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Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

kevinrooke.com

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Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#641

Post by nkrisc »

anaganisk wrote: post #633
nkrisc wrote: post #530

I have to wonder what percentage of people are like me and Apple earbuds/AirPods have never fit their ears? Are my ears that strangely shaped? Most people seem to have no problem when I've never found a pair of Apple earbuds that can stay in my ear if I do anything other than sit completely still and upright. They just don't fit, at all in any way. I have to use earbuds with a stiff silicone shroud that I can shove d…

I have the same issue, and the only reason why i wont pickup earpods, they just fall off, have you found anyway, to keep them in?

For Apple's products, no, they're completely unusable to me. For earbuds I found some $15 Panasonic ones that sound alright and fit me perfectly, so I bought 6 sets of them and just go through them over the years. I think I'm on set #2 right now. I also have Sennheiser HD1 In-Ear Bluetooth earbuds that fit pretty well, too. Both products I mentioned come with different size silicone shrouds so I just found the ones that fit best and shove them into my ear canal until they're stuck. Even then it's not perfect. My right ear doesn't hold them as well as my left.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#643

Post by ikeboy »

mprev wrote: post #624
ikeboy wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been switching between my Ubuntu laptop and Android phone. Pretty simple, I do need to disconnect it manually on one device before switching to the other but that takes a second. I don't believe Airpods would be any better in that scenario.

If you're using Ubuntu and Android then you're already trading less convenience for either financial or philosophical reasons. So, you're probably not the market for AirPods.

My killer Android feature is having a microsd card. Not supporting that is very inconvenient of Apple.

I've tried both Windows and Mac, I just like Ubuntu better.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#644

Post by dwild »

clows wrote: post #345
dwild wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But after having used Bluetooth headphones for a while, going back to wired headphones was pure hell. For me going back to wired was amazing. I no longer had to charge my headphone to listen to my music. Want to output to the speaker? Just unplug them physically. I'm sure the airpod support this much better than the Bluetooth headphone I had on Android, but my biggest pet peeve was shutting them down each time I pu…

As you said yourself ... the airpods are better bluetooth headphones than the ones you had. Charging is mostly a nonissue due to the case having a battery. shutting down is as simple as putting them in the case. There are downsides (Airpods are expensive and though they can last a few years in the end are a throwaway product), but not having a cable being in the way and pulling out the headphones is also something I'…

> As you said yourself ... the airpods are better bluetooth headphones than the ones you had.

Sure but we were talking about switching from bluetooth headphone to wired one, thus why I added that part even though we were on an Airpod thread.

> Charging is mostly a nonissue due to the case having a battery.

Which you still need to charge, the issue persist. Their battery life wasn't the issue, they could works multiple days without being charged, which just add to the issue because then it means I could go multiple days without charging then and then forgetting to do it.

> shutting down is as simple as putting them in the case

That's certainly a nice feature that would alleviate my biggest issue, that's for sure. I knew they would have fixed that or else they wouldn't be as popular, or at least, much more people would complains about that.

> not having a cable being in the way and pulling out the headphones is also something I'd consider a downside so there's that I guess.

Sure but that's a minor downside for me versus the issues I mentioned about wireless headphone. The only times I accidentally pulled down my cable was when I was training on a treadmill, which is also what made me buy bluetooth headphone in the first place. I stopped using them before stopping training...

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#645

Post by swozey »

kristianc wrote: post #218
jedberg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point no matter how amazing the Android is, I would find the iPhone easier. I've been using an iPhone for so long it's just second nature. At one point I was forced to use an Android for a month. I could just never get used to the interface.

You find the iPhone easy to use because the iPhone is easy to use and more or less consistent in every iPhone device you’ve used. A five year old can use an iPhone. That’s competitive differentiation, which is very much part of marketing. An iPhone isn’t easy to use in the same way that git is easier to use than svn for someone who has been using git for a decade.

When I had my six month affair with an Iphone 6 it took me a month (I don't get many calls) to finally get frustrated enough to google "How to reject calls" because I was so used to Android giving me a big red X that I never even considered pushing the power button to reject a call (I think that even just mutes incoming calls on Android, I forget), that X let me mute or reject based on the direction I swiped it. I could only figure out how to mute the rings which means my car radio would just be silent until the caller finally gave up.

I know a lot of iphone users think it's the most intuitive machine in the world and a 5 year old can get it, and I'm obviously heavily swayed by my decade or whatever with Android but the amount of hidden/unintuitive-to-me/impossible-to-do things I found was what moved me back to Android after that trial.

I spent a LOT of time searching on Google for how to do things with that phone.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#646

Post by fenwick67 »

brlewis wrote: post #630
fenwick67 wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pebble was such a cool platform, and it is a damn shame that FitBit was allowed to purchase the company and immediately shut it down. Predatory competitor-purchasing like this should be illegal.

> Pebble was such a cool platform The only true part of this sentence > it is a damn shame that FitBit was allowed to purchase the company Pebble failed financially and put its assets up for sale, some of which were bought by Fitbit. > and immediately shut it down Fitbit kept servers running for years that supported Pebble devices. I'm a Fitbit employee but don't speak for Fitbit. An official response wouldn't be so…

Sincere thanks for clearing this up, I only saw the big optics on this (pebble 2 successfully crowdfunded, then later Pebble is shutting down while FitBit acquires it).

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#647

Post by swozey »

filoleg wrote: post #347
kristianc wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which I guess would explain why there are Android phones that crush the iPhone on tech specs but make a minuscule (and sometimes negative) proportion of the industry’s profit?

Actual specs don’t mean much with phones, I learned. Somehow my old Galaxy S8+, that had specs crushing iPhones on paper, after just a few months of use, would be way choppier and slower to use than an iPhone 7, which was both older and had way worse specs. And mind you, i am not the kind of person who installs tons of random apps and runs them in the background all the time.

That seems odd, you reset it after encountering that? I still have an S8 in my drawer but upgraded to the S10 when it came out last year and I honestly can barely tell the difference in their performance (I don't really mobile game so no idea there). I was actually really disappointed that it didn't feel like I'd just upgraded to a new model Corvette but felt like I got a car wash, which is how I'm sure all my phone upgrades will feel after the S7 now.

I had a big performance problem on my s7 way after putting in a high speed SDcard that apparently was corrupted or damaged. I was only, as far as I know, who knows what Android was storing on it, putting podcasts/images on it and it still brought my entire OS to its knees until I removed it. That was a huge trial in my Android loyalty because I went months with this incredibly slow phone until I finally was packing it up to sell, remembered "oh I don't want the buyer to have my SDcard!" pulled it out and it felt like a new phone again, I got another 2-3 years out of it. Eventually tossed it at the ground on accident thus the s8..

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#648

Post by toasterlovin »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #622
toasterlovin wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't spend $700 on a phone because they were hoodwinked by good marketing. And they certainly don't continue to spend $700 every several years because they were hoodwinked by good marketing.

People don't "need" to spend $700 on a phone a moto g is good enough

People also don’t need automatic transmissions, or heated car seats, or rib eye steaks, or remodeled kitchens. But most people happily spend extra money for nice things and experiences. The world will make a lot more sense once you internalize this.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#649

Post by mrguyorama »

rurp wrote: post #202
mrguyorama wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromecast is $35 and will play spotify and other apps pretty darn well.

Three or four years ago I loved my Chromecasts, but it's crazy how much worse they have gotten in that time. They used to have a really simple setup and then "just worked" from there. Now though, they regularly disappear from every device we use them with in my household and have to be setup again. The setup flow has changed several times over the past few years, always for the worse. Once everything is (re-)setup, t…

That's strange. My Chromecast seemingly hasn't changed at all in the 4 years I've owned it.

Re: Apple AirPods: iPhone accessory or the next big thing?

#650

Post by isoskeles »

yoz-y wrote: post #593
isoskeles wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha, one of the actual coolest, most fashionable people I’ve known had nothing nice to say about AirPods. She said, “Steve Jobs would have never allowed that to happen.” And to be frank, they don’t look any better than the Bluetooth headsets that were around for years before, so I have to agree with her assessment. Personal taste, of course, but I’ve also never heard anyone say that AirPods look “cool” ever. The o…

Straight from the basket of pretentious people who think they know what Steve Jobs would have wanted. They don't. Even Steve from year Y would not know what Steve from year Y+1 would want.

Like I said, personal taste, but I definitely took her opinion of it more seriously given her job is to sell fashionable clothes to fashionable people, and throw in some confirmation bias because I don't like AirPods.

I'm not even sure what standard anyone here could use to claim that AirPods (or anything) are cool. Apple products are a status symbol, and sure they have potential to be cool, but glorifying bluetooth earbuds as such looks more, to me, like we're just conflating whatever cool means with the idea of status.

I'm not saying they're mutually exclusive, but I am saying I require some actual definition of terms and proof beyond sales or people wearing them to take the claim seriously on HN. Otherwise, it just looks like a fanboy being a fanboy.

But yeah, anything sticking out of your ears that has a lower profile than wired headphones falls into this goofy uncanny valley of man-melding-with-machine, at least in my view. And this is why I believe that Steve Jobs had the design-sense to see that and not allow it. But hey, maybe not, maybe the way I have articulated it is completely wrong, and this goofy uncanny valley is actually really cool.

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