Truly, is it possible for tech companies today to release even one fucking product, even something so simple as headphones, without piling on all the desperate, grubby, scummy tracking bloat and related shit possible in an effort to turn you into a product EVEN when you're paying for their creations. It's revolting and sincerely deserves to be harshly punished by the market (if enough consumers could be bothered to give enough of a shit about something so "irrelevant" as their basic privacy).
Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
301–310 of 431 posts
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#302Truly, is it possible for tech companies today to release even one fucking product, even something so simple as headphones, without piling on all the desperate, grubby, scummy tracking bloat and related shit possible in an effort to turn you into a product EVEN when you're paying for their creations. It's revolting and sincerely deserves to be harshly punished by the market (if enough consumers could be bothered to g…
You mean like Beats or Apple AirPods? They don’t collect user data at all.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#303Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use my airpods with my Android phone. What am I missing out on?
Probably nothing. They have a feature that’s quite handy to me (the proprietary quick changing from one Apple device to another IFF it has the same Apple ID — so no good for shared hardware like a tv) but “quite handy” is far from invaluable. You can program a tap on each earbud to do certain things: again, handy but you don’t have that ability I doubt you’d be upset. Apple’s quite clever on figuring out how much “bl…
If you're not used to it you'd probably not be upset but having an iPhone and Airpods I'd be upset going back.
I switch between my Mac and my iPhone daily so if I had to re-pair to do that that would suck. My guess is many modern alternatives let you pair more than one device at a time which would be another possible solution (better or worse I don't know). Apple's switching sometimes fails for me and when it does it's infuriating since it can end up taking several minutes to fix when all I wanted to do is use the damn headphones.
The tapping is pretty useful too though the features I use (pause/play/skip to next song/backup) are also part of the bluetooth headphone standard so while I can't change them to something else my other bluetooth headphones have the same standard features that I actually use.
This is also one reason I didn't like the Airpod Pro's. Tap is replaced with squeeze. Squeeze requires 2 fingers, Tap works with a knuckle. I can tap with full hands. I can't squeeze it full hands so they effectively downgraded the product with pro.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own the Bose QC 35's and I never had to use an app at all until I decided to update them to the latest software
I used to love my Bose QC 35 ii's but now I'm convinced they're kind of a scam. Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years. So you aren't really paying $250 for a…
> Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years.
I've used my QC35 II's 6 to 8 hours a day for 5 days a week for 4 years. They last approximately a full week on one charge; they'd die mid Friday if I used them a lot that week or early Monday if I forgot to charge over the weekend. I've had them unplugged and unused since March (work from home) and they still had 60% when I tried them just now.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#306I just went on 2 12+ hour flights and every few minutes my phone had a "These aren't your airpods" or similar message. I had no airpods, they were someone elses on the flights, but they still interacted with my phone often.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#307When you buy food there's a label on the package that tells you what's in it.
When you buy cigarettes there's a big warning label about the risk to your health.
I think consumer devices need something like that. Imagine browsing an aisle and seeing a label on the package like "WARNING: These earbuds phone home with the track names you play, your GPS location and menstruation cycle history." How many people do you think will buy that box vs. the cheap $20 pair with the analog plug?
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I got my bose headphones they would not connect as bluetooth headphones until I installed the app. After that they would but I still had to sign up and accept location access the first time.
I see a number of people saying this but I was able to pair mine without an app. Installing the app didn’t require location access. There’s also several people saying their experience was like mine. It’s pretty obvious different people are getting two distinctly different experiences with the company. It’s not a spectrum, just one or the other. That is strange and I wonder was the cause of that is.
I think I can answer this. My mum got the Bose QC 35 and out of the box they worked fine without the app. I got the exact same thing about a few months later and after turning it on it just repeated some audio telling me to connect to the app which did not happen on the exact same product my mum had. Perhaps mine came with a newer firmware version OOTB.
As for location, android requires it for an app to scan for bluetooth devices (Not required if you connect via android settings). Maybe you use iOS?
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to love my Bose QC 35 ii's but now I'm convinced they're kind of a scam. Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years. So you aren't really paying $250 for a…
> Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years. I've used my QC35 II's 6 to 8 hours a day for 5 days a week for 4 years. They last approximately a full week on one c…
Okay, that's interesting. I've used mine ~6 hours per day for 5 days a week for 2 years. Why can't mine hold a charge for more than an hour? Maybe there's something I don't understand about how batteries work that I am doing and that I could do differently.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years. I've used my QC35 II's 6 to 8 hours a day for 5 days a week for 4 years. They last approximately a full week on one c…
Okay, that's interesting. I've used mine ~6 hours per day for 5 days a week for 2 years. Why can't mine hold a charge for more than an hour? Maybe there's something I don't understand about how batteries work that I am doing and that I could do differently.
I mostly don't use bluetooth. I keep them wired 95% of the time and noise cancelling just eliminates office noise. The remaining 5% of the time is typically on a flight to somewhere connected to my iPhone a couple of feet away.