.5" jack period. I'm not buying ridiculously expensive wireless headphones that are objectively worse (worse quality than wired alternatives, added hassle of charging them plus much more expensive).
I will not buy a computer without a 5" floppy drive.
I will not buy a computer without a 3.5" floppy drive.
I will not buy a computer without a CD drive
etc.
Seems Apple is just always ahead of the crowd in getting rid of things.
this is a false analogy. the CD drive was an improvement on the 3.5" floppy. the 3.5" floppy was an improvement on the 5" floppy. bluetooth is an improvement in form (no more wires), but a downgrade in function as the audio quality is diminished.
I hear people saying this a lot, but I'd be willing to bet that at least 90% of consumers would be incapable of telling the difference between Bluetooth and wired audio in a blind test.
Also, given that the vast majority of earbuds people use are sub-$20, I bet the audio quality isn't that great to begin with.
if 90% of consumers are incapable of telling the difference then why would apple use such an expensive DAC in their phone? I can't speak for everyone, but it's a pretty noticeable difference to me especially considering my hearing isn't very good to begin with.
Please explain to me how having to use a dongle that is inconvenient and will probably break or be lost an advantage over just having my good headphones plugged into a headphone jack?
Anyway, I won't be buying a phone without a headphone jack, or these airpods.
In a few short years you're probably going to find it hard to buy any phones then; Samsung is reportedly already planning to remove the headphone jack from their flagship phones.
My only problem with these is they're not comfortable. No, I have not worn a pair, but the speaker part is just like the current standard headphones and I've never found those comfortable. I think the pairing and siri integration, etc is all nice though.
I still have a $25 pair of Sony earbuds I bought in an airport store years ago. They are comfortable, sound great and have the mic support. Sure, they have the cord which is annoying, but I've tried Shure, Bose and a lot other wired & bluetooth earbuds and none of them sound as good as the Sony pair I have.
It's too bad Apple didn't include some kind of silicone adapter for comfort because if they did, I would consider the AirPods. But again, they're just uncomfortable.
Oh, and my wife likes her Apple headphones because they let a lot of outside sounds in. That's another reason I don't like the Apple headphones and I have a pair of Beats for noise canceling when I want it. I didn't see anywhere that the AirPods had noise canceling, so you're probably going to hear a lot of background noise when using them.
Why have the stupid white thing hanging down? You don't need it anymore. There used to be a wire coming out of it, but now there's not. They could have made it look like anything, but now it looks like I'm foaming at the ears.
Furthermore, why isn't there a better way of attaching these to your ear? I hate shoving a piece of dirty plastic into the innermost part of my ear. It'd be much nicer to have something with that shark-fin rubber piece[1] or the over-ear clip[2].
"AirPods introduce an effortless wireless listening experience packed with high-quality audio and long battery life. These magical wireless headphones use advanced technology to reinvent how we listen to music, make phone calls, enjoy TV shows and movies, play games and interact with Siri, providing a wireless audio experience not possible before."
Magical. Reinvent. Not possible before.
None of these words applies.