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Google Pixel Buds

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Re: Google Pixel Buds

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire product is a copy of the AirPods. But you know what? I'm fine with that. That's how competition works, and competition is what brings down prices. And I personally find the scrolling page design (both Apple's and Google's) pretty cool. It would drive me nuts if a site I used daily implemented something like that, like if it became a trend for news sites. But to show off a new product where I'll scroll thro…

That's how competition works No. Competition is you inventing a better mousetrap, not copying someone else's mousetrap.

If your mousetrap's very easy to copy maybe your mousetrap isn't good to begin with.

Patents, design patents, trademarks, and trade dress are all completely reasonable ways to protect your product. Failing the ability of any of those methods to product your product, I'd argue copying is fair game.

Re: Google Pixel Buds

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire product is a copy of the AirPods. But you know what? I'm fine with that. That's how competition works, and competition is what brings down prices. And I personally find the scrolling page design (both Apple's and Google's) pretty cool. It would drive me nuts if a site I used daily implemented something like that, like if it became a trend for news sites. But to show off a new product where I'll scroll thro…

That's how competition works No. Competition is you inventing a better mousetrap, not copying someone else's mousetrap.

Sometimes better is defined as [more colors|more available|lower price|supports my phone].

So it is competition, for sure!

Re: Google Pixel Buds

#273

Off-topic but this website is such a blatant rip-off of the AirPods Pro landing page[1] (EDIT: Discussed at the time [2]), and I _hate_ the UX. I'm not sure what device this is optimised for, but it requires a tonn of scrolling, it's janky, you end up scrolling past the info you want, it breaks basic functionality like Ctrl+F. Why not just make a video instead of a webpage, since that's clearly the effect they're goi…

The page is in fact almost completely blank for me - I don't think it loaded properly, all I can see are the related products at the bottom... Maybe it's because I'm on firefox? Edit: it works in chromium, what a piece of junk.

Firefox for Android, and I'm having the same issue. I do have uBlock Origin installed, but I'm not going to disable it for this.

Re: Google Pixel Buds

#274

Off-topic but this website is such a blatant rip-off of the AirPods Pro landing page[1] (EDIT: Discussed at the time [2]), and I _hate_ the UX. I'm not sure what device this is optimised for, but it requires a tonn of scrolling, it's janky, you end up scrolling past the info you want, it breaks basic functionality like Ctrl+F. Why not just make a video instead of a webpage, since that's clearly the effect they're goi…

The entire product is a copy of the AirPods. But you know what? I'm fine with that. That's how competition works, and competition is what brings down prices. And I personally find the scrolling page design (both Apple's and Google's) pretty cool. It would drive me nuts if a site I used daily implemented something like that, like if it became a trend for news sites. But to show off a new product where I'll scroll thro…

Scroll-jacking is notoriously bad for accessibility. Can't tab through the sequences and maintain proper focus, using the down arrow key moves the screen 1px per tap it feels like.

From my abled point of view, it's a terrible implementation; if I scroll using mouse wheel it should not be so slow. I would rather see each flick of mousewheel anchor the next or previous slide in place rather than having to do all the scrolling to get there. And that's really what this is, a vertical PowerPoint.

Re: Google Pixel Buds

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an e-store page. It makes sense to follow the region instead of language preferences. The problem is they ideally should separate UI language from region settings, but most sites don't. And they may have some difficulties to do so because they could have specific products that they simply don't have info in languages other than the local one. If you just want to read the description, you can simply change the…

This is a e-store page. It makes sense to follow the region instead of language preferences. Makes sense to whom? Not to someone who's been using a company's web site in one language, and then suddenly gets shifted to another language simply because they want to make a purchase from the same company they were communicating with seconds before. Imaging talking to someone at your bank's call center, and then when you g…

There is no "sudden" change. Google as a web service (search, Gmail, etc.) can offer multiple languages for a region, but their store, as a separate business, can (so far) only offers local language for a certain region.

The point I'm trying to make is that there is an issue, but the issue is not they ignore user's language setting.

What it does is that

1) They detect store region based on user's region instead of language preference, which is reasonable IMHO;

2) However, they don't have English display language for their German store. This can and should be improved. For example, Amazon Japan offers Japanese, Chinese and English. Google can definitely do better since their products are much more limited and they have translations for most of content already.

>Imaging talking to someone at your bank's call center, and then when you get transferred suddenly speaking to someone in another language. "Well, you wanted the Fraud Protection department. It makes sense to speak {$xx__language}."

A better analogy would be you're in China. Well now everything will be in Chinese and Chinese only to begin with.

Re: Google Pixel Buds

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an e-store page. It makes sense to follow the region instead of language preferences. The problem is they ideally should separate UI language from region settings, but most sites don't. And they may have some difficulties to do so because they could have specific products that they simply don't have info in languages other than the local one. If you just want to read the description, you can simply change the…

I live in Belgium; in an area of Belgium that primarily speaks French. I happen to speak French as well (though I'm not originally from Belgium, I am French), but given the places I've lived in my life that's more a coincidence than anything else. I do not speak flemish (be-nl). Yet, my page of the store is in flemish. My browser (a Google browser!) is configured to ask for pages in english , and as a fallback, in fr…

> a warning appears. In Flemish.

No, it will appear in two languages, top one being your current region/language, and bottom being your target region/language. So in your case, it should show in nl-BE and fr-BE.

Here is a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/ICwIgxH.png

Re: Google Pixel Buds

#278
> Listen all day long. > Get up to 5 hours with a single charge,

If quarantine has taught me anything, it's that 5 hours is not all day lol. I've switched to wired headphones because my wireless weren't working for me working/walkingaround/etc all day, unlike when I was working and I'd only wear them during the commute in, gym, and commute home.

Re: Google Pixel Buds

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how so much people believe that AirPods were the first of their kind of product. This isn't the first time I had to make a similar comment. Bragi crowdfunded "The Dash" in early 2014 (to much publicity) and released them in late 2015. To my knowledge this was the first high-profile pair of "disconnected wireless earbuds". AirPods were released late 2016, so a full year later, so they were not the first w…

Bragi crowdfunded "The Dash" in early 2014 (to much publicity) and released them in late 2015. To my knowledge this was the first high-profile pair of "disconnected wireless earbuds". And they had so-so reviews. There were smartphones before the iPhone, there were tablets before the iPad, there were smartwatches before the Apple Watch. However, in general when Apple enters a category they set the bar for the rest of…

> because they nail the experience and the category becomes much more popular. Moreover, Apple generally dominates the categories they enter when it comes to profit margins. (And no, it is not only because people pay to carry an Apple logo.)

At some point it switched from people buying Apple as a premium brand to, as you said them just being "more popular" and leveraging that. A lot of people simply don't look much farther than they brands they already own, and this applies to Apple as well.

I wouldn't say that the AirPods were a "setting the bar" product. I'd argue that for the Apple ecosystem it was more of a "keeping the bar", with AirPods being the path of least resistance after they removed the headphone jack.

Re: Google Pixel Buds

#280
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Windows 10 on a Surface Book (high-DPI): both are utterly unusable in Firefox Nightly, and lousy (but just barely usable) in Chrome. I despise such sites. It’s fundamentally impossible to do such scrolljacking well, and I wish they’d all agree to just stop trying .

>I wish they’d all agree to just stop trying I don't need all site owners to stop trying, I just need one usable browser that ignores the attempts.

Take a look at the AirPods Pro page with JavaScript disabled. After a very slightly suboptimal start (consuming too much vertical space for fairly meaningless content), it’s actually pretty great. That’s what they should have made for everyone.

But far more of the time, what you request is impossible, because such fancy scrolljacking sites are normally utterly broken with JS disabled. The Pixel Buds page is basically just blank, for example.

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