It's wild how much money Apple has made from Bluetooth headphones that don't suck. That's literally it. They're portable, pair easily and (somewhat) work with multiple devices. I have top of the line Bose Bluetooth headphones that still, in 2022, have issues with multiple devices. I can't count how many times I've started playing music on my iPhone only to realize that the headphones think my laptop is playing, so they just silently suppress my phone. And the only way to fix it is to go into the inane Bose app and disconnect the laptop. Why the hell can't you just tell the headphones to play from the phone and keep the laptop connected? It's so bad.
All of this has a super simple explanation: the shitty products always have org structures that treat software dev as shitty cost centers.
It took a long time to realize that the most compelling devices have good, well maintained software.
I don’t mean to say that software devs are geniuses or that these orgs have to hire the best of the best. No, they just need to create an org that prioritizes software dev. Low attrition, increased visibility, the usual. You don’t need fancy new features. Just make sure the intern who wrote your v1 Bluetooth driver feels compelled enough to stay on to become a staff engineer running a team that still assures bugs get fixed. Simple.
It's also possible that their Bluetooth stack for the AirPods is likely sharing a lot of code with their battle-tested iOS stack which puts even Android's to shame (I worked at both places and even Googler's acknowledged Android has some serious problems and Apple kicked there ass here).
A sibling noted the H1 chip and whatnot. I don't know how much the specific chip matters for that piece (certainly key for battery life & having both buds appear as a single device). After all, their Bluetooth stack was better than the competition even back when they were using off the shelf chips. Still, it's possible off the shelf chips for acting as the master are somehow simpler than the chips for acting as a slave (or maybe you notice it more).
There is a widespread belief in a simple explanation among Googlers: device makers test against iPhone. Whenever Apple strays off spec, they'll choose to be compatible with Apple's implementation rather than the standard.
TBF, can't blame them. Apple has pretty much a single stack. Android is about as fragmented as the PC world.
That wasn't a common belief AFAIK among people I talked with that actually knew what they were talking about. They readily admitted the Android stack sucked balls. There are 3 generations of Bluetooth stack that I recall. The first was Bluez-based but offloaded a lot to the vendor as I recall. That didn't work well. The second one Broadcom open-sourced their BlueDroid stack and donated it to Android in 2012. The third is Google finally taking control of it and I hope they had success with it (my info is a bit dated on that front).
Google has had a single Bluetooth stack for quite a while although variable quality vendor implementation. IIRC BlueDroid took over more of the stack than Bluez did so we're talking about 10 years here where Android has had a single monolithic stack.
The main explanation I've heard is that Apple has much fewer Bluetooth chips to support but I don't know that explains it because there's generally not that many chips in the market that all phones choose from (granted Apple is now in-house but still, they didn't use to be).
Well I think it doesn't stop with the SW stack, I remember the time when the android devices had the bathtub notch without having any real sensors in them.
Oh, so they make their own chips, they make both AirPods and MacBook, the OS, but then why do they fail to connect 20% of the time? I think the product should be capable of making sound 99.9%, not 80% of the time. AirPods might be the king of BT devices but it's a beggar in the house of wired.
I mean, if there was another "commodity" processor one could just insert into their earbuds and write some awesome software, why hasn't anyone done that yet? If you could offer the same features as AirPods (and other Apple headphones) at half the cost, you'd make serious money. People might not care too much about those technical features of them, but I know they care about consistently good performance, and the AirPods have so far delivered on that promise. Making something that works just as well, but doesn't require you to be locked in to the Apple ecosystem, would absolutely change the game for the headphone market.
I own airpods max and so far I didn't notice anything special about them. They're just ordinary headphones. They have noise suppression, but it's hardly a unique feature. Head tracking is a gimmick and I disabled it almost immediately.
I’ve got the extremely well regarded Sony WH-1000XM4s. Getting them to switch between devices is an absolute pain in the ass compared to Apple’s fairly seamless handoff.
The custom Bluetooth processor seems to be letting Apple solve a lot of pain points that every other Bluetooth headphone just makes you live with.
"Upgrading" to my Sony's was painful. Beforehand I had some cheap Chinese brand that had the best bluetooth experience of my life.
I could switch devices and the one I was using could connect up easy without having to do the whole disconnect from the other device first thing.
I suspect on connect it was also issuing a disconnect to the previous sender as well because I never had an issue of a device reconnecting overtop.
Multiple devices could be paired at the same time and it just latched on to whichever device tried to connect last.
Even apple doesn't do well at this. Apple also has all kinds of weird bugs and sound issues. They are still nice for walking around though so I won't be ditching them anytime soon.
Diminishing returns are very real when it comes to BT headphones. The cutoff seems to be around 100 USD/EUR.
If you care about sound quality, you are probably using AUX still. An alternative is the Fiio bluetooth/aux adapter that solves the bluetooth part but still has an acceptable sound quality.
The ones I had were around 60usd and had good enough sound for me. The only problem I had with them was the headband was built for small heads. Broke in the same spot twice. After second I just took the refund and got some Sony's.
Sound is pretty nice upgrade though even for someone like me that can't tell. Noise cancelling helps a lot over COVID too.
I have one of each within my family. Sound quality wise they’re better than AirPods but the usability and seamlessness sucks real bad. The good reviews are all like ones that rate the XPS as the best laptop because the reviewers think “a MacBook is not a laptop” and similarly the Jabra is the best Bluetooth headphone because to the reviewer the AirPod isn’t even competition. Which is true if you are on Android anyway.
Nobody cares about the processors themselves but they very much care what they do. One of the biggest things I constantly hear about from others with AirPods is that they connect seamlessly to all their Apple devices and switch automatically as they use them. That's only possible because of these chips.
I don't agree, but even if someone thinks they don't care they actually do since the custom silicon is no small part of why the multi-device stuff works so well. Not to mention the noise cancellation, transparency mode, etc. Sure, you buy because of the characteristics, but the characteristics are due to the custom silicon.
The unsung part of this is that Bluetooth is a ridiculously complicated protocol. Basically everyone has a broken implementation of it. If someone asked me to choose whether to write either a C++ compiler or a bluetooth stack, I would probably choose the C++ compiler.
There are very few people who are both passionate about the problem of wireless devices and who understand all of the stack enough to make a driver that is fast, resilient, and standards-compliant. I hear that Apple sometimes bends the "standards-compliant" part - which is why their airpods only work with their devices.
Apple has done a great job giving this team of <100 engineers the space they need to succeed, and it's a huge feat. Most other companies don't even try to write their own BT stack (for good reason) and just use a vendor solution, so their user experience is subpar.
I use Airpods with my PC, iPad, MacBook, and Android phone. It works well on all of them. Switching sucks though. Basically have to forget and re-pair every time.
Still better than the competition though. Had a Sony Xm something or another before, but the Airpods are way easier and more comfortable by a huge margin.
My first bluetooth earbuds were the Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 back in 2006. Back then batteries were bigger so it had a pendant that hung down, and on that it had a little display on it that would show the names of the paired devices and you could select one. It worked great.
A DIP switch, really? Could you imagine the horrendous usability. Plus all that mechanical movement will surely cause early failure. Much better to just have some solder pads. With the cost and performance of USB/battery irons these days surely most users can keep one handy. This completely solves the challenge of accidental pairing and helps the user ensure each device switch is contemplated and intentional.
The AirPods are the best recent example of people who haven’t tried the new thing crapping on it saying the old ways work fine. Multiple times people have crapped on the AirPods and I gift them one and they realize how amazing it is to not have wires at all.
Back in December 2019, the company I worked for gave everyone AirPods Pros for Xmas. Lots of people tried them and complained a lot. I have a pair and rarely use them, only with devices that don't have a headphone jack.
Having no wires was not life changing, I don't really care about that. Running out of battery sucks though. The noise canceling really is great, but they never last a full flight, so I always need backup headphones.
A backup cable is definitely still a useful feature on Bluetooth headsets. My Bose QC-35s seem to only be able to pair with two devices at a time.
I always switch to the cable if I want to use them with my Linux laptop as repairing is a pain in the arse.
I've also found the cable to be very useful for anything that requires both sound quality and a microphone at the same time. Over Bluetooth and even on my Apple stuff they seem to switch to the headset profile to use the mic and the sound then becomes aweful.
I lost my original Airpods about a month before the AirPods Pro came out. It took about a month to get my AirPods Pro. During that 2 month period I used wired headphones and hated every single minute of it. The cord was always in the way. Once, on a crowded bus, the cord got caught and the headphones were pulled out and ended up dragging on the bus floor. I tossed them and bought a cheap pair of Bluetooth headphones for the final 2 weeks. They were crap but at least there was no cord dangling about.
Moreover, it's amazing how they've managed to make a bluetooth accessory that is intuitive to older folks. I never bothered buying my parents bluetooth devices because they'd always end up in the drawer from disuse. They use their Airpods daily and never ask me for help. A wonder.
I’ve seen people minimize the usability of the AirPods. My dad who’s quite technology-averse, figured it out in 2 minutes while I helped him over FaceTime. The only reason he agreed to even try it was because the wired EarPods broke. Since then he just loves his AirPods.
Not even older folks. The technologically exhausted, too. I write code for a living and hack on hardware as a hobby. When I go on a walk or just want to chill out, I absolutely love when this kind of stuff just works. I will (and do) pay a massive premium for that. Major respect to the developers, it's obviously a feat. The haters can go recompile gentoo :)
And when it's easy enough for older folks, they're also generally better for even savvier users.
I like hacking around a Linux workstation as much as the next nerd, but when I put BT headphones in my ears to listen to a podcast, I want it to just work.
That said, every so often I need to toggle my iPhone's bluetooth switch in Settings. Even Apple's software isn't 100%.
I’ve never really unpacked this idea in my mind before, but if you stop for a second you can quickly appreciate how powerful this type of experience is.
Older folks do not like feeling left behind. if Apple is causing them to feel liberated from their state of techno exile, that’s going to create insane goodwill.
Being Bluetooth, technically the Airpods will connect to say, a Dell laptop, but in practice they will have erratic behavior, which you can solve by buying a mac... and teaching said old folks how to use MacOS instead of Windows.
While they don’t have the excellent UX of Airpods with Apple products when used with non-Apple products, I’ve never experienced this “erratic behavior”. They just work like bluetooth headphones with no weird issues. I regularly use them with my desktop on both Linux and Windows, I’ve used them with my Nintendo Switch, etc… and no erratic behavior
For some reason on Windows AirPods show up as two different types of devices (not left and right) one of which sounds very bad with a lot of noise. And of course if you connect AirPods with your iPhone and your Windows laptop they’ll start fighting over who gets to connect.
This isn’t an AirPods specific issue, it’s a Windows issue. My laptop does the same thing with my galaxy buds where it shows two devices when I connect them. One of them uses the Bluetooth profile for headphones which sounds decent and the other uses the profile for headsets which sounds like garbage but that is needed in order to have the bandwidth to use the built in mic.
I believe the different Bluetooth codecs show up as different devices under Windows, so I assume the noisy one is the one for calls. Not sure exactly why it’s like this.
Windows and Bluetooth headphones just don’t work well together, regardless of manufacturer. And good luck of the headphones also have a mic and support the headset profile.
I recently went through this with a new Windows laptop. It was quite a shock after being in the Mac world for years how bad an experience Windows and headphones is.
Use the nicer one for listening. Use the shittier one for conferences. It's not an Airpod thing, Bluetooth just sucks and doesn't support high fidelity full duplex audio.
Same issue on Macs for what it's worth. If you are listening to music and a meeting starts and the mic turns on, the protocol will switch and everything will sound like crap.
Not just older folks. As a dev and tech enthusiast, even if I dig into technical bits of many things, at the end of the day I want something that works, battle-tested, and reliable. (okay a few failures in past years like keyboard failures, but still better than competition)
My only huge issue with Apple is that they create this 'them and us' mentality. I can't share a raw iPhone video with non mac users, because of the proprietary format. If Apple really wants to create a universal computer, it should work at creating the interfaces with the rest of us. It should not be a walled garden. Removing this boundary would make me love Apple.
Yeah, I agree, Apple has a reputation of doing things "its own way" which is sometimes frustrating for sure.
BTW for that specific use case AFAIK iPhone uses H.265 and H.264 (and ProRes but I don't think you're mentioning that when saying "raw", rather meaning straight out of device) videos inside a MOV container, which are both widely available (with H.265 having some license fees but available virtually on every device).
Much easier for everyone to use. When I first got my AirPods, they were the biggest single piece of life-friction-removal I've gotten from a piece of technology since my first smartphone
I still remember the time I opened the box on a new Ipod, and there was no instruction booklet. The contrast with my previous device (a Sony minidisc player) was shocking.
Not that intuitive imo. I had to show my sister in law who is in her 50's that she needs to leave the case open with the airpods in it, then press the button on the back, in order to make them discoverable.
Like all apple products they do sacrifice some discoverability in favor of a sexier minimalist look
When you bring an unpaired AirPods case close to a phone, all you need to do is open the lid.
A photorealistic visual will appear on screen explaining what to do next. At this point, guided by the visual, you need to push the button on the back.
If you can think of a simpler way, I’d give Apple a call.
Are you saying that she was pairing them with a non-Apple device?
In which case, fair enough perhaps, but it feels a tad unfair to put the burden of universal discovery for all host devices on Apple.
And is it really that un-discoverable? What would you do on any other Bluetooth device? You'd look for a button. What is there on the AirPods case? A button.
I still say: if you have a simpler idea, let's hear it.
Edit: and, I'm sure the AirPods come with a folded slip of paper in the box, as all Apple products do, explaining the very basics of how to get the thing working.
> it feels a tad unfair to put the burden of universal discovery for all host devices on Apple.
I guess, but I've always felt apple deliberately thwarts such efforts for product lock in
>And is it really that un-discoverable? What would you do on any other Bluetooth device? You'd look for a button. What is there on the AirPods case? A button.
Lol but like I said you also have to arbitrarily open the lid and place both airpods inside
> I guess, but I've always felt apple deliberately thwarts such efforts for product lock in
Deliberately thwarting efforts would be not having a button.
There's a button. Like every other Bluetooth headphone case. Push the button.
> Lol but like I said you also have to arbitrarily open the lid and place both airpods inside
Oh come now. In what scenario do you get handed an AirPods case and two loose AirPods and are expected to pair them? Is that what happened to your sister-in-law?
If you buy a new pair of AirPods, you should never have to do that unless you go out of your way to unpair them from your iCloud account. Also, you e over complicated it - just hold the button in the case until it’s reset, then open the lid and they will appear as new.
> Like all apple products they do sacrifice some discoverability in favor of a sexier minimalist look
And which Bluetooth headphones have a more ‘discoverable’ pairing mode?
> Why the hell can't you just tell the headphones to play from the phone and keep the laptop connected?
This is something that baffled me on Windows and MacOS, but I don't seem to experience on Linux/Android/iOS. Windows was particularly "greedy"; whenever you'd turn on your headphones it would attempt to steal the connection away (even booting other multipoint connections off). MacOS is slightly more graceful, but still hiccups when it initializes a new sound source and (for some godawful reason) launches iTunes for me. Thanks Apple.
On my FireTV and Linux desktop/laptop, they seem to have lazy-negotiation enabled by default. Turned-on devices will connect and acknowledge one another, but won't switch audio sources until the other device starts playing audio. I really think this ought to be the standard for all Bluetooth audio stacks.
(Note: this is a relatively recent development on the Linux side of things. Before PipeWire, it's Bluetooth audio stack was worse than Windows.)
It’s complicated, but basically, when audio is playing (I.e. new audio session) that’s when the BT headphones wake up. So you can get horrible initial delay (and missed audio in some configurations), unless you just broadcast a null signal to keep the connection alive.
I’m assuming that’s why all the popular USB “Bluetooth audio with aptX” all identify as an audio device and handle pairing etc. on their own. (Despite Windows’ stack having aptX support)
I've run into that before too, but I'm talking about the latency when an audio session is already running. There's a latency test in this review of the headphones I have: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/sony/wh-1000xm4-wi... It's actually worse than I remembered. The iOS latency is 38ms and the Windows latency is 5.5x longer at 212ms. It's bad enough that watching videos is very annoying because the sound is visibly out of sync, and if you look through the other rtings reviews, this is about average for Windows Bluetooth.
That's probably a large piece of it, considering Linux has a similar interface that would work just as well (MPRIS controls). I wouldn't be surprised if all of those implimentations used media data to determine connection priorities.
I haven't experienced the issue with iTunes starting on bluetooth connections, but some people pointed me to this project to deal with it: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
You can also set it to start something else (Spotify, whatever) instead
I'm personally just miffed that it's enabled by default. Reminds me of something Microsoft would do (Hey, I see you connected your headphones! Want to launch Groove Music?)
Yeah. I remember my reason for switching to AirPods Max.
My Sony xm3 kept connecting to the laptop in my backpack - which was asleep - when I was getting on my bike.
I had to unpair my phone and re-pair it to force it to "own" the headphones. It was such a pita.
That really was the biggest value add of the Apple headphones, and it works absolutely great. It almost (a 99.5%+ kind of almost) always connects to the device I want it to connect to, right away.
It's a pity though that they have the common issues of Bluetooth, and turning on the microphone immediately kills the sound quality... It's one of the cases where I'd appreciate them just using a proprietary protocol. The headphones basically only work well with Apple devices anyway.
I had the Bose QC35 IIs and had the exact same issue. My work laptop was in sleep mode and still they decided to keep connecting to it.
I had to either open up the mobile app, wait for it to do its stuff and force a disconnect with the laptop OR get up, walk to the laptop, open it, turn off BT and close it again.
Ordered AirPods Max and I've had pretty much zero issues since.
I can walk from my computer to the TV and Apple TV will prompt me to connect to it with one button. I can grab my phone, walk away and the headphones will move to the phone automatically. Magic.
For non apple headphones I just hold the power button when I turn them on so they go into pairing move and pair again to the device. (Mainly switching between laptops) I wish apple did over ear headphones for like $200 instead of $600.
I have two versions of Sennheiser Momentum, but I decided to “trial” the AirPods Max by buying them with the intent of return, because they’re over half a grand $$$.
After literally minutes of use, the thought to return them evaporated just as quickly.
Pretty much all because of the seamless connection.
To be fair to the Sennheisers, they are durable: they survived contact with a wall at least twice.
I have an XM3 also. Only occasionally does it try to pair with the wrong device. That might have a lot to do with me turning bluetooth off on unused devices though. However, in the rare instances where it does connect to the wrong device, I hold the power button down which forces it to enter pairing mode and disconnect. And almost always, the device I want to use will then connect. It hasn't happened often enough to be an annoyance yet.
I have XM3. Hold power for 7 seconds and it will enter pairing mode. Fairly minor issue for me as I mostly use them for coding. Amazing headphones otherwise.
What bugs me about this UI is that there is another button on the headphones that I NEVER use. Why can't that just be the pairing button? Or maybe their top-of-the-line headphone model could have... Three buttons?
Also if you have a phone with NFC (or possibly any device with NFC other than an iPhone) you can just slide the device over the NFC logo and it will switch over to being paired with that device. Really convenient when switching from my computer to phone.
Bluesnooze[1] mostly resolved this issue for me on MacOS. I also own the XM3s, as well as non-Apple Bluetooth earbuds (Edifier X3), neither of which support multiple devices.
>Bluesnooze prevents your sleeping Mac from connecting to Bluetooth accessories.
I generally just put my XM3s straight into pairing mode and then select them from the device I want to use them on. Otherwise they are bound to pair to the wrong device, usually my sleeping mbp.
Apple creates the problem by leaving bluetooth on in the first place. When I close the lid on my laptop, no power, no external monitor, I would expect it to be sleeping. This is also a security issue. Thieves can detect that you left your laptop in the trunk of your car.
It’s upsetting how (non-AirPods) device switching — even Bluetooth 5 multipoint — is still just meh.
Some devices accept connect requests and gracefully disconnect from the current device (good but manual), some just ignore them, some don’t gracefully disconnect causing the original device to ping-pong reconnect, etc. And “real” BT5 multipoint can also break if an app happens to use “phone call” audio priority, and you get yanked off the second device.
The only device I have that does it well (and with non-Apple platforms) is an Xbox Wireless Headset, and that’s only because it literally has 2 wireless audio chipsets connected at the same time: Xbox Audio and Bluetooth. Sadly that means it’s also 2x the power and 0.5x the battery life.
But yeah, switching from iPhone to iPad with AirPods is really nice. I wish I had that on Windows (without MagicPods).
If you have apple devices maybe. An acquaintance purchased a pair that was solely linked to his windows laptop and had a miriad of issues. This persisted with different device and was finally resolved when he switched to a different pair of Bluetooth headphones.
The issues you're describing sound more Bluetooth related, and given the above experience I suspect the experience would be just as bad on non apple devices.
I guess "don't suck" is relative, but my AirPods failed after about a year. It's a coin toss now whether their microphone will work or not, rendering them unreliable and worse than useless for the work Zoom meetings I bought them for. Maybe I'm old-fashioned for expecting any piece of technology to last longer than a year.
Buy devices like that with a credit card that has warranty extension. Homeowners and renters insurances sometimes also include extended warranties. Applecare is another option, of course.
This is my complaint as well. On multiple pairs, the microphone becomes unreliable after some number of months. If I'm lucky, it's within the warranty period.
And to add insult to injury, your listening audio quality also gets degraded whenever it's on... So it's a lose-lose for both sides every time you use it.
My main complaint is that OSX has no setting to completely disable it.
I have to manually switch to the Macbook internal mic basically before every call.
I wish they would just sell a model without the crappy mic. I would even happily pay less for it.
The audio quality thing is a Bluetooth limitation AFAIK. There is no standard which lets you stream high quality audio bidirectionally, their high fidelity mode has only one audio stream going to the headphones.
I fly often. Just the idea of always getting wired headphones tangled in something is a pain.
I use Beats Flex headphones though. It’s a lot easier to just hang them around my neck and they don’t fall to the floor if they fall out my ear. They also last 12 hours.
Wired headphones are especially a pain when running,
I just got a brand new phone with an Aux port, I have 1 set of $2 earphones at each desk, in each car, next to my running stuff, gym bag, backpack, etc ...
I had to pay a premium for a phone with an aux port, but extra features are worth it to me.
I always had issue with in-ear phones passing some of the friction down the ear canal. Sure over the ear ie kosses work flawlessly, but then I have to carry usb-3.5mm conversion kit all the time (and keep forgetting and then having useless headphones), no premium non-chinese phone with good camera has the port anymore. And I have small kids, so good, I mean the best on the market camera always with me is a must I will thank myself later for, as does/will all my close family.
As for airpods, I don't get the hype, but thats mostly true for any Apple announcements apart from their CPUs. Yet they have the capitalization they have so they are doing something right, athough it feels its mostly marketing and "we are US" which means nothing to Europeans for good reasons unfortunately... I prefer higher quality customizable phone who respects me as user, higher quality cameras on it, higher quality in ear buds (even relatively mediocre Sennehiser Momentum 2 TW sounds miles and lightyears better, last longer, use HD codecs with anything ever created that has it too, which now means tons of devices, and pair flawlessly so far). I saw first hand my boss struggling and failing repeatedly to even pair his (back then) brand new Iphone 13 pro max pair with out-of-box charged airpods pro. WTFs all around the office, he was so ashamed... It was not the last time we all saw it from front seats, still happens quite regularly.
My wife has Garmin fenix watch. Apple watch are a bad joke if you have it for something else than showing off how "in" you are and not an "old boring fart", which seems mostly marketing/sales guys these days.
My wife, based on my recent recommendation which I am beginning to regret, just bought iphone 13 mini. Battery life is proper meh, seriously I expected better based on what online world says. The device with useless notch is fugly as hell, thick, heavy, screen has huge black borders - it looks like cheap chinese phone from cca 2015. OK, whatever, quality must be inside, and some is, some isn't.
You can't have a fucking unlocking pattern, because Apple knows better what you need, and you should learn what you actually want. Because 'security', so either full Face ID which she finds no-go because its her opinion and I respect it (and so should Apple), or some 6-digits idiotic code for every fucking unlock which is plain stupid and arrogant, or completely unsecured phone. No pattern draw like every other sane device since 2015 unless you want to straight jailbreak whole device and lose all warranty.
Fuck you Apple, I really, truly expected more from your devices in 2022, and so did my wife. Its not about how many things you get right (there are plenty of devices who get many things right), but where you fail hurts, especially when one is used to basic things working for many, many years.
At least resale value is quite good, especially when Apple decided to not continue their smallest line for whatever stupid reasons so this is last of the line, with A15 chip. Maybe she will eventually start liking it, but man I truly expected more from Apple since right now Samsungs seem a much better offer for people like her, if you are not counting pennies on resales
My "sleep headphones" start chanting "battery low" every 20 seconds when the battery drops too low, which inevitably happens after I'm asleep. Who thought that was a good idea?
I'll just chime in and say that while I'm reasonably satisfied with my Airpods Pro, I've been pretty happy with much cheaper Bluetooth wired (i.e. connected buds) earphones -- the noise canceling is nice but I don't depend on it. A couple months ago I bought Airpod Pros on sale for my mom. And it's the one gadget gift, out of countless that I've bought her, that I've actually seen her regularly use. Not only that, but she'll get pretty annoyed when something goes temporarily wrong with them (e.g. foam tips fall out, case fails to charge), rather than give up on them like any other superfluous accessory.
The gadgets I've bought my mom that she's neglected and forgotten include: PC and Mac laptops, her iPhone (in lieu of getting her another Android), Apple Watch, and of course, various kinds of headphones, bluetooth and wired.
She's a pretty big luddite and I honestly had never really seen her use her iphone for much other than talking and texting -- e.g. when she's lost in the city, she will ask every random stranger for help and never think to use the phone GPS. But since she took to using the Airpods, it's opened up all the (obvious) possibilities of the phone as portable entertainment device.
Sorry if all this sounds like shilling for the Airpods (again, I'm personally meh on them and will likely try out Anker's offerings if I need to replace mine) -- it's just this comment thread triggered in me the pleasant experience I've had with it as a Mother's day gifter.
This was why I originally loved my airpods pro. Then it started going random and they no longer would connect to the device I expect. Much of the problem is that for some reason even if the laptop lid is closed apple's laptop still connect to your headphones. Right now my bose work better than the apple stuff, they connect to my laptop and headphones and music plays out of which ever one is going at the time.
Yup. Unfortunately every other Bluetooth headphones suck when it comes to connectivity and stable playing. Been using Airpods Max for a year and never had a connection issue.
I ended up giving my airpod pros to my partner. I found both the connectivity and sound quality (as well as noise canceling) much better on my Sony WF-1000MX4s.
The WF-1000MX4s are absolutely PERFECT with the sole exception of the non-tactile controls. If they replaced the touch sensors with actual buttons, they would be the best earbuds on the market.
I have a pair, but haven't used too many gestures, since it seems somewhat limited. I was very surprised that you cant even accept/reject a call with a gesture. Just curious, why would you get buttons instead of sensors?
> Just curious, why would you get buttons instead of sensors?
Two things:
1. Long hair. If your hair is in the way, you have to brush it away before the sensors will correctly register your input.
2. Beanies. If you wear an acrylic beanie (due to the aforementioned long hair), there is enough capacitance detected in contact with the material to generate spurious, and unwanted, inputs.
I have seven devices that I use my AirPods with - an iPhone, iPad, Watch, computer, and two AppleTVs. Once I paired them with one device, they are automatically paired with every device connected to my AppleID. They switch seamlessly without me having to do a thing.
I also don’t have to decipher beeps to change settings. I can change anything about them visually from any of my devices.
It's not like other bluetooth headphones can do this. My Jabra Elite won't work with their own app half the time on devices that are officially supported!
Of course they can't do the same auto connection, but in my experience airpods work at least as well with non-apple devices as any other Bluetooth headphones.
> but in my experience airpods work at least as well with non-apple devices as any other Bluetooth headphones.
Ding ding ding... Of course they do - and that's my point.
They're moderately nice on apple if you're entirely on that ecosystem, and utterly the same on everything else (frankly - I think they're actually much worse than some of the nicer headphones you can get, but that's not bluetooth related at all).
You mean you can pair to one of your devices and it will automatically show up and paid to every other device you possess without having to do anything?
I'm no longer sure what you're talking about. I am responding to this point:
> "Unfortunately every other Bluetooth headphones suck when it comes to connectivity and stable playing."
and it's complete rubbish. The vast majority of high end bluetooth headsets work just fine (some are even FAR better in terms of battery life, comfort, and range - with no stability issues at all)
I'm glad you get a slightly improved experience when you stay in your walled garden, but that has zilch to do with my point - I'm not in that garden.
So your response of "Well it works ok if you [do this thing you're not doing]" is mostly a tangent that's not relevant.
And yet I've had problems with every AirPod I've owned (Normal, Pro, and Max) and at this point, with the issues with the Max, I'm fed up. It's awful, and for the price I've paid, I should not be having these issues.
Same here, so many issues that always led to dead earphones after <18 months.
I won't be buying any more Apple headphones after my current Airpods Pro dies (already quite unreliable charging in the case, so unless I check and place it down gently I'm likely to come back and find it out of battery from one of the earpieces having been on the whole time).
I only stuck with airpods this long because their bluetooth functionality really is great especially when I was in a little apartment with an Apple TV as well as my phone. But they're really disappointingly unreliable, badly overpriced, and Apple support around them is always terrible (in my experience in the UK).
This feature _alone_ made me buy the 1st generation AirPods Pro once I got an Apple Watch. They really hook you into that ecosystem! ;-) In all seriousness, these are the best-sounding and most reliable earbud headphones I've ever owned. I hear the Beats Pro are a little better sound bass-wise, but I bet that tech will be in the new generation of the AirPods Pro as well.
The fact that my AirPods can move between my multiple computers, phone, watch, and even television relatively easily is just amazing. It goes to show how hard this problem was to solve, though, since Apple had to literally invent their own processor to make this work.
I had a couple of airpods as my daily driver and was pretty surprised of how little they suck, but a couple of months ago, I bought some shitty headband with bluetooth headphones which is advertised as running gear. I actually bought it to sleep covering my eyes with the headband and put some white noise, and since they costed 20 bucks that’s all that was asking from them.
So I was greatly surprised because they sound pretty decent, and they are able to pair on several devices, automatically switching, keeping the annoyance on a pretty low level, you still need to turn them on by long pressing a button and they still emit annoying sound when battery is low for a lot of time, but since they were just shitty 20 bucks generic gear I was thinking that maybe companies have finally solved Bluetooth.
Time skip to 5 days ago, I lost my airpods and thought to give non apple headset a chance, since I’m more into over ear stuff. So I bought a pair of not so cheap sony headphones… and yesterday I returned them. Bluetooth still sucks and maybe the generic ones were just a lucky hit. It seems like I will get a new set of airpods.
That would be a hell of a feature. I am not sure Bluetooth is up to the task, though, I don’t think it handles simultaneous connexions to a single device very well.
a lot of the seamlessness comes from (a) airpods being designed to work with iOS and, for the last few years, the H1/H2 chips. BT by itself is really troublesome and (b) apple being able to spend a lot of time and money on design. for most, headphones are extremely low margin; before the airpods, heaphones over $200 were also really low volume.
Uninstall the Bose app? I never installed it, and my Bose QC35ii headphones work better than my airpod pros. With the airpods, they will almost always bind to the wrong device until I go into settings and force a connection. The Bose connects to both, and actually works..
I use and like the Bose wireless noise cancelling earbuds as well. Though have never had airpods. These have lasted me two years of daily use. They just announced preorders for a new revision.
Sony WH-1000XM4s I'd say are the most comparable in terms of ease of use and pairing well. I haven't had any dropout problems with them like I have with others (including my gen 3 airpods). I use my AirPods for my phone/tablet and my XM4s with my 2020 Mac Mini.
I've daily driven the xm3's and the xm4's for years and their multi-device support is so bad that it literally makes it worse than not having it at all. I explicitly disable multi-device support for them because the headphones will randomly jump around for seemingly no reason at all making them entirely unusable. Apple's bluetooth headphones, assuming you are living exclusively inside of the apple ecosystem, are the only bluetooth headphones that have multi-device support that is actually functional.
If you chain your xm4's to a single device then they work pretty much flawlessly but that is also way less convenient.
I disable the multiconnect on my XM4s as well. They switch based on what's currently sending signal, but one has to stop broadcasting first. It disables LDAC support anyway if you use that. I was torn between the XM4s and Airpods Max but ultimately am tired of picking up more Lightning connector devices. I will no longer purchase things that don't charge via USB-C. I use my XM4s daily as well for over 1.5 years now (Jan 2021), and have to be in my top 5 things I've bought in my life that I feel were worth every dollar. I'll be buying the XM5s on launch day.
I also had a pair of Airpods Pros, they're so close to being the perfect single pair of headphones for everyone. But they hurt my ear canal with anything but the small tips, and then they wouldn't seal.
> "I disable the multiconnect on my XM4s as well."
I have the XM4s also. I've also had problems with switching devices at times, notably with certain Mac apps that would stay connected (sending silent audio?) and prevent them from switching to the other device. But this seems to have been resolved with recent macOS updates (or maybe app updates?), and I haven't had the issue for a while.
In any case, any occasional pain caused by multiple device connections is vastly less than the pain of having to manually switch devices... every. single. time. I had the XM3s before, which had no multiple device support, and it was horrible!
> "I've daily driven the xm3's and the xm4's for years and their multi-device support is so bad that it literally makes it worse than not having it at all."
Disagree. I had the XM3s before and it was a constant pain having to manually switch devices. Sure, it's not 100% perfect, but the XM4s seamlessly switching between my laptop and phone is a dream by comparison.
I have some oneplus ones that cost me 1/4 as much and are just as good as my set that died (airpods) the initial (no) setup (needed) was the only advantage for apple's product. People give apple a bit too much credit for this stuff.
After moving from Airpods (not Pros) to some Sennheiser MTW2s, I want to go back to Airpods. My Airpods worked and were reliable. These Sennheisers on the other hand have needed one of them to be replaced due to a stuck button, and now need the other one replaced due to it outright dying out of nowhere, but Sennheiser support is basically nonexistent right now. I never needed an Airpod replaced, or any other kind of support. They just worked and were reliable, and honestly, stayed in my ears SO much better.
I love my HD600s but I will never buy another wireless Sennheiser product. They're garbage. Apple definitely did this one right.
I think you’re talking about the QC 35 ii/45. The same switch you use to turn them on can be used to switch devices. Press it once, and the voice prompt will say what it is currently connected to. Keep pressing it and it’ll start listing other previously connected devices each time you press it. Once it says “hardwaregeeks iPhone” stop clicking the switch and it’ll switch to that. It’s actually pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it. Also you can disconnect the second device by connecting the first device “twice”. Hope this helps.
Yeah, I've used a lot of headphones (Sony, Microsoft, Sennheiser, Bose), and honestly the Bose are some of the better one. Also love the hardware buttons, touch ones are always a PITA. Every time I go to double tap to go forward, it registers 1 tap and pauses, so I have to tap again to unpause, and double tap again. They also act out in the winter cold.
IMO there's been Bluetooth headphones that don't suck (aside from multi devices, which I don't care about personally) way before Airpods. Perhaps this was many peoples' introductions to quality Bluetooth headphones though, as the ones I like tend to be in the 100-150 range.
I still much prefer U-shaped headphones worn over the neck, much less hassle, more battery, better sound. Samsung's entry in that category was very good, I hope they keep putting those out and not go all in on airpod type products.
QC35 here and have been surprised how much better they were then the Sony equivalent at the time. If I stop audio on my iPhone, then play audio on my iPad - the headphones switch automatically.
In saying that, it seems to fail with more then 2 devices despite being able to remember 3 devices at a time.
If I have the headphones connected to iPhone and iPad, then want to use my laptop I will normally need to switch bluetooth off on the mobile devices before turning on the headphones - allowing it to connect to the computer. A little annoying but still faster then messing around with cables.
Honestly I've always felt they do suck, I've owned 6 pairs and they all have had connectivity or charging issues of some sort. Personally my bose set suck less but I hate the form factor. The simple airpod that doesn't have a rubber gasket jammed in your ear has me coming back buying them again and again
> only to realize that the headphones think my laptop is playing,
Some browser tab has some media playing that is keeping hold of the BT audio connection.
Same reason why laptops, neither my Windows or Mac laptops, can figure out when they should go to sleep. Some broken browser tabs keeps the CPU at max speed, and turns on the GPU.
My Jlab headphones have a solution -- whenever they turn on they are in "pairing" mode as if they are brand new. They seem to figure out when they find an existing paired device, but if not they are discoverable every time.
Still can't pair to two devices without dueling but just drop it form one.
I would have completely agreed until I tried to pair my AirPods with Linux; they're the only device I've had trouble pairing with my Linux desktop. Even so, I mostly agree. What's going on at all the other companies that cannot get this right?
The main selling point of AirPods Pro is replaceable tips and noise cancelling. People say competitors have mostly caught up in Bluetooth quality, but it’s the only noise cancelling I’ve used without the sucking feeling that hurts your ears.
Interestingly enough that's what I miss about my Bose. The in-ear QuietComfort earbuds I had were _far_ more comfortable (and stable in my ear) and the noise cancelling was so far ahead of my AirPods Pro that you wouldn't even consider the two devices in the same genre.
Honestly I still feel they forced the success by removing the headphone jack. I know the market is 'proving me wrong' but a market without a choice isn't purely voting with their dollars but voting with a single option.
Yup! The killer feature just got better. They claim noise cancellation is better and there’s a way yo adjust volume up and down on the stems. So dope. And more battery life! These are insta buys for us.
Take away the most convenient interface (the 3.5mm mini plug) that works on all devices equally and replace it with something you can do better than anyone else.
They just don't fit and stay inside a significant minority of people's ears when they are moving - including mine - necessitating the need of third party Ear Hooks - which I have to keep taking out and putting on while charging. Which is a pain.
I went back to Bose.
I will give apple full marks for stupendous glitz and marketing though. Any other company would have been slaughtered in the feedback. The reality distortion field has been well-inherited by the company.
I'm hoping Apple will keep making Beats Powerbeats Pro and keep them kinda up to date. I don't really want to buy headphones without ear hooks to find out whether they fall out when I run.
I love my AirPod Pros, but I hate how unreliable charging in the case is. The AirPods will often think they are out of the case, when they are, and discharge themselves, while connected to my phone/laptop.
Then they will re-charge, emptying the battery in the case, so I will end up with a dead pair of AirPods after a couple of days in the pocket, not using them.
I guess their tolerances are too tight, hopefully something that will be fixed with AirPod Pro 2, it is a big annoyance.
Some times they will also not pick up that they are being put into my ears, so I have to put them back in the case a couple of times for them to react. Really annoying too.
This issue is very bad, and I've had it on all 3 of the sets of AirPods pros I have owned.
Another issue I have had on all three is that the noise cancelling degrades over time. When you get a new set, it's kind of night and day how good they are at first. After about 6 months I would say that they noticably suck compared to how they are when you first get them, and they just continue to degrade over time.
My guess is just wax and gunk getting to the external microphone mesh over time, but there is no way to deal with it that I can see short of buying another pair.
Apple has covered these sound issues for me, every time they have apparently diagnosed that the issue matches my complaint. But I've had to make 5 warranty claims for this in just over 2 years of ownership! I have only made 8 warranty claims ever in my life, over 60% of my lifetime warranty claims have been for one airpods pro purchase!
Something is seriously up with the design of the original pros. I hope these issues have been resolved for 2nd gen.
This might be because each were sold with the old firmware (better noise cancellation), and eventually got updated to the new firmware (better battery).
I've had this happen three times now in 2.5 years. The first symptom is that the noise cancellation gets worse. Some months after that, you start hearing a crackling sound, particularly while speaking, or if you adjust the airpod in your ear.
I believe what is happening is that earwax is building up in the grille on the top inside of the airpod which houses a microphone. As the sound from this microphone gets more distorted, the noise cancellation gradually stops working. You can also see this because after you've had the airpods a couple of months you will never get the ear tip fit test to pass.
Every time this has gotten to the crackling stage, Apple has replaced these without charge, even though I didn't have Applecare. They have some sort of machine in the back of the store that they use to test them, and if your set fails the test, they give you a new pair (sometimes just one).
Wow, thanks for sharing this. I've had mine for 9 months and just started hearing the crackling noise. I didn't know this was a widespread issue or that Apple addresses it so easily. Fingers crossed...
It's not firmware - the issue develops very gradually rather than all at once. This is part of what makes it such an insidious fault, like the boiling frog analogy.
Make no mistake, the issue is in no way resolved on new manufactured 1st gen pros. New manufactured stock are more likely to be covered by the original purchase warranty and so there is less pressure on Apple to extend support.
I recently had my pre-Oct 2020 pros replaced with new manufactured stock under this support program. Within less than a month the replacements developed the same sound issues, supported by Apple's diagnosis and another free replacement.
I don't think I use them in an unusual way - I don't even wear them during exercise. There is just something inherently flawed in the design that causes the sound quality to subtly degrade by a significant amount.
Glad to know that I’m not the only one with this issue. I’m already on my third replacement pair, but the problem keeps coming back. In my case when it fails the noise cancelling amplifies low frequency noise.
> My guess is just wax and gunk getting to the external microphone mesh
I’ve came to the same hypothesis and wiped my second replacement pair down with alcohol every other day, the problem STILL eventually manifests.
> My guess is just wax and gunk getting to the external microphone mesh over time, but there is no way to deal with it
I haven't tried this myself but someone on reddit mentioned you can use blu tack (sp?) - press it on the external mics, then pull off to clean it. I imagine it works but as I said, haven't tried it personally.
I have tried it (and done this more than once) -- it does work, but it's not quite that easy. You have to fashion the tack into various shapes to get into the crevices, and it has taken the better part of an hour to be satisfied with the result each time. Still worth it.
The fix is to clean the stems with alcohol. That will get rid of the corrosion building on the contacts.
Also, as a preventative measure, before putting them in the case, make absolutely sure they are dry.
As a runner, mine tend to get sweaty and if I put them in the case with even just a hint of salty sweat on them, the current flowing through the connector will corrode it very quickly, necessitating the cleaning next time.
They said there will now be (I assume, optional) audio cues when you put your AirPods in the case to let you know they are charging, not sure if that will help or not. I agree with you though. It seems like it would be a really easy thing for Apple to check if 1 headphone was in the case (that it knew of) and the other wasn't but also that you weren't playing music/audio so it could warn you. I added a battery widget to my home screen to see if they are both charging. Thankfully this issue is rare-ish for me but when it does happen it's maddening.
I've had this issue too, and I think the root cause is that the physical connection between the AirPods and the case can be unreliable/spotty -- likely a light film buildup on the contacts.
I've had success from "massaging" the offending AirPods in a circle pattern while they're in the case -- which I think rubs the contacts together. Anyway, I haven't had the problem for some time now.
I had similar issues but found somewhat of a workaround.
What I have to do is first put the left AirPod Pro into the case, close the lid, then wait for the light to turn orange. If it doesn't turn orange, try re-seating it and it eventually will. Only after that happens can I then put in the right AirPod Pro and everything will properly charge and pair properly.
I have this same problem, have had the right one replaced under warranty and the entire set replaced under warranty, no luck. If I periodically clean the inside of the case with rubbing alcohol it helps mitigate the charging problem. Then I just end up in a world where left ear connects, right ear nothing... unpair, re-pair... right ear connects, left ear nothing... unpair, re-pair... I used to use them mostly for trail running and it would take me 10-15 minutes to get them functional before every run. Now I just skip them, too frustrating.
FWIW I've got Samsung Galaxy Buds that also suffer from a similar case charging issue [1]. Seems to me that it is a problem with the technology itself which hopefully companies will improve in next product iterations.
Made worse in my experience with M1 Macbook Pros keeping bluetooth connected/paired while closed/asleep (and so other devices can't connect to them), and the fact that Monterey got rid of the "paired" bluetooth system menu icon (it's always just the standard icon which doesn't change depending on paired status now), so it's now a bit more annoying to work out if things are paired or not, without clicking around in the menu.
There is a light. The problem is if only 1 is charging, you'll still see the "charging" light while the other slowly loses battery.
I've dealt with this occasionally, from what I suspect is some buildup on the contacts due to sweat on my headphones from running. I find taking a cotton swap with alcohol to clean off the contacts every so often solves the problem.
I have two devices I pair my AirPods with, one a work laptop and one a personal phone, using two different iCloud accounts. I also had the problems you describe.
I started disabling Bluetooth on my phone and now the AirPods don’t seem to have any issues. Not sure if it was related, but maybe worth trying.
I have the same issue(s) on my third set of earpods and second case. It has gotten to a point where I don't want to buy another set of Apple headphones because I'm afraid this will happen again one day or another.
I had similar issues when I used them while working out and was sweaty. Sometimes, in the case, they wouldn't fully make contact and didn't charge. Cleaning them off periodically fixed that for me.
I actually have a similar issue. I gave them a good clean last week which seems to have helped a bit... Very seriously considering upgrading to the new generation sometime soon.
Does anyone else have problems with the current AirPods Pro dramatically prioritizing ambient noise (cars passing on the street, washing of dishes, etc.) over your own voice when on phone calls? This is a major problem with two pairs I've owned and with those owned by my girlfriend, brother, and pretty much everyone else who would humor me and test it out. My girlfriend and I have taken our sets to multiple different Apple Stores for diagnostics and even had one or both of the AirPods (and cases) replaced to no avail.
I kinda feel like I'm going nuts because I can't find many people talking about this online and it renders them effectively useless for calls when anywhere but sitting at home in a quiet room.
You're not nuts - this has been a huge issue for a long time. It's what makes taking calls outside on a street so frustrating (or even turning on the faucet to wash a mug while on a call).
It's weird because this wasn't an issue with the initial versions of AirPods firmware. But somewhere along the line, they tuned the firmware to introduce the issue you're describing.
Oh wow, this is really helpful. I did a quick test and this seems to make a big difference!
For anyone reading: if you're on a call, pull down on control center and there's a Mic Mode setting that appears that you can change to "Voice Isolation". This setting won't be there if you're not in a call.
I have a problem where Voice Isolation partially cancels out my voice, especially when background noise is pronounced, and actually makes calling a worse experience for both parties. Whenever I'm on a call outside, with my AirPod Pro's, the person on the other end complains that Voice Isolation cancels out every other word. When I experiment between keeping Voice Isolation on or off, almost everyone I've tried this with prefers it off. It turns out filling in missing words takes more energy than understanding my voice with background noise.
I wish Voice Isolation could be pre-trained on our voices, similar to how Face ID pre-trains on your face. That way, the phone's software can know to recognize your voice and not cancel those out.
It's the worst when you're talking to someone with AirPods who is doing other tasks while talking to you, like chores around the house. The noise cancellation is perfect until some loud sharp noise then BAM your ear drums get blasted. As an end-user, though, I much prefer my AirPods to my Bose over-ears in almost all situations.
Yeah this is pretty standard behavior. The worst part is that the headphones cancel most of the background noise out while the mic magnifies it, so you think you're in a perfectly quiet space but everyone else on the call is wondering what's going on on your end.
Pretty much everyone at my company who has Airpods suffers from this, it seems particularly bad on Zoom for some reason (still happens on Google Meet, but less often).
Zoom's automatic gain adjustments aren't responsive enough in my experience. You can disable it and pick a manual level for mic input. But that's hardly a fix for this issue, of course.
This happens without headphones as well. Any ambient noise on a call triggers silencing that makes conversations almost impossible sometimes. Like my parents are outside and there's a light breeze and 80% of them speaking is muted.
Happens with normal phone microphone, worse with speakerphone, happens with my calls with my Bose headphones and my AirPod Pros.
It's a phone setting, I'd buy a case of beer for anybody who could show me how to turn off the noise suppression completely. It is clearly happening on iOS, not the headphones.
I've definitely experienced the ear-piercing scream of a siren on the other end only to be told by the person I'm talking to that the ambulance is like eight blocks away. I remember that as far back as my LG Chocolate.
But what AirPods are doing is either a dramatic escalation of that or something different altogether. Typically when I encounter this problem, I or the person I'm talking to will hang up and call back without AirPods, using the regular phone mic or speakerphone or whatever, and it will be significantly better if not completely resolved.
I think you're misunderstanding. This isn't an issue with noise cancelling or transparency mode. The issue is with the way the AirPods Pro mic picks up the user's dialogue (and surrounding noises) and relays/amplifies them to the person on the other end of a phone call.
For example:
Person A calls Person B. Person B answers using AirPods Pro. They begin talking. Person B decides to wash a dish in her sink while talking to Person A. Person A goes from hearing Person B's voice clearly to barely hearing it at all behind the seemingly amplified sound of the dish washing. Person B is none the wiser and doesn't understand why she has to keep repeating herself. Both parties hang up in frustration. Then they break up and enter simultaneous but separate downward spirals until neither can afford AirPods Pros anymore. Then they meet again and decide to talk on the phone. They hear each other clearly. Their lives improve. They can afford AirPods Pros again. The cycle repeats.
Adaptive Transparency is such a promising feature. I would love if transparency mode could eliminate the sound of noises like air conditioners, road noise, and construction while still being "transparent". It seems that, as of now, it's limited to loud noises only.
I hope it at least eliminates the hear-loss-causing pops that occur when you have loud, brief clicking noises like that of a bug zapper. For older models, you should never use the Airpods next to a bug zapper. I learned the hard way, in the form of tinnitus.
From the accessibility you can select to have booth transparency and noise reduction. You can also tune what the transparency passes through. It's not super sophisticated, but maybe it's a bit closer to what you want.
That doesn't work. I set my iPhone to cap sounds at 85db but I guess it doesn't cap the passthrough noise from transparency. In the case of the bug zapper, it actually amplifies it.
Seriously, I would love to have a chat with the product manager in charge. With over 6.2M call-minutes per minute and over 300M daily active users [1], how can "mute", the most important functionality in a video call (I would argue even more than disconnecting the call) still be missing?
Just a tiny dot that sets a mute/unmute flag on the mic, preferably with an audible cue. Don't even involve the phone, just mute it on the device itself. I know HSP/HFP don't support mute command but a device level option should be easy. Moreover Apple could, as it's done before, implement an Apple-to-Apple extension of either of these protocols.
If airpods had mute buttons, tons of people would complain about accidentally muting themselves. People already have mute functionality in the paired device's OS and the app they're using. Adding mute functionality to a third place just increases confusion. And worse: if you build it how you're suggesting (purely in-headphone, without notifying the paired device), people won't have any indication that they're muted other than a one-time audio cue. They'll end up toggling mute/unmute in Zoom and/or their device's OS, then assume that the headphones are broken. It's a UX nightmare.
Airpods is one of the invention that you don’t know you need it but when you buy it, you know it’s good and it just works seamlessly
It mentioned in the page that it’ll support high fidelity audio? Does this mean that they came up with new encoding for wireless transmission? Possibly something better than AAC?
My Airpods pro are the only consumer good I've purchased that on a dollar per utility basis, outranks the previous #1, my bicycle.
Before, it seemed silly to have $200 headphones that could fall out of your ears and disappear. The pros fixed that, and also to some degree liberated me from my phone. It's easy now to leave my phone across the house and take calls or ask Siri to play a specific podcast, song, or album. The range is incredible compared to other bluetooth headsets.
It's almost unbelievable that this is occurring in the same lifetime where I registered for college classes by touchtone on a landline.
I was a big airpods hater before I got them myself. And yeah, everything people complain about is real, they aren't perfect. But they are so good that I'd rather deal with every single one of the issues than go back to wired.
I'm just not sure if it's sheer hyperbole or people use the word completely differently.
For instance we don't talk about Sony inventing a new Walkman, or Lenovo inventing the Chromebook Duet. Or Tesla inventing the Model S. Does Apple invent new bluetooth earphones ?
Two major gripes with my current AirPods (not-Pro)…
1 - Battery life is less than half what it was when new. For $160, they should last more than 2 years, IMO. This applies to both the pods themselves and the case.
2 - I hate wireless ear buds for anything beyond sitting still. The risk of losing one half of a $160 pair is just too high. They might be ok walking, but not hiking, running, or cycling. The Pros might stay in better, but they’re even more expensive.
If Apple made a set of ear buds that had a strap, and a battery that lasted longer (not per play, but lifetime/# recharge cycles), I’d happily buy again. My wife has a set of Jaybird Tarah Pros that were cheaper, the battery longevity is better, and there’s no risk of losing one. Of course, Jaybird no longer makes these either. Ho Hum.
I won some Beats X from a contest at a conference in 2017, and used them on and off for the first two years. After that they were my daily drivers for any and all workouts.
They would get used at minimum 3 times a week for at least 2 hours, and then the last two years they would get used 7 times a week for at least 1.5 hours.
The last year or so I had to charge them every three workouts, so the battery was lasting 4.5 - 5 hours or so. They would still quick charge though, so 15 minutes of charging would be enough for a long workout.
About a month ago they stopped charging, no matter what I tried. I ended up buying the Beats Flex and the Powerbeats Pro. The Flex at $70 is a steal, and so far lasts about 12 hours before needing recharging. I've been using them almost daily around the house.
The Powerbeats Pro I've been using when heading to the gym when lifting, the lack of cord around the back makes them a better choice.
Anyway, the Beats Flex are holding up well over the last month or so... but the original Beats X definitely held their own too over many years of service!
I haven’t used an around-the-ear bud in many years. Do you think the Powerbeats Pro would work well under a bicycle helmet (where the straps typically pass just in front and just behind the ear)? I wonder if they have them open at the Apple shop - I could always swing by with a helmet and try.
Have you tested how well the Flex pairs with multiple devices? That’s one nice feature of the AirPods, at least within the Apple device ecosystem. At that price, they might be my best option, but I haven’t heard much about the chip they use (vs the H1 in the AirPods and up-market Beats).
The Beats Flex uses the Apple W1 chip, just like the Beats X that came before them. They connect/pair to all of my iCloud enabled devices and switch easily between them as well.
I have mine mostly switching between my Apple Watch and my iPhone, but occasionally my MacBook Pro as well.
Unless I’m missing something, the only offering from Beats is the Flex. The rest are either over-ear “studio” headphones or true wireless. The Flex might be ok, but it doesn’t use the same chipset as the AirPods, so I don’t know if it pairs as seamlessly between 3+ devices or if they’ll work as well for teleconferencing.
> The Flex might be ok, but it doesn’t use the same chipset as the AirPods
The Beats Flex actually do use the W1 chip, which was used in the first few AirPods, and a bunch of Beats devices. It supports ‘AirPod-style’ pair once/use on any Apple devices use.
I’ve used Comply foam tips and can run and workout without issue. You can squish them down and then they expand to fill your ear. Better sound isolation too.
I would love to buy AirPods one day, but I have just had too many experiences telling someone on Zoom they sound like they’re under water, and they say, “hold on a sec that’s my AirPods.”
If Apple could fix that issue, this would be a nice product!
Unfortunately I don’t know how Apple could ever signal to me that they had fixed that issue.
It's a limitation of Bluetooth's available bandwidth, especially with bidirectional audio. Apple added support for an improved speech codec, AAC-ELD, to the 3rd gen AirPods last year:
I'm not sure when AAC-ELD is used on the host side though. It probably depends on the version of macOS and maybe even which app is being used.
FWIW, macOS can be setup to use the AirPods for output and the built-in mic for input and that will likely result in better quality both for the person using AirPods and the person on the other end.
Personally, I still use a wired headset for my conference calls. Wires are a PITA but they Just Work.
> It's a limitation of Bluetooth's available bandwidth, especially with bidirectional audio.
I've often read this is the problem, but I don't buy it.
BTLE is up to 1 megabit. A high-quality audio stream is typically up to 320 kbps compressed. Voice can be compressed as low as 64 kbps and still sound as if the person is standing right next to you.
That's still less than 400 kbps, well under the 1 mbps BTLE supports.
It's explained in the section on SCO at the link in my original comment:
> Bluetooth supports data rates of up to 3 MB/s and fully uncompressed stereo audio only needs about 1.4 MB/s. But, the 3 MB/s data rate is for an Asynchronous Connection Less (ACL) transfers under ideal circumstances. In practice, even 990 kb/s (what Sony’s LDAC codec uses) is not trivial to transmit reliably. But the Hands Free Profile doesn’t even use ACL, but Synchronous Connection Oriented (SCO) transfers. These have a fixed data rate of 64 kbit/s (bidirectional).
> Synchronous Connection Oriented (SCO) and its enhanced version Enhanced Synchronous Connection Oriented (eSCO) are the modes used for Bluetooth voice transmission. The mode allows you to transmit sound and voice strictly in order, with a symmetrical speed of sending and receiving, without waiting for confirmation of transmission and re-sending packets. This reduces the overall delay in the transmission of audio over the radio channel, but imposes serious restrictions on the amount of data transmitted per unit of time and adversely affects the quality of the audio. When this mode is used, both the voice from the microphone and the audio are transmitted to the headphones with the same quality.
You should also know that (as mh- points out), BTLE is an separate protocol that is not used for audio. Audio devices use Bluetooth classic. That's also explained at https://habr.com/en/post/456182/ in the "Bluetooth 5, Classic and Low Energy" section.
You make good points. There are certainly gaps in my knowledge of Bluetooth.
> But the Hands Free Profile doesn’t even use ACL, but Synchronous Connection Oriented (SCO) transfers. These have a fixed data rate of 64 kbit/s (bidirectional).
Why are we limited to HFP? Does the Bluetooth spec not allow forming two A2DP connections to establish bi-directional audio?
I apologize if your link answers these questions, but it's currently throwing a 504 Gateway Timeout.
I've done A/B tests with Airpods (gen2) and the built-in mic on my M1 iMac and people always say Airpods are better, but both are good.
I've noticed what you're saying with people on older (Apple) laptops. I wonder if there's a connection. Honestly, sometimes I could swear that people are using the built-in mic and not the Airpods, but they swear they are not.
I listened to a lot of mic testing a few months ago, frustrated by the AirPods Pro Gen 1 too. My conclusion was that all wireless earphone mics are pretty bad, and you’re not going to sound good unless you hold the phone up to your cheek or use a headset. But if you just want the best you can get in wireless earphones, I think the Jabra Elite 7 Pro and Sennhesier Momentum 3 are both a step up from the AirPods Pro Gen 1. They sound cheaper and let in more background noise, but they don’t have that underwater sound, parts of your voice disappearing, or sporadic background noise amplification, making them more intelligible and less stressful on a call.
Even just use the microphone on the macbook, its significantly better than the airpods mic and it doesn't cause the audio quality on your airpods to drop like you get when the mic is active.
Lots of people actually just have broken AirPods and the gen 1 Pro's in particular seem to have a lot of extremely common faults that surface. Like the mics just being completely blown out and crackling as people speak, even see it happening to people on the news who are using them.
I have AirPods Pro but I still use Jabra wired headset with mic for work and important video calls. No issues like devices stealing the Bluetooth away from each other, and voice sounds much better which can be important for people’s perception.
Correct. We rely on the courage of companies smarter than us to come up with the solutions to these problems, but sometimes they forget to fix the problems they're responsible for causing.
The max are basically useless. They sound okaish compared to headphones 4-6x their price, but they love to pair with anything around and the mic is non existent. It's the most enjoyable brutally frustrating experience ever.
regarding the "hold on a sec" issue, that's the Mac, not the AirPods
Every time I dial in with an iOS device it works flawlessly. If it's on the Mac, I have to log in to YouTube and play some random nonsense to make sure they're connected before I start the call, and even then (today), they sometimes fail.
Personalized Spatial Audio has me really excited (https://youtu.be/ux6zXguiqxM?t=2739). The idea is to map your ears / head with the depth camera of the iPhone, to create a personal profile.
10 years ago I played around with binaural microphones, the kind that you stick in your own ears to record the true sound profile. Closing your eyes and playing back these recordings is just incredible. You will be completely fooled and will not believe that these sounds are just played back.
If this personalized spatial audio stuff gets even close to this level of immersiveness, that would be outstanding. So cool for Apple to even attempt such a feature!
Nura measures otoacoustic emissions. Others in this space (Audeara et al) use audiometry. In all cases this is designed just to model the frequency response of your ears. This is then used to create a static filter that compensates for this.
Apple may still do something similar for base calibration but that's not the exciting bit. From the marketing material the depth camera is used to scan your face. This gives both the exact placement of your ears, full facial geometry and likely a model of your pinnae. With that info spatial audio could get terrifyingly good. It becomes possible to fully emulate how you perceive sound naturally, applying the same time differences, filtering and early reflections as you've been used to your entire life.
Nura is still going and are miles ahead of anything Apple are doing sound quality wise. I’ve got both the Nuraphones and the Nurabuds and listening to anything else in a similar price range is such a step down. You can also use Spatial on them if that’s your thing.
For anyone who runs with AirPod Pros I recommend "AirPod Pro Ear Hooks" that you can get on Amazon for like £10. They keep them in your ear really well.
No worries. I was considering buying another pair or headphones just to workout in, but all I really wanted was for my AirPod Pros not to come loose. These hooks work so well. Surprised Apple don't sell them.
I really want to buy a pair of AirPods, but I’ve been hesitant to because hearing in my left ear is seemingly slowly fading away and I think it was partly because I use to wear EarBuds at max volume all of the time when I was a teen.
I know Apple has a headphone safety feature which limits the maximum dB they’re outputting; Even then I always feel super guilty that I might be damaging my hearing further whenever I use headphones in general. It’s already damn near impossible for me to hear someone talking if I’m eating for instance, or if some other noise is even remotely overshadowing what I’m trying to listen to. Never fails to bring me down:(
With noise cancellation I find I never have to crank up the volume above low-medium. This is great as I also try to avoid damaging my hearing more.
The iPhone also has a widget in the control center that displays the current decibel number that the AirPods are outputting. I never go above the “green zone”. The volume is tracked in the Health app where you can see all historic data.
Finally the iPhone has an accessibility function where you can use apps to create perform a sound test, and then generate a specific frequency curve for your phone (maybe boost some frequency that you struggle to hear or increase the volume on one side etc).
Touch volume control removes my biggest pain point with the original. I might actually get two: one for my Apple devices and another for Windows/Android
I use them with my Pixel 5. They work fine. No spatial audio and no battery status for the case or headphones. You can get apps that unreliably show that info but they require excessive permissions and are loaded with ads. Occasionally the headphones won't connect or one headphone won't play audio. Toggling bluetooth or rebooting my phone is usually required at that point.
I got mine in February 2021, I would say that connection issues have improved since then through a couple firmware updates. But you can only install the firmware updates if you have an iphone/ipad/mac so thats another barrier.
Works well with Surface Book and Duo but Apple doesn’t officially support multipoint so it doesn’t have the semi-seamless sharing enabled for Apple devices
Personally the best features of my airpod pros are that they have never fallen out of my ears and I can wear them for 10+ hours straight without noticing them where other earbuds would get my ears sore after a couple hours.
Do they work as well with non apple products? No, but the apple integration isn't what makes them great imo.
Good to know they use computational algorithms to perform ANC! What would we do without the innovators at Apple…
In other news, still no support for lossless audio, and the charging port is still Lightning rather than USB-C. Seems like a good time to pick up the 1st gen Pros on discount
You don’t need lossless audio. Seriously. AAC is transparent in all the conditions you’d use these AirPods in. Lossless is a total gimmick and shame on Apple for ever enabling that 24bit nonsense.
You don’t have golden ears. You aren’t listening closely while walking around town. Noise cancellation removes some of the frequencies. Lossless would drain battery for literally no gain in quality.
Edit: as others have noted, these do feature the ability to receive lossless audio. You should disable it.
Ctrl-F “lossless”, “24”, “ALAC” on the tech specs page. No results.
I am no audiophile, and I don’t really care about lossless audio one way or the other, but it seems deceptive to plaster “Apple Lossless” all over the Apple Music app when no Apple headphones can play lossless audio. All the marketing talk about the audio improvements in the H2 chip seems designed to obscure this fact, and to compensate for the fact that the AirPods Pro 2 are technically inferior to other Bluetooth headphones that support lossless playback.
Judging a headphone by specific codec support just doesn't make sense. Support for acoustically transparent codecs is good enough. Nobody has every demonstrated an ability to reliably distinguish high bitrate mp3 or AAC from lossless.
There are still benefits to lossless from a preservation perspective, but for actually listening to music it really doesn't matter.
I agree it's totally deceptive, and unbecoming of Apple. And to correct my earlier statement, Apple makes no claim that these support lossless. Which means, basically, you're stuck with their $9 DAC if you want lossless (though that little thing is surprisingly good).
I want to get them but reliability is a big concern. Everyone in my family has had problems with our first gen pros. Mine started developing crackling issues. During the pandemic I remember hearing that it was a known problem and could be fixed at the Apple store, but all of the stores were closed. I put off bringing them in until later. I finally got around to it this past week as the issue has grown a lot worse recently, and they said it is indeed a manufacturer defect, my AirPods are now out of warranty, and it will cost $180 to repair them. They then encouraged me to just buy a new pair given the high repair price.
That just rubs me the wrong way. They spent a good amount of time during the conference today highlighting their commitment to the environment yet are incentivizing that I purchase a new set. If these ones demonstrate stronger reliability and get USB C a year from now, I'll definitely consider them.
It might be worth giving the Apple Store or online support another shot.
I was in basically the exact same position a month ago (pros bought launch week, very out of warranty, known crackling issue) and they replaced the ear pieces (but not the case) without question or hesitation.
If you bought them before October 2020, they qualify for the recall program and should be replaced for free. If you complain loudly enough maybe they will replace them for free anyway even if not covered (did so for mine).
Ahh I didn't know that! The problem was nonexistent for me during that period, so it wasn't a priority to "fix" my working product. The issue has become much more pronounced in the period since the warranty expired. Lesson learned: bring in the working product if there's a known recall regardless of if it's fine at the moment. Won't let that happen again.
This thread has been eye opening. I’ll check out online support and see if that’s better than in person. In person is a lot stingier now than it was 5 years back.
These will be an insta-buy for me. I've loved my AirPods Pro but the battery life has fallen from when I first got them. I knew that would be the case and I'm not mad about it. I'm excited for the touch control on these as well as the better ANC. Also the case having Find My support will be very nice. I'll finally get the MagSafe case as well since that came out later and I never upgraded.
This is my problem with wireless headphones. They’re cool but basically disposable when the battery degrades, which happens fast because of the usage pattern. Seems like an awful waste, I’ve gone back to wired. They will last me decades.
Ehh, I've used these without fail almost every day I've owned them, just shy of 3 years, for often 4+ hours a day. They feel magical, they work really well, and I love always having them in my pocket (and they never get tangled). So for me they were a really good return on investment. I tried to go back to wired after I lost my original AirPods (not pro) years ago and bought new AirPods within a week after going crazy dealing with the wires (getting caught on things, getting tangled, having to run them up my shirt and even then having them sometimes pull on my ears, etc).
At the end of the day it comes down to what your time/enjoyment is worth, for myself $250/3 years is an easy choice but I get that it's not for everyone. Also I've never had wired headphones last more than a year or 2 (at least the ones I carried with me everywhere), 10's of years seems like a stretch unless we are talking about over the ear headphones or similar and those have a ton of downsides compared to something that can fit in your pocket.
I call bull on this -- the plastic halves of the earbud casings are ultrasonically sealed together; you have to break them apart to get at the guts (and IIRC the battery is also soldered in). Just look up the iFixit teardown; they're completely unrepairable. My bet is, they are just swapping them out with refurbs and writing off the loss against their AppleCare earnings.
They are absolutely just giving you new ones. Id suggest it's largely possible because the profit margins are quite high on them so giving you new ones is way cheaper than the retail price.
The one thing that would have made me upgrade is the promise that I could use the Pros with my Mac on a Teams/Zoom cal and not sound like I was talking on a 1970s landline.
What's worse is that their boss is bad at their job. I sold phones in retail for one year and in that time I learned feature, function, benefit. I think some of these VPs should go back to school.
I disagree, I don't usually hear hertz as a unit outside of display refresh rates. If they had said "The watch scans for crash events at 3000 hertz" it would sound strange and incorrect to me year.
And an always-on display being able to refresh at 1 hertz is a selling point and a good thing, no?
Not to say that this would be a good idea, or that anyone does headphones this way, but you could implement PID control with analog circuits. Capacitors, resistors, and Op-amps.
I'm still not convinced that Bluetooth earbuds are safe, and yes, I'm aware they don't produce ionizing radiation. No one here is concerned about having them in your ear canal for hours every day for years is essentially no worse than wearing a hat that keeps your head equally warm? What is the most convincing, clear evidence of a lack of long term health issues?
Just to be clear, are you suggesting that wearing a hat causes some sort of damage to one's health? And further than that, a hat that kept one's head as warm as two one inch pieces of plastic?
Obviously I don't have data to back it up, but I can't imagine even gluing a pair of AirPods to one's face for one's entire life would make any significant impact on lifespan. Other than maybe all the glue.
EDIT: And if you're experiencing excessive heat from earbuds (which I would say would be essentially any amount of heat - they shouldn't really put out any noticeable heat), you probably have severely faulty earbuds and should get them replaced.
I doubt hat wearing is physically harmful, but it does warm your head, and that's one of the claims against Bluetooth headsets. I find that a non-danger. But it may not be the only one, e.g., voltage-gated calcium channels. I haven't looked into and wondered if anyone wanted to chime in with the latest.
Plenty of RF signals are going through your body right now -- what makes bluetooth here particularly dangerous in your opinion?
Concerns come after some form of adverse reaction. I personally only have them in for 2-3 hours per day, and don't think of the bluetooth much.
We won't have long term data for years, and that's just the reality. Even with long-term data, trying to hone in specific health problems to Airpods or similar devices will be incredibly difficult.
> What is the most convincing, clear evidence of a lack of long term health issues?
The same convincing, clear evidence we have of a lack of long term health issues from eating a gluten free diet. There will never be any that will satisfy you, as one can’t prove a negative.
If your concern isn't radiation, then is there a specific bluetooth issue or is it in-ear headphones in general? Certainly anything that can cause a build-up of earwax can result in other issues. So if you're wearing them for long stretches daily, there's a potential issue if these devices go deep enough (I don't know if they do).
I adore the OG airpods, but the pro model disappointed me bigtime. They are always falling out of my ears, specifically my left ear which seems to be a little bit smaller. I tried aftermarket tips to no avail.
I still use v2 and got an extra one in case that model will disappear from stores. The tap interface is so much easier to use than the actual button press
I had the same experience, loved my AirPods but the Pros never fit well and the left side would fall out, returned within the 14-day return period.
The 2nd gen AirPods have a better UI, too: wearing mittens, with a hat over the AirPods, I could tap them to play/pause or skip tracks. This is impossible on newer AirPods. Siri is good, but isn’t as quick or convenient as a physical interface.
Honest question: how can folks justify spending $250+tax on a device that in just a year or two of significant usage will not be usable anymore due to degraded battery?
I was gifted a pair and after two years the battery lasts less than one hour in playback mode, and just a few minutes in call mode. What a disappointment. Am I expected to spend another $280?!
I also do not want to spend $50+ for a third party battery replacement. At least with the iPhone I can buy one, use it for 6 years and change the battery a couple times, making it a good purchase.
I use them everyday while working, for multiple hours per day and can expense them. They work better than other bluetooth headsets I've tried, and the noise cancelling is excellent in loud environments.
I'm willing to pay a premium for the convenience and seamless pairing to other Apple products I already have (Apple TV, macbook, iphone).
To be clear, I would pay even $350 for them, if only I could remove the $5 battery and replace it cleanly. Or even bring it to an Apple Store and get a new battery for $30. It just feels such a robbery otherwise.
I'd say under $500AUD I would still pay for them assuming they were the only product in their class. But at say $400 I'd opt to pick a competitors product.
The more you use something the more it makes sense to spend on it, assuming your extra spending is getting you something. If you used them significantly for two years, it sounds like you got a lot of value out of them.
To be clear, I would pay even $350 for them, if only I could remove the $5 battery and replace it cleanly. Or even bring it to an Apple Store and get a new battery for $30, in a similar iPhone workflow. It just feels such a robbery otherwise.
There's no other product that does what it does as well as it does it.
It's a no-brainer purchase for me and I won't even blink at replacing them if they're ever lost.
I basically can't imagine my life without them (walking around the city, workouts, playing sports, airports/planes, etc). I can imagine this is much less important if you live in a suburb and mostly commute via car or don't have physically active hobbies.
Ultimately yes it does suck that they're expensive but the alternative of not having them sucks way more IMO.
The absolute highest? I think they could go as high as $500 and I can still justify it.
Of course, this opens up a huge price window for competitors to occupy so at some point it makes more sense to get something cheaper to get 80% of the functionality. But this also goes to show how much I value that final 20%.
At the price of $250 today, there really isn't any legitimate competition IMO.
A lot of sane improvements to the case (added speaker, lanyard loop, full U1 Find My support), good to see. They tout "H2 Apple Silicon, amazing sound quality with Adaptive EQ," but I can't find any reference to lossless audio in the tech specs, which is a bit of a disappointment.
It's surely ironic that Apple Music supports 24/192 lossless audio and none of its headphones can utilize it.
> The one in your lightning to 3.5mm iPhone adapter may not be as good as a $100 desktop DAC hooked up to your PC playing from USB, and that may not be as good as a $500+ DAC in a recording studio.
This isn't true; it's better than the first and possibly better than the second. It's a very good $9 dongle.
Hopefully they have some sort of authentication system. I previously wrote about fake Airpods and how they are nearly indistinguishable from the real ones when they are connected. (Spoofs all the special iOS interfaces etc) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32287113
That's what I'm wondering. It's impossible to do anything while on a call without the other side complaining that it sounds like I'm banging cutlery on my pots.
That sounds like every vocal-tuned mic ever. Someone's kids could be two rooms away and barely audible to them, but over the mic they are amplified screams. Kitchen stuff, forget about it.
I don't know much about it so let me ask: is this primarily a software or hardware "issue"? I feel like it wasn't really an issue before the Pro's, and I've been using AirPods since 2016. I may just be misremembering things though.
I totally get it, too. When I'm on call with someone and they do kitchen stuff or whatever, I quite literally feel an erratic rage building up and just want to hang up immediately. It sounds so infuriatingly loud, even though the other side may have only put down a glass on the counter or something. It's really bad imo. If this somehow gets fixed, I'll buy a pair at an instant.
It's a setting that AFAICT only shows up in facetime. When I'm in a facetime call, in the control center there's a new "mic mode" tile (next to the also-facetime-only "video effects" tile that toggles portrait mode). In the mic mode panel there's three options "Standard", "Voice Isolation", and "Wide Spectrum".
I use the voice isolation one and people I've talked to say that it's drastically improved the call quality, particularly while I'm walking next to a busy street.
edit: you can see the setting without actually starting a call, just go into the facetime app and hit "New FaceTime". It will show you a blurred front view camera and let you pick a contact to call, but at that moment you can drag the control center down and they'll be there.
It's one of those things hidden in the menu you get when you drag down from the upper right (during a call). I think. I found it once on a video call to my mom, but like the lost city of Atlantis, it seems to have disappeared for me again now that I'm trying to find it again. I hate the iPhone UI, but they work so well most of the time...
I have Powerbeats 3 which I assume function similar to other apple earbuds. I use them while cycling & mountain biking and find that sometimes when I pass another person they stop working. Anyone experience the same behavior? Is there a reason?
i hope the volume control can be disabled (though i doubt this will be the case). i’ve never met a touch sensitive headphone volume control that wasn’t susceptible to accidental triggering. i have too many issues with my hearing to risk that.
I hope so too. I disabled touch controls on my WH-1000XM3 (the over the ear type) because an accidental swipe would rewind or skip to the next item (e.g. videos on YouTube). When I have to adjust the earbud version (WF-1000XM3) it's really easy to touch the controls on accident as well. Even the Airpods Pro that I have can be touchy when adjusting because they have sensors to pause when you take them out and resume when you put them back in (great feature) but they also sometimes pause (or unpause) incorrectly depending on the situation. (I just realized that is an option that can be disabled so I'm torn about disabling it now. Single click does pause and unpause as well.)
I was very hopefully about airpods when I bought mine 1 month ago. They pair nicely with my apple devices but right airpod has hissing static sound coming out of it. When I contact with apple support about this they took my airpods and ran their stupid diagnostics test. Since diagnostics test doesn't show anyhthing they are not bothered to look further. However, here comes the quesiton what if diagnostics tests doesn't cover enough to detect problem I am having? I am bit bothered becuase its very easy to prove my point you just pop right one in and you can hear annoying static sound
Are there Bluetooth headphones that are better? My understanding is that it's a limitation in the Bluetooth spec. I've heard talk of Apple wanting to do their own thing specifically because of things like this.
If the size/shape is the same as the original AirPods Pro, does that mean that the new XS earbud will be usable with the original version? I have never had issues with earbuds (wired or original AirPods) before, but the AirPods Pro doesn't fit well for me. I use it when listening to content, but if I'm talking I use my old AirPods (non-Pro). The Pros migrate out of my ear canal quickly when I'm talking or eating, due to the jaw movement.
Fingers crossed that we'll be able to pick up the new XS size in an Apple Store once these are out!
Did they fix the microphone? The thing is barely usable because of the random mic error that starts broadcasting outside noises instead of the voice.
I RMAed mine twice and Apple didn’t challenge me so they are well aware of the issue. Naturally the issue came back with the 3rd AirPods Pro but I just won’t bother RMAing at this point.
So is it anyhow addressed in the new model? The other features are frankly insignificant, as AirPods Pro are already nearly as good as it gets for this kind of gadget.
Battery life is nice sure etc but it’s all diminishing returns at this point i thunk
Interested to know what bluetooth codecs these support. That's important for using them with non-apple devices. Frustrating that they don't list supported codecs in the tech specs.
Tech specs are live, but even though there are a half dozen size measurements, not a codec in sight. I think that is intentional because they don’t support AptX, or LDAC which would be essential for using these with anything not Apple.
Is it possible to preset a max volume on the airpods pro so that I never under any circumstances damage my ears, even if I mistakenly blast the sound of a screeching whistle at full volume?
I am just curious how are people dealing with EMF radiations emitted by AirPods? I have 2 sets of AirPods and Bose QC35 but I stopped using AirPods altogether and I use QC35 using the wire.
Until a study like that is reproduced and a plausible explanation given, it's just junk science, and should be treated as such.
It would be VERY obvious by now if nonionizing EMF was hazardous to humans at athermal levels. We've spent ~100 years using it and ~50 years paying attention.
Why don't we have Wi-Fi headphones? The only thing anyone can agree on about Bluetooth is that it absolutely sucks. You'd think Apple would be pushing this.
I should be able to buy a pair of headphones with built in streaming capability and be able to cast from HomePod or my phone with near gigabit bandwidth over Wi-Fi 6, and have zero concerns about range anywhere in my home.
Your ears have on the order of 1 megabit/sec bandwidth, so anything more is irrelevant, specifically Wi-Fi 6 is 1000 times overkill.
Bluetooth uses about half the energy per bit transmitted compared to wifi. So, using wifi would cut all your run times in half or increase your battery size. The data transmission is the dominant power consumption of wireless ear phones.
>Your ears have on the order of 1 megabit/sec bandwidth, so anything more is irrelevant, specifically Wi-Fi 6 is 1000 times overkill.
That's silly. This would imply that there's no point in ever having any form of wireless data transmission with more bandwidth than the totality of your senses can intake at once. Obviously it could be used for more than just transferring audio data. But bandwidth isn't really the point anyways. It's about connection quality and range, which Bluetooth will never be able to achieve by design. I would gladly sacrifice battery life for headphones that "just work" with zero effort connectivity at all times, in the same way my laptop seamlessly connects to Wi-Fi.
I'll probably upgrade to the 2nd generation.
The AirPods Pro were, for me, the first time in many years that the boundary of tech and magic were blurred. I have a air purifier in my room. I put the Airpods on for the first time, and somehow they turned off my air purifier. Sort of freaked me out :)
I love the addition of more accessibility features. If the “Conversation Boost” feature can work the way I hope it does, I would buy a pair or 2 of these immediately.
I have often desired a feature similar to “transparency” except it would amplify sounds, basically hearing aids when you boil it down.
Have they put an airtag into the case yet? This would be a killer fucking feature. I use bose earbuds and bodged an airtag onto their case with a 3d printed wrapper... it's ugly as fuck but it works.
I can't get great noise cancellation from AirPods Pro. If I don't use the smaller silicone tips, the muscles in my ears spasm which makes a rumbling sound. But the smaller tips let more external noise in.
I hope that they have finally eliminated the deafening loudness of the low battery announcement. I check the airpods pro battery compulsively just to avoid hearing this. (love them otherwise)
Apple figured out how to get your Apple devices to talk to each other to do the Bluetooth handoff automatically disconnecting/reconnecting your AirPods from your iPhone to your MacBook, iPad, Mac Mini, etc., and back, without you having to do anything.
The fact that this only works with Apple devices is, from Apple's perspective, a feature not a bug.
It also allows them to keep the bill of materials inside the AirPods smaller, cheaper, and lower power, because they only require a single Bluetooth transceiver to pair with an unlimited number of Apple devices, unlike your Jabra which requires two Bluetooth transceivers to support dual device pairing.
Long live the first generation ipod shuffle. It just worked. Now every gadget has so many "why is it doing this?" and "how do I make it stop doing ___?" that I've checked out entirely. Cords are hip again in my house.
I get what you mean, but I think the AirPods pretty well live up to the “it just works” magic of cords. The UI is deeply intuitive. We’re talking the easiest to use product of the most UX obsessed company on earth. I can understand being put off the cost for something that you will use for a few years then toss in the bin, but then again almost everything eventually become trash.
I just hope they fixed the crackling/static noise issue, as well as the ANC issues (usually they come together). I am literally at the 5th replacement right now.
Millions of tons...? It's orders of magnitude less than that.
It's 56.1 grams for both buds and case. For comparison, 2 AA batteries is 46 grams.
They're tiny. In terms of e-waste, they're not even a rounding error. In terms of all devices to worry about, they're essentially last on the list. They're roughly the mass of the most popular consumer disposable batteries themselves.
(If you want to do the math, they sold ~90 million units in 2021.)
I used to think like this, but on closer inspection I realized that you create more waste/polution on every trip to the grocery store, or by driving a car for a week, or eating meat. Yes it's a shame that they are designed not to be repairable but there are so many more low hanging fruit in our everyday lives that we don't think about when it comes to environmental issues.
I've been using the same airpods v2 since some time in 2019 and whenever I end up replacing them, I won't really feel much regret at the small amount of e-waste they produce. I mean, I probably come across 2 or 3 e-cigarette things each time I take my dog for a walk.
I don't mean to engage in whataboutism but I've used those airpods for hundreds of hours. Seems like a pretty reasonable lifespan to me.
> A redesigned inward-facing microphone works with voice enhancement algorithms to better recognize and articulate your voice, so it sounds more natural when you’re on phone and video calls.
Also where are you getting "moving away from bluetooth"? That was a rumor (that they might move to their U1 tech for better audio quality) but they didn't mention that in the presentation nor is it mentioned on their site.
Ahh, that makes way more sense. I didn't apply the "nothing on" to the second thing and while I think moving off bluetooth is a plus I know there are others who see it as a negative and I assumed that's what they meant since moving from BT was rumored ("Apple doing something proprietary", even though clearly the market isn't moving quickly to fix the issues with BT).
UWB would provide plenty of bandwidth at close range with better energy efficiency, but it will not match bluetooth for distance. With sufficient software complexity you could switch back and forth between them depending on conditions… so that sounds like a business decision on cost to implement and benefit.
Or some clown has a patent conjoining some aspect of UWB and audio, or protocol switching. Apple never says "we don't do this because there is a patent in the way". It isn't their image.
