I think this is actually a fantastic place for Apple. I'm happy to trash Apple where appropriate and I've got plenty of complaints. I think Apple does it's best when the integration of hardware and software is really important and there is a very low tolerance for, I won't say bugs, but issues.
They're headphones. I want to put them on and they need to make noise. I'm not dealing with connectivity issues, battery issues, etc. Sure they're $500 but when Apple gets it right I'm happy to pay $500 for something that works than $300 for the first try that I eventually stop using because of some issue or another then another try at $350 for something a little better only to finally throw in the towel an pay the $500 to Apple that might not be perfect but hits it on enough points that I want to use them.
Battery, I need to be able to easily and quickly know what the status is and I need to know that if I plugged them in before I go to bed I'll be good to go all day, the next day and I don't have to think about charging.
Connectivity. When I go to use them I need them to connect and work. No fiddling around with loss of connection or not connecting in the first place.
With the spatial audio they're actually cheap if you figure I'm done with any Dolby Atmos, 9.1, 7.1, 5.1 etc stand alone setup. I'm watching movies with this. I'm tired of all the speakers, decoder, amp, wires, sub, constant upgrades. Compare this to even the least expensive stand alone 5.1 system and it's a very inexpensive alternative.
I bought a $100 pair of bluetooth Sennheisers that have a battery life that seems to be measured not in hours, but in days. I use them all day every day while working in the office, at home, or coffee shop. Music sounds great and so do movies. Never have to worry about the bluetooth connnection, pairs to my Mac or to my work laptop just fine. And they got to me with Amazon Prime.
You do not need to spend $500 if all you need is headphones that do their job.
> You do not need to spend $500 if all you need is headphones that do their job.
Its amazing to me the number of Apple fanboys in this thread that seem to think that every other pair of headphones out there is completely broken, and nothing will "just work". This has been a solved problem for like a decade.
It's amazing to me how many folks seem to have no clue about what folks value in the apple ecosystem.
Call folks fanboys (I use windows / linux all day for my job by choice).
Do your "solved problem" bluetooth headphones allow EASY audio sharing when the kid is sleeping and you want to watch something with your wife? These are two bluetooth devices on same audio stream.
Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device (without having to unpaid with another device). That is game changing.
The problem is, folks have listened to folks like you so many times and gotten BURNED so many times. Oh, it "should" work you say. Total BS at least 20% of the time.
I won't buy the max'es because I have no need for something that nice. But the $159 for the airpods? Slam dunk.
You should go back and listen to the criticism of the airpods when they came out - overpriced, stupid, whatever. Then check out sales numbers.
Do that again with the apple watch maybe? Started slow, but I'm curious what their top competitor is by $ revenue - they have just improved and improved.
Go ahead and call me a fanboy but... Apple really nails the "it just works".
I'm a software engineer, and I'm happy to get my hands dirty with some code. But when it comes to my devices, I really don't want to waste my time trying to figure out why this or that device, doesn't pair with, or work well with, my other device.
Apple just does this better than anyone else.
I recently got an Apple watch and the setup process was sublime. Pairing with all my other devices, was effortless. Instantly my watch was "mine" with everything I need on it.
The LTE setup was mostly painless too. There was a bug in the process that was on Verizon's end, but other than that, getting my phone paired to my number was a breeze.
The pairing with my phone, and my mac, is what makes this whole ecosystem special. It just works, and it works pretty damn well. Yes, you can get most of this functionality on a windows or linux machine, with an android phone, airpod replicas, and an android based smart watch but the fluidity of the apple integration is unmatched.
This is what (some) people are willing to pay more for.
I have a different take on this. I'm an apple machine user. I work on an iMac Pro everyday and have used mac/ios for over a decade. But i've also extensively used Android, Windows, Linux etc extensively.
From what I've experienced it is true that when using apple with apple, it just works. that is true and i won't dispute that. they own the ecosystem so they can handle the integration well, obiously. But the opposite is also true. When using apple with non apple, it (sometimes) just doesn't work or works poorly. When i use the same device on Windows or Android (linux is a different beast), it just works when it won't with iOS or Mac. and sometimes i just want to use a brand thats not apple...
I think for many apple users these days, they believe that Android/Windows still have the problems they faced back in 2009 and havent extensively used either since switching.
Android pairs newer bluetooth devices essentially the same way apple pairs airpods now and windows doesnt still have all the issues from windows vista that made them switch in the first place and has support for way more devices than apple ever will.
I'm not trying to make the point that one is better than the other, my point for apple users is that the experience on windows/android isn't as bad as they think it is and my point for windows/android users is that you're not missing out on much or anything at all from the apple ecosystem.
Buy devices that fit your use case and budget. its as simple as that.
I think you've nailed it. I also made this observation. So many time I'll be talking to another dev about macOS v. linux for example, and they'll say something like, "I don't want to have to compile my kernel" or they'll describe something that makes it clear they haven't tried any Linux distro in a long time. I'll usually ask, "when was the last time you tried it?" and at that point they'll usually realize what they're doing and say something like, "It's been probably 15 years, maybe things are better now?"
Yes, things are better. If I compared the first iPhone to an Pixel 4, the iPhone isn't going to compare nicely. It's always worth making sure you are comparing apples to apples (no pun intended ;-))
I've recently given Linux another try, for use on a machine meant as a media server, and also to drive my family "video call station" (i.e., combine big TV, webcam and a bluetooth audio widget with mic and speakers so that the kids can talk to their grandparents in COVID times). Went with the most main stream distro, Ubuntu 20.04.
Result: couldn't get the Bluetooth conference widget working. Googled around for hours and tried all kinds of things, including compiling and installing kernel modules and replacing the bluetooth stack. Nothing worked. No, this is not an exotic non-standard protocol, it's a standard one (I think aptX or so? sorry, forgot the details again already; but I googled around and found lots of people with similar issues, and then many "solutions", none of which worked; see above)
Anyway, I am back to plugging in my MacBook each time we want to video conference, and will soon install Windows on the media server (no matter how much I hate the thought).
I really want to use Linux for this kind of stuff, but it's 2020 and I can't get a Bluetooth widget working that works flawlessly on various Macs, Windows machines, iPhone, iPad and an Android phone.
So while things may be better, they are still far from where they could be, I am afraid.
With "media server" I generally meant: "device hooked up to the speaker and AV receiver for video playback, couch surfing, perhaps the occasional game (mostly via emulators).
Yeah, adding the microphone and camera is going beyond that, but it's convenient to use the computer already hooked to the TV instead of, you know, hooking up yet another one. Also, how does Airplay give me access to the camera mounted on top of the TV (an old phone, BTW)? Also, how is that relevant for my comment at all? :-)
Airplay can share a screen and through that it can share a FaceTime call - or at least I thought it could and Googling suggests it can. This entirely depends on your ‘old phone’ being an iPhone.
I tried Linux recently (Ubuntu, I believe it was 19.10 but might've been 18.04 lts). Within minutes of booting I was searching for answers to questions that one should never have to ask (specifically, it was something to do with sound - it wasn't outputting or it was going over HDMI instead of the plugged in Aux Jack.) Linux may have gotten better, but it feels just as unfinished and confusing to me as it did 20 years ago when I first booted knoppix.
Oh it’s plenty obtuse, but you can get a lot working in a very reliable fashion.
My daily driver is a Mac but Ubuntu is great for messing about - it really is baffling how simple things can turn into hours of pain though.
> they'll describe something that makes it clear they haven't tried any Linux distro in a long time.
I use Linux for work.
In Ubuntu 20 air pod pros still don’t pair properly - I can use the earphones but not the headset microphone.
Then there are minor annoyances like plugging in an
external monitor and keyboard to a closed laptop (thinkpad) and not having it wake up (need to open and close the case), or closing the case but then the power management doesn’t work properly so if it’s not plugged in to power, then when I open it the next day the battery is drained and the laptop has shutdown - losing any unsaved state.
Finally (and this is the main one preventing me from using Linux on my personal laptop) Chinese fonts on Linux are awful. Not only are the default fonts ugly but applications do a poor job of rendering them, often getting baselines offsets between subsequent characters wrong, making characters on the same line jump around.
It’s altogether a subpar experience especially compared to macOS.
> In Ubuntu 20 air pod pros still don’t pair properly - I can use the earphones but not the headset microphone.
Do you really blame Linux over Apple for that? Bluetooth on Linux isn't great, that's totally true, but a big source of problems is the device makers. They often test against only the system they are targeting, and leave the rest. Nearly every bluetooth implementation has issues, but the Linux one is never tested/developed with like others.
> Then there are minor annoyances like plugging in an external monitor and keyboard to a closed laptop (thinkpad) and not having it wake up (need to open and close the case), or closing the case but then the power management doesn’t work properly so if it’s not plugged in to power, then when I open it the next day the battery is drained and the laptop has shutdown - losing any unsaved state.
I agree, this is insanely stupid. By all means I don't think things are perfect yet, but they are definitely better than they used to be. There are also easy things you can do to avoid these things, such as sleeping your laptop from the Gnome widget (or just run `systemctl suspend -i`) and it works every time. just open the lid to resume working. It's annoying that you have to do that for sure, but in my opinion learning simple workflow changes like that aren't a big deal in exchange for the FLOSS aspects, but everyone is different. Choice is what makes things great!
I don't blame anyone, and I understand the reasons, but at the end of the day I still can't use devices I can use everywhere else, and I'm reminded of that daily when I need to plug wired headphones in instead.
Power-management issues I've learned to work around - but again is something that requires regular actions/changes in behaviour that serve as a continual reminder that there are issues.
Chinese font issues I've given up on entirely and I just have the UI in English.
Don't get me wrong, macOS has plenty of issues too, and it feels like the overall software quality has been in a gradual state of decline for at least a decade, but it doesn't have the same continual reminders of issues that I get when using Linux, and the fonts always look nice regardless of language.
I recently had an SSD failure and tried using Ubuntu 20.10 to fix my (heavily tweaked to get things mostly-working) older Ubuntu installation. After many hours fiddling with startup settings I still cannot get the live USB to boot to anything other than a black screen. This is a ~2008 graphics card with mature open source drivers. I can get a console if using safe graphics mode but then no network connectivity either. Who knows about sound, haven't got there yet. All the same issues as 15-20 years ago.
When I was last using this machine regularly, most biannual upgrades broke one of these three things anyway (and, no: the tweaks were not obscure things that caused the breakage, and several failed attempts were made to revert them, report them, or look into the causes, and they obviously don't affect the live USB).
On earphones I reserve my judgement since my Sony 1000XM2 works really well and I don't have advanced needs like switching devices constantly or sharing the audio with another person.
On desktop OS or smartphone I cannot agree with this sentiment though. I used Arch Linux (arguably the best Linux experience I've had by far) on Thinkpad for 3 years and used Nexus/Pixel for 5+ years. Starting from last year I finally had enough and switched back to Macbook + iPhone. God were the devices much, much reliable and my life much easier. At least I didn't have to worry about random stuffs like Bluetooth disconnection, lack of proper HiDPI support or the camera taking 5 seconds to start/simply freezing.
I am super excited to be jumping back into Linux as of this month. But I will say, even though the issues are different, I still have a lot of issues. Things do not "just work." Some of that is simple expectation setting.
With Linux, you know that something can work if you just give it enough elbow grease. The same is true on macOS, but the ecosystem does not tempt you unless its something you actually need. On Linux, the ecosystem says, "oh, that weird thing you want to do you? YES! You can do it! It's normal! Go for it!" And then you do, and you have issues, and everyone is like "oh that sucks but also you were trying to do a weird thing." The blessed path is less clear.
Have taken the blessed path on Ubuntu 20.04LTS with a Lenovo workstation, however on updating the bootloader spontaneously decided to Bork itself. Could possibly try and fix it, however this is not something I want to mess with right now so currently using WSL v2 and Docker on Windows 10 and not having any problems. It is nice to be able to add 2/4/8gb of storage and 128gb of ram for dirt cheap, something that is not possible with a mac though.
Seriously- who is more likely to put app ads in my start menu (candy crush and friends) when I pay for the ‘pro’ version of their os? Apple or windows?
Can you guarantee my Samsung TV won’t start showing me ads? Hint - they already do.
My next Samsung smart phone from Verizon won’t have trash bloat ware on it and won’t prompt me endlessly for Samsung pay?
That I can get an item fixed easily at any of their retail stores?
Sure - stuff out there works - but figuring out the perfect phone carrier / phone provider for example is annoying. Where is download boost on Verizon? Oh, it’s disabled.
Even apples phone experience is much more consistent across all carriers. Why these other folks bundle 10 Verizon and another batch of junk themselves as user value enhancing boggles my mind
> Android pairs newer bluetooth devices essentially the same way apple pairs airpods now
This isn’t really the part of Apple’s Bluetooth that I appreciate. What I find immensely useful is when you want to switch the headphones from one device to another. Apple’s solution isn’t 100% accurate, but on any given day, it’s common for me to switch my AirPod Pros from my phone to my watch to my laptop to my Apple TV. Before I switched over to all Apple gear, I needed to either spend 5 minutes re-pairing my headphones or (what I really did) have dedicated Bluetooth headphones for my TV.
This is the major benefit for me... the seamless switching, not the pairing.
Nowadays we can switch a device connect to headphone by connecting from the device. It's not good as like Apple's proprietary solution, but the rest of the world is also improving since 2010. I also like NFC but it's less adopted.
Of course everyone's experience is different but Apple's software is pretty far from "Just Works". Especially their macos with the recent update to Big Sur as well as multiple OS updates during Catalina. In the 1 year I have owned a 16 inch macbook pro it's bricked on me twice because of their "Just Works" OS updates and had to take it to the Apple store to get it reset. Not to mention the issue of not being apple to open non-apple apps at one point due to a bug on their side. I have had issues with Windows and Linux, but nothing close to bricking my machine. It seems to me Apple's way of doing business is if it's not an Apple product, we have no interest. They really want to lock you in which is fine cause they are a business but that mindset is extremely dangerous in my opinion.
Yeah, I didn't have the "it just works" experience. The last iPhone I owned was an iPhone 3s, and an update nearly bricked it by slowing everything down on the phone.
I guess "it just works" as long as you keep upgrading to their latest. That's true with deprecations in every product line, but it's not something I'd pay a premium for, especially when it doesn't exist.
My experience with Apple recently has been quite rocky. I recommended a family purchase a MacBook Pro but they ended up getting bit by the keyboard bug, which basically compromises the entire experience really badly.
I tried the Apple smart home ecology on the argument of privacy and I’m getting frustrated at the disparity in quality vs Google. For example, there’s a noticeable probability of multiple devices picking up AND redundantly entering a command, like adding a reminder. Often, often times, another Siri device will take over from the local one in front of me and say, “Sorry, I can’t do that,” even though it could if the right device picked up.
Apple is still a top recommendation but they aren’t a no brainer. The more you use your brain the less you end up on the bad side of the Apple ecology, like with the sticky keyboard issue.
It's not true. Take the Apple TV vs Roku. Roku is so easy to use, so reliable, similar capabilities. They just nail it. Apple TV's remote is so confusing error prone and unintuitive my wife refuses to touch it, and I make mistakes with it much more than Roku. We put up with it only for the exclusives (Apple TV, HBO Max) and Apple only features (Apple device mirroring)
Same, everything else feels… "stiff" and somewhat clunky compared to an ATV4K, and the next best option Roku has serious privacy issues.
I will say though that oddly, the Siri remote got a little worse in its ATV4K revision — most notably, triggering a jump back/forward 30s is much harder on the newer remote. As a result I've paired my old original Dev Kit remote with the ATV4K, which works beautifully.
Well I like my Bose headphones, which use a single AAA battery but they are corded. Wireless anything is a hard no for me due to poor experience with it. I know a lot of people disagree.
So why are you even posting in a topic about a pair of wireless headphones? You're not the market. You have no recent experience with similar products. What was your point?
Maybe if you stay in the ecosystem. I used an end of 2013 Macbook Pro at work that was bought for a research project. Latest hardware at the time. Had all kinds of problems connecting it to my Android phone. Apple "just works" is a myth. I have had as many problems with Apple hardware as with most other hardware. The chances that some random device will "just work" is probably highest for Windows 10. I'm saying that as a Linux user (by choice) and sometimes forced Windows 10 and OSX user.
I also recall some issues when developing Arduino stuff because of the USB connection to the Arduino.
If you want the best platform for connecting random vendors together, I would probably go with Windows/Microsoft.
If you want the best platform for seamless vertical integration nothing is better than Apple. That's why people get so excited about new Apple products. It's a new shiny toy that they know will work excellently within their ecosystem.
Not to discount your experiences, but I use FreeBSD, Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android devices, professionally and personally, and I don't have many problems getting these devices to talk to each other.
>Had all kinds of problems connecting it to my Android phone.
MacOS doesn't have native MTP support. You can use a third party tool on MacOS or an SMB client on Android.
I loved my AirPods. Then the batteries gave up the ghost, and I was left with small, expensive, probably toxic electronic garbage. It ruined the brand for me and I can't imagine buying another pair of AirPods.
- Do an in warranty battery replacement (within 1 year)
- Pay a repair shop or apple for a new battery.
- Apple runs one of the most comprehensive recycling and trade-in programs out there. Every store offers both trade-in value for devices that have it and free recycling for those that don't.
Surely it will be possible to replace them in repair shops? Not for the home gamer obviously, but neither are screen repairs - and I’m really happy with my third party screen repair.
My AirPods also lack battery capacity now, to a degree that it’s annoyingly short. I accidentally came over a second pair, but yeah a new pair of earphones every two to three years sounds expensive to me.
Problem is, they work so spectacularly well otherwise that I don’t know how that I could stand anything else. Part of this is that Apple seem to intentionally make other headsets work less well. For example by not routing calls through the headset by default, such a joke.
But at least it’s small? I mean, one dead laptop is the equivalent of many lifetimes worth of AirPods in terms of waste.
Of all the things that could be disposable this seems like the least concerning. A Tesla contains orders of magnitudes more plastic, electronics, and batteries that will one day be junk and you will go through maybe 3 sets of AirPods before you trade in for a newer model EV?
Cars in general are pretty wasteful, even outside of the manufacturing process. I'd be surprised if Teslas wasted more raw 'energy' when totaled compared to the waste caused by extracting, refining, transporting, and then burning oil and all the human labor that goes into that.
I'm all-in on Apple, and I don't see that changing. And generally, the above has been my experience too. But I recently bought a wireless magic keyboard and trackpad for a standing workstation with a monitor in the corner of our living room. I'd expected to be able to switch between our two laptops seamlessly so that whoever happened to need it could use it, but no - you have to explicitly unpair the keyboard and trackpad from one computer before re-pairing it to the other. That means finding it wherever my wife left it, turning it on or at a minimum logging in and all the rest of the dance, every single time. It drives me insane.
I have a shitty $50 brand x bluetooth speaker that does it better than this. I want to listen to some music, I pair with it. My wife wants to listen to some music later? She just pairs to it and she's done. It doesn't seem that hard to get right.
Could be bad design, or could be good shared-space / privacy-focused design. Letting someone else yoink a connected input device in a hypothetical coffee shop or office with 50 people nearby is a recipe for annoyance or even for privacy-invasion. (Even if it only lets you grab devices you've previously been paired to, that's still an easy thing in an office where a lot of the equipment is more communal.)
My recollection is that the magic keyboard / trackpad insta-pair if you connect them via wire. Would plugging them each in to a lightning cable for a second to switch their allegiance work better for you than manually unpairing? Obviously it's still a hassle.
I have a Logitech k380 which in my opinion does this in an intuitive way.
There’s 3 dedicated buttons for paired Bluetooth devices (fn + 1,2,3) and hitting them just pairs to the device. And you can reassign a button to another device by holding fn+1,2,3.
When you turn it on it pairs to the last device it was paired to.
New Logitech master mouse I bought does it really well. One button under to switch between three computers.
That said... I really hope we can move away from Bluetooth, it’s the least reliable and most errorprone thing on todays computers.
I don't have much experience with Apple stuff, but recently I was tasked with getting a Macbook onto the most recent OS revision.
I actually never managed to do it, and had to call for backup. In order to eventually do it, this other person had to install multiple updates, each of which seemed to only be accessible from some different piece of UI, and a lot of the process seemed to trial and error and dead-ends.
I don't think Apple stuff "just works" nearly as well as people claim it does.
Having performed every OS update from OS X Jaguar (10.2) to macOS Big Sur, I'm surprised by your experience. macOS releases have always been complete and not in place upgrades over previous versions.
Once the OS releases became free and were no longer distributed on physical media there was a time when releases would be downloaded from the App Store. OS updates have moved from a dedicated Software Update app, to the App Store app and now into System Preferences. For I'm not sure how long, OS installations have been effectively click and approve the license with no other input required for the past decade (and with increasingly less information displayed during the install process).
I've recently installed OS X 10.4 Tiger (from 2005) and Windows 8 Pro, both from original media to blank drives, the OS X installation was much less frustrating (most notably because I didn't have to dig up a license key).
New versions of OS X and macOS have been released as full versions, but in OS X (ie 10.##) the App Store and System Preferences methods are absolutely in-place upgrades. Big Sur is actually a full system update via any method.
"For I'm not sure how long, OS installations have been effectively click and..." agree to legal contract titled 'Terms and Conditions' that, if anyone read them, would clarify a TON of technical misconceptions and speculations (but ironically does not provide much legal clarity).
I've recently installed OS X 10.10 - macOS 11.0 dozens of times each with no eyes or hands, and at least one of the people involved was frustrated every single time. People shouldn't have to have experience installing every release of the last fifteen years to install the latest without struggling.
Because Microsoft has had to pay so much attention to it - and maybe Apple has not - the Windows update process is at the very least far more informative about what’s going on - status of installation before and after any reboot. Updating OS on wife’s MacBook seems like comparatively opaque process. Which is fine if things “always work”, but they don’t.
Yeah I'm a MacOS fanboy, but it really irked me when they got rid of the (hard to find but extremely useful) log output during OS updates a few major versions back. It saved me a lot of time once when it showed that it was backing up files that I didn't care about. Now there is no option to view the log during installation.
I've been fortunate to never run into any failed updates (and I've done many) but as they remove features like this and 32 bit support, I'm looking at other options for my next machine.
Apple just works until it doesn’t. I have used Apple products for many years but a a perfectly fine 2013 15” MBP dying on me because of bad RAM has made me reconsider. That’s something that should be a cheap and quick replacement
It was in excellent condition other than that, so I don’t think age matters. Do you think it’s reasonable to buy a whole new car because the tires are worn out?
I think people do under-value the ecosystem that Apple has built with their devices. The kind of audio sharing you describe is really nice and is legitimately something Apple built (as far as I know). I think Apple often prices their devices on the high end, but that's fine.
That said, I think your description of other bluetooth devices is overly pessimistic. I've had no problems finding bluetooth devices that do basic bluetooth things (connecting, xmitting audio, swapping devices) well. For that reason I basically never recommend Apple products as if they are the only ones to "get it right."
Apple is a premium brand. Folks should consider them if they want a premium product, but it's silly to act as if their competition doesn't offer the same basic functionality for much better prices.
Who do you trust (brand wise) to get it right. Does someone get it right? I'm sure, but my guess is if you did brand survey's, people would KNOW that apple gets it pretty right, and most players don't.
That's partly because apple ignore HN. I need a modulare phone that I can ugprade the ram on. Apple is ignoring you, they seal their phones up with epoxy so they are pretty darn waterproof. But for normal users, this is a positive.
They call out fake third party batteries. OH NO says HN. For normal users, a plus again.
They offer BY FAR the longest and most reliable operating system support. First gen ipad pro's STILL have value! My old android tablet has been unsupported since the DAY I bought it.
Or built in junkware and adware. If I buy a samsung TV can I be pretty sure it won't datamine my viewing habits? Even top competitors turn out to be basically scammers. Will you guarantee me that samsung won't jam ads onto my TV after I buy it?
"Towards the end of 2019, owners have started to voice their dissatisfaction with larger, increasingly obtrusive, and unrelated ads showing up on their Samsung TVs. These include ads for canned beans or discount supermarkets" - this is on $2,500+ frame art TV's etc.
It turns out, despite your claims, these other very large companies selling very expensive items are scamming folks to often, it only takes getting burned ONCE by this to just reduce your circle of trust dramatically.
Is there a perfect bluetooth device out there? Sure. If I go through the amazon listings will I find that device? I doubt it. If I buy from apple will I get it? I think so.
The price of these headphones is ridiculous, I don't defend that. If they are able to sell them at this price I'll be a bit surprised. But overall, they have built user trust up pretty high.
> They call out fake third party batteries. OH NO says HN. For normal users, a plus again.
They make it impossible to replace any component even if the user knows exactly what they're doing. Not, "warning: non-certified component added", but "haha, you thought you could use 3rd party parts? enjoy your brick"
> They offer BY FAR the longest and most reliable operating system support. First gen ipad pro's STILL have value! My old android tablet has been unsupported since the DAY I bought it.
Right, which is why we keep hearing from people who move their macbooks to Linux after Apple drops support. And why Apple technically supports phones forever while releasing OS updates that tank performance.
> Or built in junkware and adware. If I buy a samsung TV can I be pretty sure it won't datamine my viewing habits? Even top competitors turn out to be basically scammers. Will you guarantee me that samsung won't jam ads onto my TV after I buy it?
Right to repair is a real issue that needs to be dealt with but if we consider some other points, when you do an unofficial screen or battery replacement, where does that screen actually come from? I'm not aware of any companies manufacturing brand new iphone displays. So my only thought is they must be mostly from stolen phones and for batteries, also stolen and second hand batteries.
When I have done my own battery replacements on android phones I have found that half the time the battery I got off ebay is already stuffed probably because it was in someones phone for 2 years already.
We need to consider how much use letting users replace their own screens is compared to how much use having users not get their phone stolen is. Perhaps there could be a system where the part ids are tied to an apple id and the original id has to authorize a transfer but then all the displays on ebay would still not work because they are stolen.
Agree with basically all of this. People put on their rose tinted glasses when thinking about products they own and ignore the issues.
I have completely had it with Samsung consumer level devices. Every single one I have had has come with bloatware, discontinued support after a short time and seems to slow down real bad after a few years.
The last samsung product I own is a TV which was perfectly fine on day one but now its so slow I find it hard to change channel or volume and turning it on shows a shitload of HUD bloatware about random streaming services.
And when you point out any of these issues people go "Oh its not a problem you just open the registery editor" or "you pop the back of your tv open and unplug the antenna and then flash this file on to the spi chip"
And don't care if all their other products have to be from Apple. You don't buy "one" Apple product which "just works". You have to buy everything from the ecosystem.
Lately I was checking for some good wireless earplugs. The airpods seem to be the best. But only if you're using an iPhone.
>You don't buy "one" Apple product which "just works".
>You have to buy everything from the ecosystem.
Agreed with the first, heavily disagreed with the second. People often end up buying into the Apple ecosystem after just one product, but not because they have to, but because they feel compelled to.
That was me with original airpods. They worked superbly with android, no complaints whatsoever. So I was like "huh, let me check out their other newer product offerings, it's been quite a while". Eventually, i ended up buying heavily into the ecosystem, and couldn't be happier (sidenote: shared clipboard between your phone and laptop/desktop is amazing).
In fact, I think the timing and everything about original airpods was a stroke of genius. I single-handedly know quite a few people who couldn't care less about Apple ecosystem at all and owned zero Apple devices, but they eventually gave in to try airpods, bought them, and a few years down the road ended up buying an iPhone or a Mac. Some of them were even very staunch pro-android people.
I didn't have an iPhone when I first bought AirPods. They are the best for working out at the gym, so I went for them, after trying some alternatives.
The phone I used them with first was the Pixel 2. They worked perfectly fine. The only heartburn I had was once I had paired them with my Macbook, the bluetooth connection would prefer the Macbook over the phone, which was sometimes annoying.
Others might be upset at the lack of support for the Google Assistant, but for actually using the headphones, there was nothing better, even on Android.
A bit off topic, but I’ve always considered Apple the Disney of tech. What they put out is consistently good, and sometimes even great. While other studios might put out a better movie from time to time than Disney, their batting average is consistently higher than everyone else.
The same with Apple. With few exceptions, I can walk into an Apple store and buy an arbitrary product and be assured that it’s, at the minimum, good. Contrast with someone like Samsung who has great products but also really bad products. I can’t pull a random Samsung out of a hat and be convinced that I’ll like it.
I did not understand the Apple fans until I started using Apple for work stuff. One Apple product alone isn’t anything to write home about, but once you start getting more products, the eco system is above and beyond. Did you highlight a text field on the Apple TV? Your phone vibrates with a full screen keyboard at the ready. Little things like that make it a really nice experience that I haven’t seen other vendors match.
I just got an apple TV and I laughed when I saw that.
Even better, your phone can act as the remote, your airpods can paid (I've heard) etc.
Other than iphone I'm very late to apple's world, but as I get older, I just love that stuff works and I don't feel like I'm getting scammed every second.
Watch shows or movies as a couple while putting baby to sleep or feeding. Also nice when you’re in kitchen and the noise of exhaust hood, microwave, faucet, pressure cooker, and whatnot are going on.
> Do your "solved problem" bluetooth headphones allow EASY audio sharing when the kid is sleeping and you want to watch something with your wife? These are two bluetooth devices on same audio stream.
Yes. Samsung has supported this for years and it has recently upstreamed to all android devices. You can literally do this with any phone and any bluetooth devices, you don't need to fork up $500 for the priviledge.
> Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device (without having to unpaid with another device).
Yes. The Bose QC35 II for example can store multiple bluetooth connections on the device and switch between them. They cost half as much as the Apple cans and are all but guaranteed to sound better than the plastic cones Apple uses.
> You should go back and listen to the criticism of the airpods when they came out - overpriced, stupid, whatever. Then check out sales numbers.
I won't argue that. Apple certainly moves product - there's a significant portion of the population that would buy anything they put out.
> Bose QC35 II for example can store multiple bluetooth connections on the device and switch between them
I have these and it’s annoying to switch them because they’re stored and switched via the app - if you’re switching between more than 2 devices.
The Bose anc also don’t have particularly good audio either so I’m interested to see what the Apple offering sounds like.
In general, there’s a bunch of little annoyances with the current anc devices available (audio quality, uncomfortable, ugly, etc) that I’d like to see Apple fix.
> I have these and it’s annoying to switch them because they’re stored and switched via the app - if you’re switching between more than 2 devices.
Not true, you can cycle between previously connected devices by long holding the power switch in the on position. You can also add new connections and wipe all connections via that switch. I have them and never need to use the app. Read the manual.
Again, this is another thing where Apple improve for an “already solved problem”.
You don’t need to press any buttons. Just interact with your devices as normal and your audio connection switches automatically as if sound were playing through the device’s respective speakers.
In fact there may be a downside because sometimes I actually need to take my AirPods out to verify that audio is still playing through them since the audio just transferred so fast.
The Bose phones also do fast and automatic switching between the last two connected devices. The button shuffle is only needed to switch to other previously connected devices (and that also takes only another few seconds).
Also one of my devices is a Windows PC. I don’t know if AirPods work equally well with non-Apple sources.
I don’t call that an improvement. Having my audio switch from the meeting I’m currently in to the 400th spam call of the day isn’t an improvement over getting to ignore the call entirely.
I've used Bose Bluetooth ANC headphones, and I can't say I've been impressed (though admittedly I don't have much to compare to).
The battery life is pretty much one day's use. The bluetooth connectivity is flaky, and sometimes I hear weird sound artifacts over Bluetooth too. The robot voice announcement whenever a device goes in or out of range, even if I'm currently listening to something from a different device, is super annoying, and there's no way AFAIK to turn it off.
Oh, and another thing: frequently attempts to play audio from one device will be silent because the headphones think another connected device is playing audio … even though it's not.
As other commenters said, the Bose headphones leave a ton of room for improvement. Trying to get them on the correct bluetooth device is something I have to fiddle with every single day. I will gladly pay an extra $200 for something that works more reliably.
But I worry that the "just works" will only kick in for a complete apple ecosystem. I have a bunch of issues with my airpods + Android, that iphone users don't seem to have, for example.
"Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device (without having to unpaid with another device). That is game changing."
Man, I wish my headphones did this. I constantly have to fiddle with my bluetooth settings, have audio come out of my mac or iPhone, sometimes in inappropriate places, even after I've tried to tell the OS to play from headphones. The worst is when switching between my Mac and iPhone, usually I have to unpair one, put my headphones into pairing mode, or at the very least turn bluetooth off on one device.
My headphones are...Apple AirPods. They did this when they first launched, so I even got the pros. Now none of my pairs ever work.
I really wish Apple would figure out how to make stuff just work. I think there's opportunity for someone to figure it out! No clue what happened to this company, but the AirPods are undoubtedly the most frustrating Apple product I've ever owned
Had 3 pairs of airpods over the years (2 original ones, 1 pro), all used heavily, haven't experienced this kind of an issue even once. And neither do I know anyone else who did. I don't know your situation, but I have a feeling you might have gotten a faulty unit, in which case a warranty request might be helpful.
I switch my current ones between a macbook and my phone multiple times a day, all it takes is pressing a single button in my taskbar on macbook or control panel of my phone.
I heard they even have an autoswitch feature now, where you can use your airpods with macbook, but when a call comes in or you play a video on your iphone, it switches automatically to that device, and then back. Haven't had a chance to test that feature myself tho, so YMMV.
> Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device
My Airpods don't. They are regularly confused whether they should connect to the iPad or the iPhone. Yes, both are nearby. But I'm only tapping and interacting on one of them at any given moment. Not always. Sometimes.
More frustrating: The iPad just loves to use its internal loudspeakers. I'm sitting on the couch watching a YouTube video via Airpods. I'm clicking on another video, sound is coming from the loudspeaker. Not always. Sometimes.
Third annoyance: I'm getting both Airpods out the capsule. Both are nearly fully charged. Only one is playing. I need to put the mute one back into the capsule, close it, open it and get the Airpod out again. Not always. Often.
Pre-COVID I used a pair of Plantronics noise cancelling headphones that covered all of your requirements pretty well. Unfortunately the microphone was shit, so I decided to get Airpod Pros for all the remote meetings. Even with the short battery life they have quickly become my default headphones.
I'm not typically a fanboy of anything, but Apple does make some quality electronics.
>Given you cannot replace battery, this is not high quality according to my standards.
Cool, just don't be surprised when the sales numbers and reviews end up not reflecting that sentiment. Mostly because I doubt that vast majority of people use that metric as a baseline measure of high quality.
Especially because airpod competitors with replaceable batteries will be singificantly heavier, significantly less waterproof and may be more costly for similar functionality.
Non replaceable batteries, non upgradeable memory etc is all a tradeoff. Checkout the mac mini with M1 and soldered on memory, but memory performance seems amazing.
I draw the line with replacable battery because it renders the device inherently useless for its purpose (mobile use case).
All Apple in ear Airpods get destroyed if anyone replaces the battery. Even Apple cannot, and they claim to care about the environment.
Beats got a bad name, so I just skip that. There's a reason they did not attach that brand name to their Airpods products.
We just had BF and I saw great deals for Airpods. All of them.
XM3, which has superb ANC, just had a successor (XM4) which has multiple device support. XM4 goes for 350. XM3 was 200 on BF.
Now compare that with Airpods Max price tag and features.
I bought XM4 as a successor to my Logitech G933. Logitech G933 has no ANC, not so good sound quality, it has a proprietary dongle (the dealbreaker for my use case due to USB-A and dongle requirement), it has microUSB, it has 3.5 mm, battery lasts 8 hours. Battery replacement can be bought directly from Logitech, easy to replace yourself, and costs 10 EUR. Compare to XM3/4 3.5 mm, Bluetooth, superb ANC, USB-C (in contrast to microUSB or lightning), and the battery is good... but I doubt it still is in 3 years.
>just had a successor (XM4) which has multiple device support.
As an owner of those same Sony headphones (XM3), their multi-device support is a joke compared to airpods. Not even kidding, night and day. Manual pairing, limit on devices, having to do everything through Sony's buggy app, etc. I still like them, because when I am working at my desk in an office, I would prefer over-the-ears. If Apple manages to match and/or beat Sony's sound+ANC quality, but bring all the connectivity and great multi-device pairing features of current Airpods to Airpods Max, I am sold.
Yeah, well, that's why I wrote XM4. XM4 is mostly like XM3. One of the very few improvements is the multiple device support (but the price difference is IMO unlikely to be worth it).
I use the WF-1000XM3 and WH-1000XM4 and the pairing of the WF-1000XM3 works fine for me, but the ANC of the over the ears XM4 (as well as your WH-1000XM3) is superior. At times, I don't even have listen to anything and it still works. Its terrific at work. Even works with getting less agitated by the noise of my children.
Genuine question, is XM4 ANC that much different from XM3? I always assumed, for some reason, that it was an incremental upgrade in sound+ANC, but more of a major upgrade in hardware dept. Never tried XM4 myself though, so that is purely from hearing people talking about it, not actually testing the device myself.
If you confirm that ANC is actually significantly better than on XM3 (which I already liked a lot anyway), then now I know what I will be upgrading to, in case Airpods Max end up not delivering on their promise :)
Reviews I read suggest only a marginal difference in ANC area. My entire argument has been in the previous posts that the XM4 isn't worth the price over the already excellent XM3. That multi-device feature of XM4? Never had to use it. I might've as well purchased a XM3. Ideally at BF (200 EUR is a steal).
Yeah, no worries, I wasn't even continuing with the argument in my previous reply, I was just curious about XM3 vs. XM4.
And on that note, for other people who are interested, XM4 had recently a really good deal on Amazon (US) for something like $250. At that price point, it is def a really good bang for the buck.
At least until Airpods Max come out, XM4 are unilaterally imo overall the best pair of wireless headphones with ANC. Not trying to imply that Airpods Max will take over that spot as soon as they get released, they might completely flop and be trash, who knows. But either way, XM4 is currently imo the best, and even if Airpods Max somehow manages to become a magical pair of headphones, XM4 is still a great pair, and is definitely still gonna be a better bang for the buck than Airpods Max (while i pre-ordered those, I don't have any illusions about me not paying the "apple tax" on those). So for anyone hesitating or not into the idea of paying $500+ for wireless headphones with ANC, i heavily recommend Sony WH-1000XM4.
> Do your "solved problem" bluetooth headphones allow EASY audio sharing when the kid is sleeping and you want to watch something with your wife? These are two bluetooth devices on same audio stream.
I don’t know, I have never once needed this capability.
> Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device (without having to unpaid with another device). That is game changing.
Yes, for the 5 years I’ve had Bluetooth headphones this has never been an issue.
> Yes, for the 5 years I’ve had Bluetooth headphones this has never been an issue.
No opinion on apple being better or not (mixed bag, in my limited experience) but this just isn't true in general I think. I've used at least a half dozen bluetooth headphones on at least a dozen different laptops/desktops/phones over the last decade... they have all had some issues with connections at various times.
Very true indeed. That's why I stopped bothering with Linux. I love Linux and I've used it on many laptops. But not a single one offered me trouble free computing. I can't blame Linux for that. It's amazing what the open source community has achieved. I hate Windows and I can't be productive on it. People who have used Apple's ecosystem know what the phrase "it just works" means. I probably wouldn't spend $899 (Australian dollars) on those headphones. But my wife recently bought a pair of Airpod pros and I've never had an experience like that with any other earphones! They just work. It feels like Apple just knows what we want! I still use a three year old iPhone 8 and it just works with latest OS updates. It hasn't slowed down a bit. Why do I need to buy a POS Android phone with 12 gb of ram when I'm happy. Apple's products actually have that zen feeling. It's hard to describe. And the longevity of their products make them really good value for money.
It looks to the PC like USB audio, but it talks to the headphones over Bluetooth.
If I want to transition from the Windows 10 laptop to the Linux laptop, or desk-side PC, I just move the dongle.
Signal is solid. Has an LED on it so you can see whether it's talking to a headset (blue), playing audio with mic umuted (green), or playing audio with mic muted (red). (Amazing feature for Zoom calls!)
The retail price of it seems a bit high at $56, but you can find them used with Jabra Evolve 65 headsets on eBay for $45-$60 as a bundle. (The headset sound is pretty good, actually. Fragile if you don't pack it flat in a backpack, alas.)
Sorry I sound like a commercial, but it really makes life easier. Seems like the frustration saved was worth the $$$.
Different people have different experiences and their opinions are based on those experiences. In my experiences Apple products don’t always “just work”, but since they’re designed with the overconfident belief that they do “just work”, the failure modes can be extremely cryptic and unrecoverable.
> Does your solved problem bluetooth headphones RELIABLY connect to your current device (without having to unpaid with another device). That is game changing.
Is that really game changing? I recently got myself a pair of Huawei FreeLace Pro which do exactly that, even have a button shortcut to change between the two devices, works with my iPhone and iPad. They have ANC, an Awareness mode, a battery charge that last 28 hours, the audio sounds amazing enough to this non-audiophile, all of that for 89€.
My "solved problem" Sony WH-1000XM3s can connect to my TV and have their volume controlled. My Apple AirPods Pro can't...
Neither pair will switch between my iPhone and MacBook without triggering a manual pair from the Bluetooth menu. To get that working for the AirPods I have to update to Big Sur but apparently that has a good chance of bricking my MacBook so I can't.
My Bose QC 35 IIs reliably connect to two devices at the same time. I spark 'em up and hear the voice say "Connected to <phone 1>... and <phone 2>". When I play anything with either phone, I hear it through the headphones. It just works.
(Yes, I save, and use, my old smartphones. I'm an Android developer so they're handy to keep around.)
If my kids are asleep we turn the TV volume down. Why would you wear headphones with your spouse, you can't have any conversation so it defeats the purpose of watching together
If you want to talk put a headphone in the outer ear, and you can still talk softly to each other. Headphones are super immersive sounding. And if you have the pros, you set them to transparency mode. You can still talk, but kids won't hear the movie.
You should consider turning down your headphone volume if the idea of talking to someone with them on seems far-fetched.
I used to be like that and my hearing shows it, and I've learned that just because I'm listening to something, it doesn't need to immerse my entire aural apparatus.
What is your point? MacDonalds make the best hamburgers because they sell so many of them? Windows is the best OS because billions of people use it?
>Do your "solved problem" bluetooth headphones allow EASY audio sharing when the kid is sleeping and you want to watch something with your wife? These are two bluetooth devices on same audio stream.
So in your mind, 'solving' a problem is buying not one, but TWO $500 headphones instead of $10 earbuds and a $5 Y connector? Oh wait, you also believe that the headphone jack is stupid. Yeah, sure, sell people a $1000 solution for a problem you created. Great job!
>It's amazing to me how many folks seem to have no clue about what folks value in the apple ecosystem.
The headphone jack that all of the other mobile manufacturers are dropping too? Putting its removal at Apple's feet alone is a bit disingenious when it was the obvious direction for smartphones. Eventually one of the manufacturers was going to be "brave" and the rest would follow.
Also, a long trailing cable from your TV / accessories across your living room to a y-connector to two more long trailing cables to two headsets is incredibly inelegant and for some houses, an impractical solution. Having wireless headphones that support a Bluetooth standard (because no two implementations are the same) that allows multiple speakers for a single source, is very nice.
If you're not familiar with Apple ecosystem, it might seem peculiar. But Apple's integration means that "just works" entails, for instance, automatic switching between devices. So I'm listening to music on my iPad, I pause it, pick up my phone and start a YouTube video. The AirPods automatically switch from the iPad to the iPhone without me doing anything. Nothing else "just works" like that, and it's one reason people like to stay within the Apple ecosystem.
I can see where you're coming from, but I expect versatility if I'm paying $500 for headphones. I want to be able to either plugin my headphones into my controller or connect to my gaming console when I'm playing. I want to connect to my TV's bluetooth when I'm watching TV. Every company does ecosystem lock to some basic level but Apple takes it to a whole new level and clearly people seem to be ok with it (and even praise them for it?)
> I want to connect to my TV's bluetooth when I'm watching TV.
I'm confused here. There's no Appke secret sauce chip in the TV so connecting my headphones (Airpods Pro) to it is the same hassle it is connecting any bluetooth device, but they work together just fine. The Apple secret sauce for switching between devices is like an escalator breaking and becoming stairs: when you use the to connect to any other bluetooth device they work as well as any dumber bluetooth headphone/speaker.
>Every company does ecosystem lock to some basic level but Apple takes it to a whole new level and clearly people seem to be ok with it (and even praise them for it?)
Wait what? How does it lock you into anything? Sure, you might not get some Apple-ecosystem-specific perks if you are using their Airpods with non-apple devices (like the automatic switching described in the parent comment), but you still get the same benefits you would expect from other non-airpods wireless headphones. You can use airpods with android phones or your tv or whatever other device supporting bluetooth headsets, just like you would with non-airpods wireless headphones. You can also plug Airpods Max into anything using a 3.5mm jack cable, just like you could with literally any other wired headphones (and many wireless over the ear ones).
I cannot think of a single feature [that is also present on non-apple wireless headphones] that Apple locks you out of if you are using airpods with a non-apple device (e.g., the automatic switching between devices based on the content played doesn't count here, because I cannot think of a single non-apple wireless headset that supports it; you get the idea).
Any product which contains an non-removable battery eventually "just dies" whether it costs $550 and is made by Apple or not.
Decades-old Bose QC 15 headphones still work because the battery is replaceable. Pop in some new ear cushions every few years from Amazon and they are like new.
Don't expect these $550 headphones to be working 10 years after purchase.
I absolutely love my AirPods Pro but it's primarily for ease of wear _(comfy)_, the lack of inner ear pressure and transparency mode.
The connectivity has been one of the worst experiences i've had lol. Both in and out of Apple ecosystem.
I think it's primarily my laptop to be honest (2018 Macbook Pro), because they do better when connected to my phone; but the ~4 other bluetooth devices including one in-ear bluetooth pair i have never have connectivity issues. Yet i can't count the number of times these AirPods have disconnected, or connected one ear but not the other, etc.
I still love my AirPods, but connectivity has been the worst out of all my bluetooth devices. It's been frustrating.
>The connectivity has been one of the worst experiences i've had lol. Both in and out of Apple ecosystem. (...) I think it's primarily my laptop to be honest (2018 Macbook Pro)
Not sure why, I have AirPods and then AirPods Pro with a late-2017 Macbook Pro and never had a problem. Ditto with 2 iPhone models...
For what it's worth, connectivity for me with the Pros has gotten much better with Big Sur. I don't think the easy switching even worked prior to this release (despite being a touted feature when announced). It's still not perfect though.
Not the person you responded to, but I have Jabra Elites as well and I've been able to switch between my Windows computer and iPhone seamlessly. In fact, the reason I bought the Jabras was because this was the exact feature I was looking for and saw many recommendations for the Elite.
Right. Lots of stuff works with non-Mac hardware. Lots of stuff doesn't work with Mac hardware. My laptop is from my job (MBP), and I have an iPhone to keep in sync with my wife. Hence my specific question.
Yeah, I have Jabra Elite 75t and it can be connected to multiple devices at same time. For me this means PC + iPhone. Works fine for taking meetings, calls, listening to music, etc.
Bose QC 35 II work exactly as you described. Yes, Previous Beats Studio bought from Apple failed to deliver such experience, hence why Apple spent some dough on custom connectivity chips, but proper headphones OEMs figure it out as well with just latest Bluetooth generation
I honestly think there are good batches and bad ones of the QC35s. I have gen 1 and they are rock solid with the connections, never fail. Have coworkers who would swear by theirs too, while others have similar complaints as you do.
FWIW, I love my Airpods Pro and it's insane that neither Sennheiser nor Bose could beat Apple to the punch with something that works as well as those do. That being said, my Airpods Pro aren't without issues: they seem to hate my iMac. Not even the Big Sur update could change my Airpods' aversion towards reliably connecting to it.
Concur—I have the QC35, I’ve given up with all the endless niggles of multiple device support and limited them to just the phone which is my use case 95% of the time.
Yeah, my connectivity story with these got so bad at one point I ended up with two pairs, each with a little sticker telling which is for my laptop and which is for my phone. Ironically, connectivity improved with FW updates...
I use the app and "flawlessly" is a joke. The app doesn't even connect to the headphones reliably, even if they're paired and I'm listening to audio through them. Maybe 10% of the time I have to force-close the app and power cycle the headphones for the app to connect.
I have the QC 35 II and now have them wired a USB mic to make multiple devices actually work seamlessly because it was so flakey with a few devices. AirPod Pros OTOH have been perfect between iPhone, iPad, work and personal MacBook and Apple TVs. Connected to one device and all the others are automatically paired and switch with no effort.
I have a few different sets of headphones ranging from cheap workout bluetooth ones to the over ear I use for work. None of them have the issues you imply.
They all happily switch from phone to laptop to other device, going in and out of range, etc
I had the AirPods and AT MX50 but wanted NC for the office, so I bought the Sony WH1000MX3 (the highest rated, $400, wireless nc headphones with the best NC) before I got the AirPods Pro. Those were praised on reviews as beating the Bose NC (which was considered king until then).
They required me to manually disconnect from one device in order to connect to another (e.g. from laptop to phone or tablet). As far as first world problems go, it was a huge pain in the arse. And nobody cared to mention it in their reviews (found out later in forums it was just not supported).
I ended up preferring the AirPods Pro (and the slightly worse nc, but much lighter and automatically connecting) over them, and now I hardly ever use them. So those were $400 down the drain.
If those AirPods Max work like I want (which, judging from the AirPods Pro, they will), that would be a solid $500 spent without the remorse and dissapointment, which is much better than my Sony purchase...
I have the XM4s, and they support multi device connections - which is how I use them. They can be paired with up to 8 devices, can be connected to 2 devices at a time, and support one active audio stream.
I also have a similar experience, I hate the unpair-pair dance and just use my AirPods even though Sony has a better sound quality and a bit better ANC.
The new version (WH1000MX4, terrible naming scheme) supposedly have multi device support but I haven't experienced it yet so not sure if it's as smooth as the AirPods.
I have the XM4s, and the multi device support does work. My only real complaint with that is it has to be initially configured in the companion app, and enabling multi device support disables certain higher quality codecs. Once configured, the app isn't necessary for multi device switching.
I bought and sold my MX3s having had this exact experience, and have been waiting for Apple to release over ears so that I could have the same seamless experience I have with my AirPods Pro.
The number of times I’ve had to pull my laptop out of the overhead compartment on a flight to turn off Bluetooth so I could pair them with my iPad meant I eventually gave up using them. As you say, definitely a first world problem, but I guess that just means I’m in the target demographic.
My jabras work seamlessly between my phone and laptop (and that's basically all that I need). It's weird to not have multiple device connectivity with wireless headphones these days.
The question for me is, why do the Apple iphone, computers, appleTV etc. not support the "just works" experience on non-Apple headphones? Bluetooth is supposed to be a standard, no?
While I like the ergonomics, I'm wondering how much of the lack of it in non-apple headphones products is the result of Apple not fully supporting them and thus, monopolistic practices.
Replacing the cable with (modified?) bluetooth technology allows distinguishing "our hardware" from "their hardware" and adjusting software to only support certain features.
So, why would not apple devices only support these features on Apple headphones?
Bluetooth is a garbage standard riddled with decades of legacy support. Apple achieves the "just works" functionality with a proprietary chip and a proprietary protocol. Bluetooth still can't support simultaneous high-quality voice and audio.
Actually multi-point Bluetooth devices work just like that. They remain connected to 2 or more devices on the A2DP profile and switch to the source that's currently playing.
I get exactly this sort of functionality with my two (non-Apple) bluetooth headphones - the Jabra Elite 85T & the Sony XM4s. The Sony's can be paired with up to 8 devices, support two simultaneous device connections, and one active audio stream at a time. The experience is the same with the Jabras. I listen to podcasts on my iPhone, pause, and can seamlessly switch to Netflix on the iPad. It "just works".
Different use cases, mostly. The XM4s are over ear and have much better sound, but they're overkill for work (my workplace is fairly quiet, at least these days). The Jabras are a better fit for that. The XM4s were a bit of an impulse buy when I needed good ANC for my frequent Zoom calls while sharing an apartment with noisy family.
The Jabras are earbuds. The XM4 is a pair of over ear headphones.
I'm not the parent but I typically use a cheap set of earbuds for exercise/active commuting and my over ear headphones while in the office or at home due to better comfort/noise cancellation/audio quality.
I get this use case, but I'm always suspicious how useful the workflow such "integration" supports may be. I have a feeling a lot of folks who flit between multiple devices are staying occupied to avoid doing difficult or onerous work.
In other words, the real "productivity" hack is to not support a dilute workflow. One will save a _lot_ more time that way compared to some device interoperability.
I have a feeling a lot of folks who flit between multiple devices are staying occupied to avoid doing difficult or onerous work.
That's an interesting connection you've drawn between switching audio sources and malingering work.
On the flip side, a mere anecdote of where this kind of flipping was actually beneficial, if you will?
It came in the form of being on a zoom call on the Macbook (which I have in a dock and connected to a pair of displays) with a single airpod in, hearing the kid having a kid moment, and being able to just reach over, open up my ipad, join the call and immediately have audio switched so I could walk down stairs to help buckaroo with a chore, walk back upstairs, put the ipad away and switch back to the Macbook was kind of...well awesome.
No one on the call had a clue.
(also comes in handy when I want to switch from work macbook to personal macbook after hours, or vice versa, if I'm on personal macbook after hours and get paged and need to jump on a slack call. Definitely not avoiding onerous or difficult work there either)
What a weird reflex. Inventing arbitrary character flaws because someone wants to do something as harmless as be able to switch audio sources seamlessly, and then being so uncreative that the only reason you can come up with is to procrastinate work.
Someone people truly can't handle gadget chit-chat.
> This has been a solved problem for like a decade.
Tell that to Bose. Their newest 700 model headphones are a UX/Connectivity nightmare.
If not for the fact that the Sony noise cancelling headphones exist in the same price bracket, I could easily see myself going with a $500 pair of headphones that "just work".
Actually, as a both an Apple user and high-fidelity music lover, I'd happily pay $549, if and only if they sound comparable to the peers at this price point.
If their fidelity is below its peers, all of the "just works" stuff goes to trash for me. I have a pair of entry level Philips BT headphones (designed by Gibson) and they sound well above its price point. It's no Sennheiser, Grado, RHA or similar but, they're not a pair of cheap cans either.
So, for $549, they should rather sound detailed and balanced. Otherwise, It's meaningless for me.
In my view, having things "just work" is elusive and unpredictable. I've seen this in the workplace. You can have two workers with similar jobs, similar or even the same hardware and software tools. One person will constantly be cursing at their machine, running into indescribable hang-ups, and so forth. The other will just be cruising right along.
You're tempted to suspect that the problems experienced by your one colleague are self inflicted, but you'd never suggest it out loud. The differences might be real, but due to a hidden cause. Or, some workers might be more "accident prone" when it comes to dealing with tech. I've even seen this with people who should be the most tech savvy: Good programmers.
Regardless of the cause, imagine that someone discovers a market appeal to the effect of: "The problems are not your fault, we have stuff that just works." It's a safe bet that the message will resonate with X percent of people. That's a perfect market. And if Apple has discovered that market, we certainly can't dispute that they're successful -- possibly the most successful company on the planet.
On the other hand, if you belong to the other group, and somebody can make a less expensive product that you're satisfied with, and it "just works" for you, then you're happy too. They can be successful too, even if on a modest scale. I'd take 10% of Apple's market. ;-)
At one workplace, long ago, two of us were using Windows, and my colleague couldn't make it work at all, plus he sent me articles about Windows horror stories from magazines. I never had a problem. My friend ended up with Apple, and I kept using Windows. We were both happy.
I've bought at least 5 bluetooth headphones, ranging from cheap workout ones to Bose QuietComfort. None of them work well with multiple devices. Inevitably I have to disconnect my laptop because it's preventing my phone from playing audio. AirPods are the only one that works. I can have 3, 4 devices connected to my AirPods and it'll just work.
> This has been a solved problem for like a decade.
Yeah right. I spend hundreds of dollars in headphones when I want to upgrade and it's always the same crappy bluetooth experience. Not saying this will be better but that problem hasn't been solved yet.
Yeah and AirPods Pro are far from perfect. I can pair them with my TV but they don't support volume control over Bluetooth so I can't change their volume, they don't have an interface for it on the device.
Meanwhile my Sony WH1000-XM3s work perfectly with my TV, including volume control, and work perfectly with everything else including my Apple devices.
I don't have "connectivity issues" and battery life is 10hrs more than AirPods Max. They even included a stereo cable in the box to connect to the standard 3.5mm jack built-in to the headset, and they also came with a proper case to protect them when they're in my rucksack. All for £330 less than AirPods Max.
It's amazing that people think AirPods Max will be the first ever good set of on-ear wireless headphones.
I bought AIAIAI headphones decades ago, they work with all tech I use: I just plug them in, and they just work. No need to pair them with bluetooth, no nothing.
Since they are modular, they also have been a breeze to upgrade and repair. Need different cables? Better microphone? Its 20$ to upgrade that part of the headphone. Want to add bluetooth support? Can do that as well.
People buying and gifting pair of > 200$ headphones every year as if speakers are some kind of tech that gets outdated.
If you really care about audio quality and the environment, just buy a good pair of upgradeable headphones. They'll last you your whole life.
I don't think that's true for wireless. I have a pair of bose qc 35s, but can't actually use them to watch general video content on my computer because of the 1/3rd second latency. If I can watch something on a player that lets me add video delay(like VLC), they work great, but not for youtube or web videos.
Definitely not a solved problem. My bose qc35 II headphones constantly drop connection or connects to my ipad instead of my laptop. The sound quality is trash but I'm ok with that as I got them for active noise cancellation. ANC works great I must admit.
For what it is worth, I have the Sennheiser Momentum Bluetooth headset.
I am an audio weirdo who used a lot of professional headphones over the years, and I like the Sennheiser sound. Too often have I been disappointed by "premium brands" that are not really in the business of designing headphone drivers and so their sound is subpar.
These Sennheiser headphones switch sources automatically, they are made from metal and leather, they sound great, they have all the battery I need and, most importantly for me, they have actual buttons. After using other headphones without buttons, I can't tell you how much better I like that "feature".
I think Apple can make headway with noise cancellation, battery and ergonomics. That will be enough for most people.
However, for myself, I am most curious if they will actually sound good, especially given that their marketing quip on that topic is - well let's call it "more than a few empty phrases".
Why would you say something like that when these Apple headphones are not at all aimed at people that want headphones that do the bare minimum job and nothing else? Comparing your $100 Sennheisers to these misses the point completely.
Top comment was talking about how it's nice to have headphones that "just work" as headphones are expected to. The response that $100 Sennheisers do the same thing is perfectly reasonable. Lest you miss the point completely: This is speaking to the audience who only want the "just works" headphones and not the $400 worth of differentiating features.
No, the top comment was talking specifically about the problems that Apple has addressed with their headphones through hardware and software. It's not analogous at all.
The point is that "their job" differs for some people and OP was pretty explicit on what "their job" meant to them.
And the point is that most of the things perceived as only working on Apple are actually standard nowadays. You can automatically switch devices, you can automatically transform multi-channel audio to spatial audio on headphones, and so on.
Name one device that switches automatically between devices as seamlessly as Airpods?
I have Macs and PCs and the only device that I can use wirelessly without any issues are my Airpods. With the PC, it's just a click to connect. I have tried Jabra headsets, Sony, Bose, and others and none of them even come close so I have to politely disagree with that statement. If these Airpods Max are anything like my regular Airpods, that will be worth it just to add watching TV to that list.
I have Jabra Elites and I don't even have to "click to connect". They're connected to both devices at the same time. They're what I use every day for listening to music on one device and seamlessly switch to answering a call on another device, no press of any button required.
I actually have AirPods too, and I consider the Jabras to be more seamless.
I have a Jabra Elite headset which is what I figured you were referring to and I think you're stretching it to say that it's seamless. I can't get it to connect to my computer and phone without having the app installed and, even then, the sound quality was garbage until I updated the firmware on the set. I don't see how you can think that the Jabra is more seamless unless you only use 2 devices and don't use the Airpods with iCloud. My Airpods switch from my phone, computer, iPad, and Apple TV so seamlessly that I "donated" my the Elite to my wife for work. She has to answer phones for her job and even she thinks the audio quality on the Elite is bad compared to her Airpods but she finds the headset more comfortable than the Airpods.
I have the Jabra Elite 65t and I've never installed the app on any device. As I type this I currently have it connected to both my iPhone and my Macbook Pro and it is definitely more seamless than my AirPods when switching between the two. The AirPods require me to manually switch which device it is connected to when I switch between music and a call (it's only one single button press, so not that big of a deal, but still). The Jabra, OTOH, requires literally zero interaction for me. I listen to music on my phone and then when it's time for a Zoom call on my laptop I simply launch Zoom and the Jabra automatically switch. I also use it with my iPad, an Android tablet, and two other macbooks and it works fine. The only quirkiness is that it doesn't like being connected to a macbook and an ipad at the same time. When switching between the iPad and one of my MBPs I have to manually disconnect from the iPad first, but that's only with the iPad for some reason.
I've never noticed a difference in the sound quality, and I have actually had coworkers remark that they can hear me better when I use the Jabras, FWIW.
I love how everyone is making the same point while, I think intentionally, ignoring the major issue... Jabra's can do the switching with 2 bluetooth devices. Airpods can do it between every Apple device, without doing anything. The situation you're describing where you use the Jabra headsets/phones with an iPad, tablet, and other Macbooks requires you to connect to the devices manually. It's not always a pain but it's not seamless like with Airpods. If you have to manually switch anything then you either don't have them set up correctly or you intentionally turned something off. I don't have to do anything to get my Airpods to switch devices.
>Jabra's can do the switching with 2 bluetooth devices. Airpods can do it between every Apple device, without doing anything.
I dunno, it seems like you're the one ignoring what people are saying. Multiple people in this thread are specifically pointing out that Jabra can easily do this automated switching too, with no issues. I don't know why you keep ignoring that.
>The situation you're describing where you use the Jabra headsets/phones with an iPad, tablet, and other Macbooks requires you to connect to the devices manually.
No, that's not what I said. The Jabras automatically switch between all of my devices (with the sole exception of the iPad for an unknown reason). It does not require any manual acts on my part.
>If you have to manually switch anything then you either don't have them set up correctly or you intentionally turned something off.
Yes, I intentionally turned off the Automatic switching feature of the Airpods because if I left it on, the Airpods would decide to randomly switch devices even when I was in the middle of a phone call, in the middle of a song, or randomly switch to a device that was sitting in another room completely unused. The Automatic switching feature on the Airpods is completely unusable to me, and after talking to other Airpods users, they found the same. The Jabras, on the other hand, don't have any such issues, and thus the Jabras are much more seamless.
Then I'm befuddled on how our experiences, and apparently those we've talked to, can be so different. Especially considering that Jabra's official support had confirmed to me that you can only be actively paired to 2 devices at a time with the Elite headsets (https://www.reddit.com/r/Jabra/comments/g32aom/elite_75t_act...). Either that has changed since I first purchased the Elite or you're stretching the truth. On top of that, the Airpods automatic switching can't connect to devices that are in sleep mode so I feel like you're stretching the truth with that too.
I don't really care if you believe me. There are other people in this very thread talking about Airpods terrible automatic switching behavior, and many people talking about the exact same seamless automatich switching that the Jabra provide. But you can keep sticking your head in the sand and ignoring it if you want. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm not ignoring it. Why would a Jabra representative lie to me and say that it only supports 2 active connections instead of lying to me to say that it supports as many as I want? It's far more likely that they were telling me the truth about their product and that you're misrepresenting your experience than it is that they were lying to make their product seem worse while you're telling the truth.
I don’t know about “as seamlessly” but my jabra’s connect to both PC and iPhone at same time, so no switching or clicking required. At time I bought the Jabras this seemed like an advantage over the AirPods. Still happy with them.
I feel like this is a pretty standard feature of most earbuds but I don't think there are many headphones/cans that do that. I agree that it's a neat feature and wish more things did that (while also giving the option to disable it).
For me, the ability to switch between audio on all my devices instantly. Listening on my mac, answer a call on my iPhone automatically. I realize this is a niche use case, but would be really nice for me.
The ability to just take them off and have them pause is icing on the cake as well.
If other headphones have these features, I'm open to them.
My Jabra elites do both those things (multiple devices with instant switch on calls & auto pause with on-ear detection), and are much cheaper. The only thing they don't have is the adaptive EQ but the jury's still out on how much of that is just a marketing gimmick.
I have a Jabra elite headphones and you're either overselling it by a lot or only switch between 2 devices. They're garbage compared to my Airpods and their app is absolutely terrible. It wouldn't even let me connect to Zoom without upgrading the firmware on them which failed every time. Without the upgrade, it sounded like a crappy phone call whenever I'd get a Zoom call. After the upgrade, it sounds like a slightly less crappy phone call.
No I'm not, your experience is not universal. I use them consistently between my phone and laptop without issue. I've never really needed to connect headphones to more than 2 devices.
If you're using a macbook you need to ensure you're using the AAC codec, for some reason macOS makes SBC as the default codec for lots of devices and you've to force it to
use the non-garbage codec.
How can you say "No, I'm not" when I've explicitly made the point that the Jabra headset can only have 2 active connections. Just because you've never needed to connect more than 2 devices doesn't mean that this isn't an important distinction for me or others. I literally said "you're either overselling this or only using 2 devices".
Yeah, that's my issue. I have a pair of Anker in-ears (Liberty Pro 2) for working out and they're great for that. When it comes to being at my desk during work, seamless switching is what I need.
I can’t help but think you’re subtracting points for needing to upgrade firmware (not sure I would) and the negative experience you had doing so. Also when you say “headset” I think we may be comparing different models.
I’ve never had a firmware upgrade fail on my set of Jabra Elite 75t’s yet, and I think I’ve done three, maybe four since I got them.
I’ve never had to use or been tempted to use an app for them on the PC, only using the one on my iPhone. They work great, sound quality seems fine but not fantastic - maybe AirPods are better, but I wouldn’t know. One nice thing is the EQ in the Jabra app - it’s not “adaptive” like AirPods, but I consider manual EQ a better feature if it’s an either/or decision. Have presets for music and meetings that I rarely mess with unless on long meeting or longer music listening session. I can see how the adaptive would save you from even thinking about it so I can see why some people would prefer it.
The one thing I find annoying about the Jabra set is that if I take the left ear out to talk to someone, I may have to put both back in case and out again to get them both back online. I hear about similar problems with AirPods though.
I definitely am. The headphones didn't work out of the box on several devices, even just via Bluetooth. It sounded like an old-timey telephone. And that's exactly where I think Apple has the advantage. My overall experience with Airpods was so much better and continues to be better and more seamless. The Jabra headphones are fine but I don't even think they're worth what I paid for them and that wasn't as much as the new Airpods headphones.
Again check the codec mac is using for this. I've had no issues with them, you either had a defective device or Mac is forcing the SBC codec. On windows there's a headset audio device for every bluetooth device that sounds garbage too (regardless of what the device actually is).
There's no way to set the codec on the Mac unless the individual software has an option for it. Considering that no other devices have this issue and it was improved with a firmware update, I'm going to say it wasn't an issue with the Mac at all.
Good to know! However, I already have a pair of wireless earbuds for working out. I'm in the market for a pair of over-ear headphones with these feature.
If the tech exists for in-ears though, hopefully it will/does exist in over-ear.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. This is obviously a real dynamic. Expensive tech gear is somewhat like an entry level luxury vehicle for the masses. You’re not seriously rich enough for a S-Class Benz, but you could live that aspiration via older model CLA.
So yeah, not quite rich enough to buy a house in major cities, but hey, you can certainly splurge on this kind of stuff.
Of course you don't need to spend $500 to buy headphones that do their job. There are plenty of great headphones to buy. For me, I have some beats flex which are great for small portable phones which also are well integrated with the Apple devices. Before them, I had some nice Sennheiser wired phones.
The promise of the Airpods Max is to be very high quality headphones, which are in that rough price range. On top of that the complete integration into the Apple universe and some nice functions like the spacial audio, which had been well received with the AirPods Pro. Which are much cheaper, if you are not aiming for the highest audio quality.
Honestly, the Anker Soundcore Q10s are great. I have two pairs of studio monitor headphones on my desk (Sony MDR-V6 and BeyerDynamic DT770s) and I'm usually too lazy to put them on because the Q10s are good enough for anything but detailed audio work. They're $40, and often on sale for $30. I returned a pair of $230 Sony WH-1000XM3s because Sony has jumped the shark in the bass wars and you couldn't get them to sound reasonable without EQing the source. The $30 Q10s literally sound better.
I have a pair of the HD 4.50 BT, and they sound like the same one parent is describing. Cost around $100 on sale, battery lasts for days and I wear them 8 hrs a day for work and several hours after work listening to music or streaming video. Sound quality and active noise cancelling are both quite good for the price point. Only complaint I have is the built in microphone sounds terrible, and they always try to connect to my laptops as a headset.
Even $25 Sound Blaster JAMs tick all the boxes here. Battery lasts for days, ultra-reliable Bluetooth connection. The battery even stays at maximum capacity for years and the only thing that needs changing is the foam pads. I’ve gifted many of these to family over the years and they are all still working.
I have a pair of Sennheiser Momentum 3 (the cans not the buds) and every fucking time I use them, the audio gets stolen by some device making a notification sound, and then does not go back to the call/video/whatever I'm actually trying to listen to. I'd not call that just fine.
Can you say what model you've got? I haven't yet bought Bluetooth buds but when my tatty current wired ones die I probably will. I'd been thinking about Jabra's but I'll take whatever is cheap and works ;)
Having paid $350 for Bose QC3 headphones 4 years ago, that I use every day but sometimes have to fight with when e.g. my MacBook Pro keeps trying to steal focus even though i shut it and am trying to use the headphones with my phone now, etc. I completely agree. Paying a bit more for something that just works as well as my airpods do, assuming that this delivers, is totally worth it.
On top of that, I expect the sound quality will be a big step up, and the spatial audio might be really cool.
I see you’ve never used AirPods between multiple devises. It’s become a lot better in the last year, but that’s only because it started out infuriating.
QC3s were much better than AirPods at multi device up until a recent update.
> I see you’ve never used AirPods between multiple devises. It’s become a lot better in the last year, but that’s only because it started out infuriating.
Not the OP, but I've used AirPods since day one, switching between my iPad, iPhone, and Mac and they've been fine. I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. It's one of the things I loved about them from go, in fact a lot of people loved the way they switched between devices from the start. It was one of their most praised features.
I had the same experience with iPad and iPhone and with my MacBook... sometimes. Mohave, at least on my machine, had buggy networking stacks, and sometimes the bluetooth would just stubbornly refuse to work, WiFi as well, and it would take a reboot to fix it.
Happened every week or two, and I've never seen this problem with Catalina, or in fact any previous OSX.
And I still get the thing where a device only picks up one AirPod and I have to stick them both back in the case to get stereo.
Dramatically better than any bluetooth speaker I've had? Of course. But not perfect.
> Dramatically better than any bluetooth speaker I've had? Of course. But not perfect.
I agree, save I wouldn't describe it as dramatically better. My experience with bluetooth headphones switching between multiple devices prior to the AirPods was pretty much unusable. So the AirPods delivering "Not Perfect" was by comparison night and day.
Bose requires using their mobile app that is always very slow to open and sync and full of useless bloated features, and for whatever reason they've decided nobody should ever have more than 2 devices as a firm rule. So you want to use them with a work computer, home computer, and phone? Gotta spend 20 seconds opening the shitty app all the time and fiddling with which two are the currently connected devices.
And then on top of that, even when exactly 2 devices are connected they frequently steal focus from each other (which may be MacOS behaving badly rather than the fault of Bose, but the end result is that I'm often connected to the wrong thing and my sound isn't working).
I use my Bose QC35 II almost everyday and they store at least 5-7 different connections on the device. I have my phone, two PCs, Apple TV, iPad and MacBook Pro saved. You can slide and release the power button from the middle position to the forward position to jump to the next connection. Just stop on the one you want to connect to.
Like you mention it's hit or miss with the host device though. Sometimes it fails to connect and you need to connect from within the OS.
Its wild to see such different experiences. I have QC35s and they've never paired correctly with my iPhone. Part of that, I suspect, is because you have to use the stupid Bose app to pair your BT headphones. Why Bose doesn't let you pair them using the standard system is beyond me.
In the end I only use the QC35s on my laptop which is a total disappointment.
> Why Bose doesn't let you pair them using the standard system is beyond me.
The app collects data on what music you listen to and sends it back to Bose. So obviously they want to encourage you to install and use the app.
Last I checked, at least. Also, there are _two_ Bose apps now, and which one you use depends on which Bose QuietComfort headphones you have. That I have no explanation for.
It does! You can turn it off but by default it sends usage data back to Bose. To disable this go there hidden the setting under the profile icon in the top left then Privacy Policy.
I don't use my QC700s because I had so many pairing issues. I'm using Steelseries ones with a boom (great quality but I look like a helicopter pilot on zoom).
My QC35s disconnects every 10 minutes on Windows desktops or Apple Macbooks. It's better wired but even wired I can hear it cut out for a bit sometimes.
Not sure if it's my ignorance, but doing the bluetooth dance is infuriating, even with AirPods.
5% of the time, I get correct pairing when powered on. 20% of the time, going to the Bluetooth menu -> Device -> Connect works. The rest of the time is a frustrating time having to remove/go into paring mode/re-pair to get it to work (AirPods included).
My AirPod experience has gotten much worse since they added the auto switching feature. It just keeps jumping between my phone, iPad and MacBook. Ended up just disabling it.
Interesting. I wonder what goes wrong for you. I’m always astonished that mine gets it right. I have the occasional mishap but it’s quickly and easily corrected.
We have some google nest speakers and wow, they get it wrong so often despite being stationary. They can connect to one person, not another, drop connections, vanish for days until I care to reset them and get them back online. Sometimes the voice changes, haha. Airpods though, I can share them with my family and they work great between each of our devices.
It’s one of those things where I consider myself lucky. As a software developer I don’t subscribe to the “no adults in the room” attitude, but I know this stuff is hard. I’d expect more people to have problems.
Hah, whats funny is my google speakers work 100% of the time.
The switching itself technically works. The problem is it needs to be smarter to not switch away when audio is currently in use - especially if the mic is in use.
One issue I've seen a few times is if I have something playing on my mac, and a video going on my iPad, they've gotten into a switch loop.
Same. I found out the hard way that if your mom butt calls you phone they'll switch over even if you're in the middle of a Zoom meeting on the Mac. Using your phone while watching Netflix on the computer also became a minefield.
I am on BigSur and iOS 14. While watching a video, AirPods switch from Mac to iPhone when I get a call, but won't switch back after I disconnect the call. I have to manually do the switch back. So this is still not an optimal experience.
I forget how this is on my Bose. I think video keeps playing with muted volume when you take the phone call so when you disconnect you just rejoin the video.
You don't get the magic. You can still connect to them.
If your case is personal iPhone + work MacBook, it's probably easier to just use wired EarPods with the work MacBook. You'll get better microphone quality for meetings too.
I find switching between a work MacBook (different Apple ID) and a personal iPhone and MacBook Air to work just fine. You have to use the Bluetooth Menu, but I haven’t seen any issues.
I have the same use case, and you don't need to visit the Bluetooth menu. On OSX, you can use the volume icon and select the AirPods as output device to switch. On iOS, you can use the AirPlay quickmenu icon to select the AirPods and switch to them.
I think this is much faster than going to either OSs bluetooth settings menu.
> Paying a bit more for something that just works ...
You hit a nerve with me on this one. I have heard this line all too often to encourage people spend more money. In this case it is not “a bit more”. But a whole lot more.
Pricing needs to be brought to levels of sanity. The reason we are seeing ridiculous prices like these is because millennials don’t pay attention to prices or there is way too much credit in the market or because the gap between rich and poor is getting larger and larger.
I understand the whole paying more for something that works better. I do. But this argument is often used by those who are terribly inexperienced at life, like a copy and paste of a rich experienced person’s take, only they don’t have money like the experienced person does.
Exactly. You can get Sony XM4s for $279 right now. The Airpods Max are nearly double. And yes, that's the sale price; however, Apple products rarely go more than 10% off. Ever. So we can use $500 as a fair comparison, and it's still double after paying proportional taxes.
You describe me well: I don't use mine every day, but I use them often, and in particular for work calls. If the microphone is great, and the call audio quality too, I'll probably get a pair at some point.
Sure, if by "works" you mean "only works with other Apple products." The cost isn't just $500, it's also the opportunity cost of going with any other competing (and possibly better) product in the future. Apple's pricing is high, but is even higher if you account for the hidden hand of future buying power you give them. It's a brilliant business strategy as it limits your choice as a consumer for the lifetime of the headphones.
Say Apple decides to slow down your old iPhone again (what? no! [1])... Or maybe you just like the new Google Pixel. Sucks to be you, time to buy a new iPhone again ($$$) if you don't want your headphones to stop "just working."
The iPhone 'slow down' was to keep the phone operating with old batteries. Without the throttling the phone would just shut down abruptly under certain conditions.
Part of the reason Apple has this issue at all is that they provide continued support for their hardware years after others have stopped even giving security updates.
Apple has also a multi-year lead on things like chip performance in their devices (and more subjectively hardware design, software performance too).
I used Android nexus phones for a few years before jumping into the Apple ecosystem with the iPhone 5 (I had used macs for a while prior to that since OS X 10.3 and played with a variety of linux distos alongside it).
If Apple stuff starts to degrade compared to competition it will be a hassle to jump to a different ecosystem. As it happens, over the years it's just gotten better further ahead of the competition (with some mistakes: butterfly keyboard, touchbar).
The premium and their authoritarian approach to vertical integration and good defaults isn't for everyone, but I think it's really great and worth the premium. Other companies seem to be all over the place without much of a unified vision of what they're doing. Google in particular is extremely bad at this.
It's always shocking how Apple folks adopt a reality distortion field when it comes to explaining their reasoning. Whether it's avoiding justifying the things they claim they get from Apple ("seamless device interop") or ignoring the way Apple actively treats their customers like hot garbage (see Louis Rossman's youtube channel, or the asinine arguments companies like Apple lead against right to repair and all the poor board layout and non-interchangeable parts), instead of saying a reasonable answer like "I'm willing to be ripped off because I like the shiny buttons" or "I have one specific app I use on MacOS that I haven't had the time to replicate elsewhere", it's always some kind of indignation.
If someone tells me my bargan-tier Samsung phone is slower than molasses, I'm not gonna say "yeah but I like the blue color". I'm gonna agree.
I'm a long time Apple customer and have not noticed I was being treated like hot garbage. Their products have performed as promised with little to no hassle.
Can't say the same for their competitors (MS, Linux, Samsung, etc), whose products I've used extensively over the past 25 years. I am not a computing novice. Call it a reality distortion field if you want but I am happy.
It's quite reasonable to dislike the self-repair situation and the opaque software issue reporting. Some people value those a lot, and others less so.
I don't think Apple treats their customers like garbage though; quite the opposite. I've always had a no-bullshit customer experience - fast and easy returns & replacements, generous policies & even being able to return outside the window, no haggling about issues. E.g. a few months ago my iPad stopped charging, a replacement arrived 2 days later. Most tech companies are absolutely terrible at customer service like this.
Tech isn't perfect and will break. And by buying Apple you DO have to go through Apple when this happens, but the actual customer experience is top notch. To characterize it as being about shiny buttons is ridiculous, it's about buying peace of mind and having one less thing in your life be bullshit.
I agree, the customer support rep was very nice when he told me I had to buy a new Mac mini when my hard drive failed after 5 years. They even offered to recycle the old one if I paid $50! How nice!
Do you foresee that situation going any differently if you had experienced the same issue with a Surface Book or a Samsung laptop 5 years after you bought it? Because I don't.
If it was under 7 years old (the typical cutoff for vintage products) they should have offered the option to fix it at the Apple Store.
Could be you got stuck in an edge case or had a bad rep, which sucks. Nevertheless, they have the highest NPS / customer satisfaction scores in the industry, if we're to go by the data.
Sometimes I'm even convinced that Apple is absolutely right in squeezing their captive users of every damn penny (or grand) they can squeeze. They should charge even more. (The customer is always right, especially the addicted one).
Many flagship Android phones followed Apple's lead and killed the headphone jack, so there's a lot of old headphones that no longer "just work".
Furthermore, Bluetooth sucks all around. It's 2020 and you still can't transmit voice without falling back to SCO and having everything sound like a tin can. SBC is barely passable for music, and has hundreds of ms of latency. So companies have already hacked their own various proprietary codecs. Ever hear of AptX or LDAC? They only work with Qualcomm and Sony licensing/devices. Imagine spending $400 on your new WH-1000XM4s only to find that LDAC doesn't work on any desktop OS.
I already don't need a new phone, but the further lack of a headphone jack dis-incentivizes me from considering further. If the choices are accepting headphones I need to charge to use and being a stick in the mud, I'm going to do the latter. I'll keep my old iPhone until it no longer functions. Consequently, Apple is getting less lifetime revenue from me. But I'm not Apple's target consumer: there are others who are far more profitable. An iPhone and a MacBook are all I need, I don't pay for any of their subscription services (Apple Music) etc.
> Sure, if by "works" you mean "only works with other Apple products."
Case in point: my mom wants to buy AirPods, but she uses a Samsung Galaxy S10. I told her it'll work fine because Bluetooth, but that (at least originally) AirPods ship out with buggy firmware that needs updating. She'd need to find a friend with an iPhone just to update them to some current version before use. (And apparently even that is a UX nightmare with no real update button or indication)
> Sure, if by "works" you mean "only works with other Apple products."
Well, yeah, that is what people mean when they say this. I'm not seeing anyone here make the case that it's worthwhile if you're don't use other Apple products, or that it's not a giant hassle to switch out of Apple products. They just don't care as much about lock in as you.
> They just don't care as much about lock in as you.
I'm sure some Apple customers realize what's happening. As in, they knowingly look at the slowly boiling pot of water and get in because it's not hot enough to burn them yet.
But I think for the most part, Apple is exploiting a common blind spot in human psychology, the ability to predict the future. People look at the Apple devices they have now and make a decision to buy Airpods. They don't see the future implications of being locked-in.
The typical Apple consumer probably starts with an iPhone or mac (because of phone plans, open standards, apps, etc). The real lock-in begins with the AirPods, iWatch, etc. Once they get you to buy one of these 'lock in' devices, they're much more likely to continue making more money off of you the next time you need a new laptop/phone/desktop. That's all well and fine if you know this going in, but I'd wager most don't.
This is only fair if the Apple user is worried about switching away from iOS, not other devices.
For example, an iPhone user can get the exact same experience from the Galaxy Buds as I have with my S10+, but they get the added bonus of having enhanced operability with things like AirPods, if that's what they want instead. I think the only limitation with the Buds is the ability to stream to 2 sets of Buds at once, but that's such a rare use-case and doesn't really affect the experience in the same way as the quick switching between Apple device that comes with AirPods.
I wish I could have the Apple experience, but my hate for iOS is too strong. Otherwise, I love a lot of what they develop.
When you price out the TCO of staying in the Apple ecosystem... It's quite a bit more in yearly spend than other companies. Feels simply not worth it even with moderate earning power. Maybe I'd do it if I was making some of the wages I see around here :).
The old airpods work about as well as most bluetooth headphones on Android. The only part you lack is an official app to configure stuff like tap actions and updates.
This is spot on. Every now and then only one of my AirPods will connect and then it’s just putting them back in the case over and over until they start working again.
I have this issue from time to time. But I discovered that changing the volume slightly solves it. It seems the problem is not that one AirPod is not connected, but that for some reason the volume is turned all the way down on.
I setup a macro with BetterTouchTool on my Mac to turn on bluetooth and connect to my Airpods. And that has essentially solved any of the edgecase weirdness about connectivity. Now it's truly magical 100% of the time. I can be listening to a podcast on my phone, hit the macro and jump into a zoom call with no menu or case futzing.
Before this I was dealing with these bizarro issues occasionally that was really frustrating.
My experience with the AirPods Pro is far from being smooth. Random disconnections, sometimes L or R do not connect, cannot use microphone and listen to music...
Tired of them. Bought a pair of Beyerdynamic with a 3,5mm jack and not even a single issue... For about 150$...
Yeah, I have no idea where people are getting the whole seamless wireless connectivity experience idea from. AirPods are pretty much awful in terms of connecting. It’s a little better than regular Bluetooth because of the case which gives a lot of visual feedback when you open it, but that’s mostly to trick your senses into not realizing it’s still just a shitty bluetooth headphone that takes forever to connect.
Being limited to Bluetooth range isn't great if you're using them with any device other than the phone in your pocket. While the Airpods seem better than some other Bluetooth devices, you can't walk far around your home/office before they start cutting out
Because in the past most Bluetooth headphones were terrible and pretty much everyone got in pairing hell at some point. Airpods were much better than the status quo when launched.
That's simply not true. They might have been better than cheap bluetooth headphones with which they didn't compete, but there were plenty of price-competitive bluetooth headphones at the time which were as good or better.
The only new things about airpods were the truly wireless nature (which was definitely an advantage) and the Apple logo*.
My (Apple) Powerbeats Pro work about 50% of the time. A really bad design flaw with the tiny contacts means that 1 of the pair frequently doesn't charge in the case after a few minutes.
Go to use them for a run and one is often flat. Or my phone will try and connect to the non-charging one in the case, leaving me with no sound when I'm not actually using ear phones.
Some Apple stuff is great - but 'it just works' is a myth.
Thanks for pointing out the spatial audio. It amazes me all the comments about price but not discussing what features these actually have. Dynamic head tracking for spatial audio could be really amazing and is not cheap to implement. These aren't just some "dumb" headphones with speakers in them. I'm really interested in trying these out on the Xbox X which has Dolby Atmos on a big screen and hearing the sounds move as you look around. Also, imagine silent discos with the DJ streaming in Atmos as you move around. Now if only there was a widely adopted open spatial audio standard instead of Atmos...
Dynamic head tracking spacial audio is available today with the Airpods Pro and it is amazing. Watching surround-sound TV with spacial audio enabled is basically indistinguishable from watching TV with a surround sound system and no headphones, to the point where I have to check to make sure the audio is playing through my headphones and not external speakers.
Downside is that it only works with iPhone, iPad and AppleTV 4k. It's such an amazing upgrade over my current setup, though, that I'm planning on upgrading to an AppleTV 4K so that I'm not limited to using spatial audio on just my iPad.
I believe you only get special audio with paired to an iOS device which also includes an accelerometer. So basically iPad and iPhone. Any third-party devices don’t get special audio, as far as I’m aware.
I will tell you this, I do not miss headphone cords at all. Not one bit. I don't miss the cord snagging on parts of my desk, or my legs, or the arms of my office chair, or under the casters, etc.
Not to mention cord noise on IEMs, which admittedly isn't really a problem on over-the-ear headphones anyway.
I'll probably never buy another pair of corded headphones.
I use a pair every day. And I use bluetooth headphones every day. The existence of either doesn't make the other useless.
And I have used bluetooth headphones for over a decade, I find it hilarious that when apple suddenly had a offering that it suddenly became obsolete with cords.
It is impossible to overstate how much bluetooth sucks for temporary connections. I dare you, pair your device in my car. Or to play that song on a shared speaker setup. Just a quickie, see how well you do. Might work, might not. The outcome isn't decided by you alone or what device you are pairing with - guaranteed.
The environmental impact alone should give one pause. As the batteries will go out and make the heaphones next to useless. Tech-savvy ones might replace them but that is hardly the norm. Yet my corded headphones are over a decade old sounds better than what apple is offering at a fraction of the price.
They do not have active noise cancellation though - and that is a killer feature! For some situations... Not in my home, where I use them. Because I have the option to do so.
> I will tell you this, I do not miss headphone cords at all.
I do. I am at the point where I literally have to buy low-end phones just to still have a headphone jack.
Stuff gets lost, stuff breaks, I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars every time a little bud goes OOPS. I don't see any benefit of wireless headphones, I seem to have the superhuman ability to manage cables without effort.
My headsets never have dead batteries. Are cheap to replace, and have excellent audio quality. I guess I'm not the target audience but you'll have to add my "WTF" to the chorus in regards to $500 headphones.
I bought a cheapy pair of heyday headphones ([0] but w/o active noise cancellation) a few years back because I wanted over-the-ear headphones with both Bluetooth and 3.5mm stereo jack. I used these in the office for music, on the bus for podcasts, as hands-free for my phone, etc. It was fantastic. The only complaint I really had was that the Bluetooth mode didn't work with my phone's mic. When they broke recently, I decided to pick up some Sennheisers[1] with similar functionality.
With both of these, there have been times when the cord got annoying, but I really like having that option. I've had these new ones almost two months and have probably charged the batteries once. That's about on-par with the heyday pair - probably less frequently, truly.
People hate on the 3.5mm jack, but it never fails, and I think the hate it gets is disproportionate to how much people actually struggle with it. And if you do struggle with it on occasion, having the option to flip between Bluetooth & 3.5mm is easy peasy.
Not to mention spending five minutes untangling cords every time I take them out of my pocket, even when I want to listen to something for like 20 seconds.
Unfortunately your average consumer is not going to miss the inclusion of a 3.5 mm audio jack, but it really sucks if you're a musician.
There are a bunch of really good soft synthesizer apps for iOS that work with a midi keyboard but Bluetooth latency makes them virtually unplayable. With a standard 3.5 mm jack it's not an issue. You can buy a dongle but that's just one more piece of complexity.
Almost all bluetooth headphones on the market have a 3.5mm jack on them at least currently and every device that dropped the jack works with one of those very cheap usb c to 3.5mm adapters.
That's not really the issue though, you have two devices that you have to plug-in, the midi keyboard and now the adapter which means you have to use a splitter or usb hub. In my experience it's not usually very seamless and can sometimes cause issues with detection of the midi keyboard properly.
EDIT: I have no idea where you're getting that figure but I just looked at three different pairs of Bluetooth headphones that I have in my house, Soundpeats, TOZO, and an LG. None of them have 3.5 mm jacks on them.
I've had my share of connectivity issues with corded headphones, like pulling the cord out of the jack accidentally, breaking the wire inside the cord, not being able to walk away from the device I'm connected to without taking off the headphones, etc.
Yeah this is why it has been hard for me to pull the trigger and actually commit to wireless headphones. Except for the wire part, these are great! Removing that little wire apparently makes this a difficult engineering challenge.
> With the spatial audio they're actually cheap if you figure I'm done with any Dolby Atmos, 9.1, 7.1, 5.1 etc stand alone setup. I'm watching movies with this.
Spatial audio is a replacement of true surround sound to you? it's a gimmicky weird audio effect to me. Zero sense of sound source behind or in front of me.
Humans have limited ability to discriminate between directly in front and directly in back based solely on cues encoded in the audio. It is a well-known ambiguity in how we hear space along that narrow axis. How you arrange the sound sources doesn't matter much. Research has demonstrated that human perception of a sound being "front" or "back" is determined by non-aural sensory cues. Specifically, if you can see a plausible sound source in front of you, you will hear it in front of you. Front-to-back spatial discrimination is based almost entirely on the visual cortex providing a model of the space in which the sound notionally exists.
In practice, humans subconsciously compensate for ambiguous front/back spatial positioning by turning their heads, putting the sound source on an axis where they do have excellent spatial discrimination. For obvious reasons this doesn't work well for headphones. Unless, of course, you have some kind of head tracking built into them.
I'm sure visual sensory input factors somewhat into how audio positioning is being processed by the human brain.
However an audio experience w/o visual input via physical surround sound sources provides convincing and precise positioning of audio sources. So that indicates visual input is just a tiny factor.
What I struggle with given all audio enters the two years, regardless of headphones or multiple speakers, why is the latter so much better at conveying "surround" sound than headphone? Does this distill down to a simple scenario of sound waves entering the two ears?
A lot of this research was done at NASA Ames in Mountain View. That's how I became familiar with it, I met some of the people working on it (a very long time ago). They had a lab where you could sit at the center of a sphere of speakers where they ran experiments on spatial perception of audio. It was really interesting. Broadly speaking, headphones should outperform surround speakers for spatial perception in absolute terms but it is much easier to generate quality spatial perception with cheap speakers than cheap headphones because of how it interacts with biology (see below).
In short, two "microphones" (your ears) is not enough to place a sound in 3-space, which makes audio illusions and perception gaps possible. Beyond time-of-flight and amplitude differentials, the human ear acts like a notch filter where the notch frequency changes as a function of angle of incidence. We don't hear the notch but the brain uses it to infer angle in a plane. This has significant issues e.g. it doesn't work well for new sounds with novel spectral signatures because we can't discriminate between a natural notch frequency and one created by the ear. It is possible to synthesize audio that breaks this part of our brain by synthesizing a set of cues that violate the laws of nature -- it is pretty uncomfortable. Creating spatial perception through signal processing has a couple limitations:
First, every human ear has a unique notch filter pattern. Spatial audio over headphones, which partially bypass the notch filtering, works best when they literally insert a microphone into your ear canal and measure the unique notch filtering patterns using test patterns. This can be fed into the software algorithms to create more accurate spatial cues for your unique ears. The perceived result is qualitatively different. There is no universal algorithm that works for everyone.
Second, the relationship between your ears and the sound sources don't change with headphones. In nature, animals either change the orientation of their ears, to basically sweep the notch frequency cues (humans have vestigial biology for this) or in the case of humans we move our heads for both notch frequency and time-of-flight cues. With headphones, the sound sources turn with you, so it produces no cues.
To make natural sounding spatial audio work on headphones, the audio source needs to be able to detect changes in head orientation in real-time and apply appropriate DSP to the raw audio. This is less of a problem with surround sound speaker systems because head motion provides these spatial cues naturally. I haven't tried it out but Apple's real-time head tracking plausibly provides the necessary DSP inputs to produce a spatial model that tracks as good or better than external speakers. Where external speakers fall short is that, unless you are in a carefully acoustically treated space, the space itself injects all kinds of spectral, temporal, and amplitude artifacts that unpredictably degrade the spatial cues in the audio.
>. I haven't tried it out but Apple's real-time head tracking plausibly provides the necessary DSP inputs to produce a spatial model that tracks as good or better than external speakers.
Apple's spatial audio head tracking is unreliable at best. I can fool the system easily by rotating my head at a speed that is slower than a snap rotation, side to side.
Even when the tracking is working properly, it sounds like simulated surround sound from home theater receivers of 20 yr sago.
> It is possible to synthesize audio that breaks this part of our brain by synthesizing a set of cues that violate the laws of nature -- it is pretty uncomfortable
Do you need special equipment to do it, or can it be done on a PC with speakers? I'd be quite interested in listening to this
Yeah I'm skeptical about the statement as well. If you used a good binaural microphone [1] to record someone talking in front of the dummy head, and behind, in a small room, then played the audio back to someone through decent headphones, I'd be tremendously surprised if they couldn't immediately discern which recording was which.
I own binaural recording equipment. My experience along with listening the golden standard of binaural recording (the barber shop simulation) indicates front and rear positioning is still not possible with binaural.
The left/right sound stage is huge though in binaural recordings!
I agree with the general "it's expensive but for that price it just works" statement.
For example, with AirPods Pro, you get automatic switching between devices, easy pairing, true wireless earbuds, wireless charging, great ANC and all that in an incredibly tiny package.
But with these AirPods Pro...do you see anything they do that others don't? They are not lighter. Their battery life isn't better. They're not objectively prettier. Their case looks worse. They don't charge wirelessly. There's not a lot of gain to be had in comfort as opposed to earbuds (competing headphones from Bose for example are plenty comfortable).
So...from what we already know, they have one thing others don't and that's the "magical" pairing and switching. And they are $250 more expensive.
This means either they sound incredibly fantastic, or they are way overpriced.
> I agree with the general "it's expensive but for that price it just works" statement.
One thing a "disparity" (as in variety) of wealth creates is slices of populace where the value of the solution is worth vastly more. Tech that "just works" is one such place. People placing higher value on convenience ...
Another such place that is interesting is healthcare. Some portion of the market places longevity or health optimizations way beyond the traditional insurance models. They're willing to spend far and beyond the marginal savings from prevention to avoid health issues. An example might be taking expensive NMN/NR to potentially avoid future health issues, despite costing 100s per month.
The previous top-end for Apple's headphones was the ~$350 Beats Studio Wireless 3, which I've had a pair of the past three years. I often forget I'm wearing them when I've put them on just for noise canceling (without any music) until I bonk them with something, and their Bluetooth has been fine in use with a variety of Apple and non-Apple devices. Their biggest defect in my use has been that their folding mechanism leaves a slight indent on one point on the earcup foam. They're fine, but my desktop headphones have better quality (as they should, given the 5-10x increase in investment in them).
I expect that the $550 AirPods Max will be exceptional, and comparable in quality to my desktop headphones, which will be an achievement for anything portable and wireless. The flatpack case solves the non-portability of the Beats (which have a case the size of a watermelon), and they've removed the logo and reconstructed the earcups to not get tangled in long hair.
That's the kind of improvements I expected from Apple, and they appear to have delivered, at a price point that's about what I would expect for something that delivers impeccable audio (and sets them up for $150/$350/$550 market segments). The Studio beats are great, but these will be better. My biggest fear is that they'll be better than my desktop headphones. Works for me.
The Sony 1000XM3/4 series actually does all this and more already and has been for the last few years. Of all the noise cancellation headphones I've tried they're the best out there in the market and you can have them for less than $500. What am I missing here?
No, just no. I got so tired of my airpods not connecting randomly, automatically switching to other devices at random times, losing most of their charge after a year, and so on, that I literally just use a pair of wired airpods now and it works great. Oh, except that Apple decided iPads should have USB-C but not iPhones, so now I can't even use my lightning airpods on more than one device.
This Apple worship is the ultimate banality of consumerism. The Airpod max is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen Apple produce. I personally think it will be a big flop, but I guess we'll see.
I regret my response here as being overly dramatic. I think I got triggered by some of the obvious Apple worship going on. But my response isn't much better.
On smartphones and tablets I can definitely agree with this sentiment. There's just nothing close to the reliability and comfort that iOS gives you (Used Nexus/Pixel for 5+ years and finally had enough and switched this year back to iPhone. God was my life so much easier).
On earphones I'm not so sure. My Sony 1000XM2 works really well and I don't have advanced needs like switching devices constantly or sharing the audio with another person. Then again, maybe we just didn't know something is possible before somebody actually delivers it out there.
The "spatial audio" thing I don't think would be a very good argument though. The promotion materials are extremely vague and I don't have much confidence that the noise cancelling/sound quality of this will be night and day compared to other established earphones. So I'm not caring too much about that aspect. As long as the sound quality is not worse than Sony/Bose/Sennheiser I'll be fine with it.
the current airpod pro's don't "just work". On numerous occasions the right/left airpod gets unpaired. The charge level of each piece is independent, which is odd considering both are placed in/out of ear simultaneously. There are even issues with the UI on the iphone to show the charge level. I have to open/close between 2-3 times to be prompted with the screen.
Having said that, as a whole, the airpods do "just work" more than other bluetooth headphones, especially with the case that holds a charge.
I've read your comment and most of it makes sense. Then I sat for a bit and all I got in my head was: ffs it's $500 for some headphones. To me, this is a poor man's luxury item. It reminds me when the latest and most expensive iPhone came out.Two people bought it: the CEO and the young woman who was on the lowest salary in the company. For one it was pocket change, for the other it was 2-3 weeks earnings.
Bluetooth for audio is a solved problem. I recently bought 3 pairs of headphones, one pair no name Chinese, one pair of bose and oneplus buds. All 3 connect, switch devices (laptop, phone etc) seamlessly. I understand there may have been issues in the past but my experience the last year tells me otherwise.
I guess you never have guests? Also a pair of headphones wont differ that much from a 2.1 system that'd I'd use that as an argument, it's all psychoacoustics mostly at that point.
Also, when talking about speakers, what upgrades? You don't need yearly upgrades with speakers, unlike with Apple headphones. In the past ten years, I've spent about 400 dollars for a pair of Yamaha studio monitors fit for professional audio use, certainly for light audio entertainment as well. They'll still take any Apple headphones through the ringer in terms of quality.
I bought the airpods when they came out. After 1.5 years of use, I get 5! minutes of talktime. Apple says "tough luck". No more headphones from Apple for me.
> Compare this to even the least expensive stand alone 5.1 system and it's a very inexpensive alternative.
I've had the same DTS/Dolby Digital 5.1 system for nearly 20 years. It still works flawlessly. I very much doubt that these headphones will be functional in 20 years time.
My current wireless headset costs $10. My wife bought it on sale, cheap Chinese crap, but I'd prefer to go through 10 pairs in the next year than shell out $500. That price point is crazy
Apple Airpods don't connect to my MBP without a big delay. Maybe the firmware needs to be upgraded but I can't do it with my MBP and I don't own any other Apple products.
>I want to put them on and they need to make noise.
>I'm not dealing with connectivity issues, battery issues, etc.
>Battery, I need to be able to easily and quickly know what the status is and I need to know that if I plugged them in before I go to bed I'll be good to go all day, the next day and I don't have to think about charging.
>Connectivity. When I go to use them I need them to connect and work. No fiddling around with loss of connection or not connecting in the first place.
Wired headphones tick all these boxes. If not for Jony Ive's quest for a legacy and absurd fetish for thinner phones we wouldn't have to live the dongle life to have every feature you listed.
Yeah, I don't want to get dragged into the whole debate about headphone jacks again, but as long as someone else is saying it... headphones worked! They always worked. You plugged them in and they reliably made sound, everywhere, with high-quality audio. This comment is surreal.
And yes, I get that a lot of people do want to use wireless headphones. I'm not here to argue about that, there are legitimate reasons why people want to get rid of wires. And I also get that these headphones are filled with other features like auto-pausing, noise cancelation. There are reasons someone might look at those features and think they're worth the price. But still -- to see the primary reaction be that the important part is "just working" still feels kind of validating to all of the people who originally called out Bluetooth headphones as a step backwards from where we were.
I remember getting a lot of pushback from people who were all telling me that wireless headphones were going to get really cheap, and most of the growing pains were already over, and we were all just being ludites. But what am I supposed to think when I look at your high-tech future world, and the most popular comment is someone saying that they'll drop 550 dollars on a pair of headphones before they've even heard them, even though they'll only last 3-5 years before the battery dies -- just because it's worth that much money to have a device that reliably plays sound? How am I supposed to look at that and not come to the conclusion that the wireless market is still wildly inferior to the cheap, reliable, high-quality audio devices that came before?
It's been however many years since Apple's removal of the headphone jack and practically every high-end Android manufacturer has since copied them. And what we see is headphones that are specifically designed to work with one brand of phone/computer, that are outrageously expensive, and apparently that expense is justified to some people because the entire rest of the market is filled with options that have minor-to-major irritations during daily use.
If what OP is saying is true, then a $50 over-ear pair of Koss headphones will be more reliable and have fewer daily annoyances than most bluetooth-only headphones. And while I'm sure plenty of people disagree about bluetooth reliability, enough people here do seem agree with them that their comment is the first one you see when you enter the discussion.
I don't believe audio quality is perceptible enough that you need to spend $500 on a pair of wired headphones. But even if I did believe that audio quality was perceptible enough to require that kind of money, I also don't believe that the AirPods Max are going to match the raw specs or numbers of those $500 wired devices. And regardless, that's all kind of besides the point. The AirPods Max have plenty of exciting features tacked on, but those features aren't the primary reason why OP is excited -- they're excited because:
> I want to put them on and they need to make noise.
Well, you don't need to spend $500 to get that. Wired headphones were good at that. That was never a question or a concern that anybody had about them. Even with the awful low-quality $15-$20 solutions, you never doubted walking out of the store that when you plugged them into any audio device, sound was going to instantly come out of them as soon as you pressed the play button, even if it was a phone that your friend owned, even if it was a random ATM on a street corner, even if it was a 5 year old MP3 player or game console. They just worked.
They're headphones. I want to put them on and they need to make noise. I'm not dealing with connectivity issues, battery issues, etc. Sure they're $500 but when Apple gets it right I'm happy to pay $500 for something that works than $300 for the first try that I eventually stop using because of some issue or another then another try at $350 for something a little better only to finally throw in the towel an pay the $500 to Apple that might not be perfect but hits it on enough points that I want to use them.
Battery, I need to be able to easily and quickly know what the status is and I need to know that if I plugged them in before I go to bed I'll be good to go all day, the next day and I don't have to think about charging.
Connectivity. When I go to use them I need them to connect and work. No fiddling around with loss of connection or not connecting in the first place.
With the spatial audio they're actually cheap if you figure I'm done with any Dolby Atmos, 9.1, 7.1, 5.1 etc stand alone setup. I'm watching movies with this. I'm tired of all the speakers, decoder, amp, wires, sub, constant upgrades. Compare this to even the least expensive stand alone 5.1 system and it's a very inexpensive alternative.