Elderly? I can guarantee that no human being on earth can confidently setup bluetooth on all devices. And that's the issue, these one-off pairings.
I had a friend sync with my car bluetooth-stereo, it took a while and from the steering wheel I couldn't be of enough help. But it worked in the end, was quite frustrating though.
Then later when I tried to use my phone again it had been lost from the receiver (eventhough it can support two concurrent connections and I've only ever paired with two devices). So now I had to go through the whole dance that it was only paired in one device.
Thing is, anything that literally takes more than 3 seconds is a disaster. After a minute of fiddling with it I remembered I had an AUX cable. And then I could patiently fix it when I had time for it.
Bluetooth is a nightmare for temporary connections. Removing the headphone-jack is akin to removing a fire-alarm system because "it isn't used anyway". Well, the times you need it it is indispensable and it doesn't cost anything.
Exactly. Just recently I struggled with pairing a bluetooth speaker with my father's laptop. Another, exactly identical bluetooth speaker paired fine just the day before. The second one couldn't be paired for two days, and I have no idea why.
The fact that this bluetooth speaker has three different bluetooth modes with three different ways to switch between them via a single button doesn't help, and even after years I couldn't figure out which mode is meant for what purpose.
And the problem is that this happens regularly unless you never switch any device, which in reality doesn't happen, because nobody wants to buy nice headphones for every audio source.
Bluetooth is a mess, and I'm glad I stayed with headphone jacks so far.
I can guarantee that no human being on earth can confidently setup bluetooth on all devices. And that's the issue, these one-off pairings.
Thing is, anything that literally takes more than 3 seconds is a disaster.
In 2008, Apple introduced iPhone and promised us a future where everything "just works," and where the user and UX are paramount. Taking stock of the last decade, we're basically back to The Inmates are Running the Asylum.
I think it's cyclic. The rejected "IBM guy" in the short sleeved shirt portrayed in the Steve Jobs biopic was once the innovative young turk. Now, the typical mobile and web app developer are that "IBM guy," just with a different set of subcultural aesthetics and a different over elaborated UX language which has left ordinary users behind.
It's very telling that about half the time, I start getting hidden contempt from developers when I give them feedback. They're never wrong. I'm obviously deficient and dim. Never mind that I'm a programmer, and I'm pretty darn good at predicting how fellow engineers think. About half the time, that's where the developer starts from. No questions. No curiosity. It's just like in the old days when the command line was the fancy new easier interface. It's the same as long after GUI interfaces hit a wider public and the public started grousing about computer help desks.
(Directed to the 3rd party reader: Don't be that programmer. Seek not so much to be understood, as to understand.)
> Thing is, anything that literally takes more than 3 seconds is a disaster.
And just to add onto this, the problem isn't that Bluetooth pairing takes three seconds, per se.
The problem is that we already had an instantaneous, reliable, and universal solution. In it's place is an option that may be better in some ways (namely, wires are gone), but is worse in many others. And for what? A tiny sliver of extra volume within the phone?
Also, I tried to use my bluetooth headphones with my Macbook air, even knowing the steps, and it said I had to upgrade the OS to use them (I think the OS was like a year old at the time, and the computer four years old -- El Capitan, I think?)
Seriously? Both OSes knew the version of the bluetooth protocol they needed to use to communicate, and it still doesn't work? Never had that problem with a headphone jack.
> I can guarantee that no human being on earth can confidently setup bluetooth on all devices.
I second that. I use my Bluetooth headphones on three devices. But I can only save two connections. So one device I always use via jack to avoid having to repair several times a day.
I have 3 cars with Bluetooth and one of them (which sports a "Sync by Microsoft" label gives me no end of trouble with bluetooth. At one point I gave up and just started using a cord, because I could. I don't drive that car on a daily basis now (It's a Ford Fusion, which otherwise I like.), but when I do, I still have hassles.
I use them with my laptop too. I have had only one ‘pairing seems a bit broken’ issue since buying them as soon as they came out - and an iPhone restart was the fix. That’s about 2.5 minutes of hassle in several thousand hours of use.
If they were a pain, I would stop using them, but they are much less hassle than the many pairs of corded headphones I have. This said, other Bluetooth headphones are much more hassle.
What? It will only work with that device. It won't work in any car or any other circumstance. Also the pods themselves will not work with any non-apple device.
That's an extremely narrow use-case. If that was the only thing people used the headphone jack it wouldn't have been the big travesty that it currently is (and will be for the foreseeable time).
There's still a dance you have to do when you want to change between devices. For example, I want to switch between listening to a podcast on my iPhone to watching a show on my iPad. You'd think that would be quick and easy but it still takes 10-20 seconds.
I switch between iPhone and MacBook sometimes. My flow is usually turning off Bluetooth on the iPhone then selecting the AirPods from the MacBook, or similar. It doesn’t feel like much of a pain but it does seem like there could be an easier way. If the Bluetooth icon/menu on each device could have a ‘move AirPods to iPhone/MacBook/iPad’ option, and maybe a ‘move from’ on other devices.
>Removing the headphone-jack is akin to removing a fire-alarm system
Am I missing something? There's still a headphone port on phones, it's just not dedicated. People can still plug headphones in to their phones right? I'm asking because the tone of these comments makes it seem like new phones have removed the ability to listen to music without bluetooth.
You are missing the fact that lugging an adapter is not a realistic option. I lived the dongle life for almost two years. By the end the darn thing had started glitching on me and you could not buy replacements. I'm lucky it didn't damage the charging port...
Not that it matters, I still didn't have it with me half of the times it turned out I needed it.
I actually considered buying like 10 of them. Now we are talking about 100 USD of the crap and a MASSIVE and daily inconvenience just because the manufacturer decided to save a couple of cents. This shit is just ridiculous.
I have AirPods for meetings and music while walking, the normal Apple buds - now just backup in case I leave my AirPods behind, some Sony closed back monsters for shutting out noise while working in cafes and some nice open back Grados for music listening at home.
I hardly use the Sonys but if I do, I will just borrow the adaptor from my Apple buds in my laptop bag. For listening to my Grados I use an amp with a headphone socket.
If I wanted to plug them into my phone I would need the Apple lightning adapter and also one to the smaller headphone jack! This doesn’t bother me. If I want to do that, I’ll just do it.
I’ll even spend another £9 on an adapter to leave connected if I do it often enough.
None of this seems terrible to me and I’m not sure how unique this set of circumstances is. What are the tons of situations where this gets tricky?
1. Lugging your adapter just isn't an option. Stop. This should be enough reason. Seriously. Don't try to justify it in hindsight.
2. Since I had to constantly borrow my adapter from my regular headphones it happened that I forgot them connected to another headphones. So I often had my headphones with me but missing the adapter. Wasn't frustrating, promise.
3. I don't know when I'm gonna need it. I made a long trip by train and thought that some nice bluetooth noise cancelling phones would be nice. Well, at my destination we took a drive and I was asked to play some music. Ooops, no adapter.
4. At work my bluetooth headphones lost battery, no worries, you can still drive them with a headphone jack. Ooops, no adapter.
5. I dance, one day when arriving to practice the people responsible for it were running late. No worries, just connect your phone! Ooops, no adapter.
6. If your going social gathering with friends to a cottage you might not think to bring your headphones. But while there some music would be kind of nice. Ooops, no adapter.
Situations like that happens all the time, and it's nothing one thinks about because it's just a given that everything works. Well, was... So now I actually did bring my adapter even in cases when I didn't need my headphones. Which was another source of (2).
The above inconveniences all assume that it works as expected when you do have your adapter. But it doesn't. You can not charge and listen to music at the same time and while I love USB-C to bits it is way too clunky to be used while in your pocket. The connector did actually start to show signs of wear from having the adapter connected while walking. Luckily I had no issues charging my device but I actually don't know if data still worked.
Think about it, that alone is also completely unacceptable.
And that's all assuming that it would be kind of okay to even have an adapter at the end of your cord, even that just isn't.
Get into a friends car which only have aux input, try to connect to an older receiver, tv, boombox or computer speakers. I do this almost daily, so i have to loose several posibilities for the added convenience of what exactly?
Parent was probably referring to the fact that phones still have usb-c/lightning ports and you can plug usb-c/lightning headphones to them just fine. The port is not dedicated but as long as you are not charging it works identically to the old headphone jack.
Of course since most of the issues seem to come from things like interaction with cars, and GPS tends to quickly drain battery thus strongly encouraging using a charger, and therefore lack of a headphone jack makes getting audio in the car much more difficult... well, that "as long as you are not charging" is a pretty big negative. And that's ignoring all the various issues Bluetooth has, like some apps (eg Waze) utterly failing to output sound over Bluetooth most of the time.
Is it really common to use headphones in the car, though? The last few cars I've owned, I plugged my phone into the radio with USB and it both charged the phone and played music as well.
Lots of cars don't support transfer of audio via USB but do have an AUX socket.
I think OP was talking about people plugging between the headphone socket of their phone and the AUX input of the car stereo - not wearing headphones in the car.
It is _very_ common to charge the phone and listen to the music at the same time. Maybe only for me ... But I won't ever buy these 1-port-for-everything devices.
The iPhone allows the ability to use old headphones if you use an adapter. So you have to remember to carry that with you. You then have to buy another adapter to charge the phone at the same time as using the headphones. Say you want to use YouTube, but not pay for Red, Unlimited, or whatever they call it now. You have to leave the screen on, which means eating the battery. Two dongles or you run the risk of running your phone down.
Can I just say how insane it is Youtube charges you for the privilege of turning off your screen? I remember the original iPad did this for free. How is this the world we made for ourselves?
I had a friend sync with my car bluetooth-stereo, it took a while and from the steering wheel I couldn't be of enough help. But it worked in the end, was quite frustrating though.
Then later when I tried to use my phone again it had been lost from the receiver (eventhough it can support two concurrent connections and I've only ever paired with two devices). So now I had to go through the whole dance that it was only paired in one device.
Thing is, anything that literally takes more than 3 seconds is a disaster. After a minute of fiddling with it I remembered I had an AUX cable. And then I could patiently fix it when I had time for it.
Bluetooth is a nightmare for temporary connections. Removing the headphone-jack is akin to removing a fire-alarm system because "it isn't used anyway". Well, the times you need it it is indispensable and it doesn't cost anything.