
AirPods Are Now One of Apple’s Most Important Products - imartin2k
https://medium.com/s/the-upgrade/airpods-are-now-one-of-apples-most-important-products-66b3609d6535
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chrisseaton
> Don’t they fall out?

I don't understand why people thought they'd fall out. They're exactly the
same shape as the wired earbuds, but they don't have the wires pulling on
them. Do normal earbuds just spontaneously fall out? So why would AirPods?

~~~
addicted
The difference is that wired pods falling out is no big deal. You simply grab
it by the wire and put it back in.

However, if an Airpod falls out even once, they may be lost irretrievably.

I suspect normal Apple earphones fall out occasionally for most people. (I
can’t wear first party apple earphones at all. They never seem to stay in my
ear, so airpods are a complete no for me).

~~~
toasterlovin
You should actually try AirPods. The wired Apple headphones do not work for me
at all (they don't fit, they fall out, etc.). AirPods fit very well and almost
never fall out.

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thomascgalvin
> Like most of Apple’s best products, AirPods simply work.

This hasn't been true for a few generations now.

I just bought a $3K Mac Mini. I'm a developer, and I wanted a big, beefy
machine to replace my aging Macbook Pro.

It's a great machine. Very happy with it. But there are a lot of little
annoyances that, five or ten years ago, I never would have expected from a
Mac.

For example, the screens no longer shut themselves off after ten minutes. I've
tried playing with the Energy Saver settings, but they just ... stay on. The
screen saver never kicks in, either. This worked for like a week, and then
just stopped.

My external speakers stopped working for a while, too. I rebooted twice and
they came back.

I have two monitors hooked up to it, and MacOS keeps getting confused about
which one is my primary monitor.

None of this is a deal breaker, but it adds up. Apple doesn't "just work"
anymore. It mostly works, it's mostly great, but they aren't the magical,
invulnerable products they used to be.

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brokenmachine
They were never the magical invulnerable products you are saying they used to
be.

Source: worked support for mac equipment around OS9 time.

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SomeHacker44
I have three sets of AirPods. One got lost, and I accidentally online ordered
two.

Of the two that work, one constantly gets reported by callers as
unintelligible. The other one I never get comments about except from my
mother. Everyone universally agrees that the sound quality of holding the
iPhone X to my head is vastly superior.

AirPods are convenient but not very good in my experience. Poor audio quality,
almost no sound isolation (which could be viewed as a feature, frankly), short
battery life (long conference call and you are doing the one-ear-cycle and
pray thing), and a challenge to keep charged (yet another charger/cord needed
or a rotation cycle with phone). I have and use mine (get value from my sunk
cost) but do not like them. They also hurt my ears after about 15 minutes.

My wired Etymotic mid-range earplugs for $70-ish have vastly better audio and
mic quality, insane passive noise isolation and never need charging. Except...
no 3.5mm jack and that stupid dongle keeps getting lost when moving between
phone and laptop/ipad. Sigh.

What a travesty. Sorry to rant, but it just is not a good product even if it
is important to Apple.

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brokenmachine
Lol, that clusterfuck describes exactly what I thought they'd be like.

And you bought three sets, thus encouraging Apple that everything's fine and
to continue whatever it is they're doing!!

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SomeHacker44
It's not as if I had much of a choice here.* I could use other bluetooth
headsets, but the Airpods, as poor as the audio and mic quality are, do mostly
"just work" for me and are as small as my wired headphones were to carry
around.

* In the Apple ecosystem for a dime, in for a dollar. I am looking to get out, but that will be expensive and I do like Apple's privacy core, if not their recent hardware and UX direction.

~~~
brokenmachine
I get it, I'm on Android because I can't swallow Apple's bullshit but would
like it if Android had similar security to Apple.

It would be nice if we could have our cake and eat it too.

