Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

Well, one thought about your pricing model - you’re thinking that it might need work in the future, but you’re charging each month without delivering any additional value to customers. How about charging additional money for each new major version, corresponding to either new feature development or support for new versions of the OS?

How do you implement that?

I'm honestly asking this with minimal snark, but...

Does macOS not have a setting where the default audio out and in device can be selected and configured independently of the actual physical device connected? On Windows and LinuxMint it's a change in the settings app, and it persists between Bluetooth device reconnects. Windows abstracts the audio in and out away from the actual device, and they show up as two separate devices on my machine. When I re-pair my headphones I need to change the setting again, but that rarely happens.

This has been a non-issue for me for years. I have one bluetooth headset that does not play nice with MS Teams (Shox OpenRun), but I don't use it for calls any more.

Understandable, but in that case what's the value of the utility posted here?

The irony is that even among the same brand they differ vastly:

Beyerdynamic MMX 200 does it wrong: pair up to, uh, I don't know (undocumented!), n>2 devices (I have 4), connects to the last one on power up, but if you want to switch devices, you have to disconnect on the device it has just connected and hope it doesn't connect to yet another you have paired and happens to be in range but is not the one you want to pair with, or you have to disconnect from there too. Confused yet? Yup, it's that bad.

Worse, upon that second disconnect the headset itself initiates a reconnect by going through the MRU list again, so if you disconnect from the second (incorrect) one it might try the first (incorrect) one again since it's now the next in the MRU list, so you actually have to DISABLE BLUETOOTH on each device except the one you want to connect to.

Too bad if one of these devices is in the next room, even more annoying if it's your iPad borrowed by your SO who is now annoyed at losing sound from their movie.

At that point, it's easier to forget the headset in the device you have in hand and re-pair, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Beyerdynamic Free BYRD does it correctly: pair up to 5 devices, connects to the last one on power up, any device in the pair history can force-connect to the headset, yanking out the virtual cord from the undesired device. No interaction required on any other device.

Even better, when pulled out of the charging case they actually wait a bit (a few seconds? or detecting when they're put in ear?) so you can actually invoke some quick setting pane and connect without the connection ever going to an unsuspected device.

Dishonourable mention for Bose QC-35 II, who operates like the MMX 200, only it has two BT radios as an attempt to work around that it's doing it wrong. So, it connects to the last two devices. Unfortunately if I'm walking around the house listening to music and the second-to-last device goes out of range the headset goes " disconnected" then a few moments later " connected", which is horrible when is made out of a serial number (work laptop) and it goes on to spell it out "C. O. M. P. H. 4. 7. X. 3. 9. 9. 7. P. K. Q. L. disconnected".

The only way to prevent that is to go through the Bose app and remove devices from the history, essentially pairing it with one-device-at-a-time only. Oh, it's also great for jump scares when your SO is aping the iPad again and it turns out the headset is connected to it. All of which could be avoided if it behaved like the Free BYRD.