
Bluetooth headphones are annoying - walterbell
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/7/12109384/wireless-bluetooth-headphones-battery-life-video
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metheus
Lauren Goode is either a hack or just incompetent at using things.

> Late for a conference call you need to dial into? Hold on — you need to jam
> your Bluetooth buds in your ears and pair them to your phone if you're not
> already paired.

Is she serious? In what universe do you have a pair of BT headphones that
aren't paired to your device? You do that when you get them.

> Got a sudden burst of motivation to work out? Sorry, no music — headphones
> are dead.

Right... things with batteries need charging.

The rest of the article is just as poorly thought out.

I agree that there are issues with Bluetooth headphones, but I find the
benefits so great that I've stopped using my RHA T10i in-ear phones almost
entirely.

~~~
sumitgt
Well, yeah maybe Verge has a history of being a little over-dramatic. I
wouldn't blame Lauren Goode for that. The Editor-in-chief has been lamenting
all over the place about the removal of the 3.5mm jack from iPhones even
before the product has launched!. I understand it could be a stupid decision,
but a reasonable tech publication should at least wait to hear what Apple says
before jumping to conclusions.

As far as pairing BT headsets are concerned, I do have to visit the bluetooth
setting and select the headset everytime. This is different from the initial
pairing.

~~~
metheus
Agree to your points, but and if the article was "Removing the 3.5mm jack is
stupid", I wouldn't take issue with that. But that's not her claim, and my
issue is with her absurd non-points in support of her claim that bluetooth
headphones are annoying. Here's one more:

> A plastic three-button remote is a poor substitute for an entire phone
> interface when it comes to controlling music, answering phone calls, or
> using Siri.

In what way is that different than wired headphones??!!

I'm surprised by your need to select your headset each time you use it,
though. If that was her issue, if it was widespread, I'd absolutely concede
the point. That's not been my experience at all, though. I've used 4 different
headsets (all Jabra, though), a half dozen portable speakers, and am currently
using two different headphone/mic models -- JayBird BlueBuds and Turtle Beach
Elite 800X. Not a single one of them requires that behavior. I power them on,
they connect.

What is more, if I'm getting a phone call, and my headset isn't already on,
when I _do_ power it on, it connects and immediately answers the call.

The only time I need to use the device selection preferences is when I switch
which device I'm using the headphones with. And that works flawlessly for me.
When I leave the house, I turn on my headphones and they attach to my iPhone.
When I get to work, I use the bluetooth menu mar item to select the headphones
and they switch over to the MacBook. When I leave I select them again on my
iPhone and they switch back. If I pull out my iPad to watch a video, I switch
over to them.

Hell, not only does that work well, but iOS even tries to guess what app I
want to switch to when it detects a bluetooth connection.

Obviously this is a case of YMMV. I don't doubt that your headset doesn't work
as smoothly with the iPhone. And if Lauren Goode's article had even a shred of
that nuance, I wouldn't call her a hack. But both times I've noticed her work
lately I've found it riddled with non-evidence in support of her claims (see
her article about why WatchOS 3 is "an admission that Apple had it all wrong
when it came to interactions on the first-generation Apple Watch":
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11926314/apple-watch-
os3-n...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11926314/apple-watch-os3-new-
software-faster-third-party-apps-wwdc)).

