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AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

victorwynne.com

41–50 of 87 posts

Re: AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

#41

I've never used AirPods but I can say their microphones are awful: whenever I'm talking to someone who is on AirPods, I can immediately tell it from the very low audio quality. This happens with many, many people. When they switch to their iPhone mic, it literally sounds like the audio version of upgrading from 144p to 4K.

True. The AirPod's mic is awful. People keep telling me they can hear all the background noise.

Re: AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

#42

I've never used AirPods but I can say their microphones are awful: whenever I'm talking to someone who is on AirPods, I can immediately tell it from the very low audio quality. This happens with many, many people. When they switch to their iPhone mic, it literally sounds like the audio version of upgrading from 144p to 4K.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41695756

Apple may have already fixed this issue in newer firmware/models.

Re: AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

#43
post #30

I don't agree at all. I love the product but I have to buy a new pair of airpods every few years very consistently. It's either battery capacity loss, or crackling audio issues, or both to the point of not being usable. The Apple Genius always comes up with a story like "well it's out of warranty and the cost of repair is about the same as just buying new ones so you make the call dear customer."

This is anecdotal but I haven’t had any issues with my AirPods 2 Pro and I have been using them for three years.

Re: AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

#45
post #23

When Apple discontinued the first generation of AirPods, the final firmware release had a bug that was never fixed. It caused the left AirPod to disconnect after one or two minutes. Hundreds of thousands of loyal customers were affected [0], including me. You couldn't even buy a second hand left AirPod because of a firmware version mismatch. I still love Apple products, but under Tim Cook, it feels like they care mor…

Apple really needs to put a product person back in charge, IMO. Cook is a supply chain wizard, and has been very good for Apple shareholders - but not great for the products. Apple's quality, especially software, has been on a downward spiral for a while now. If I wasn't so locked in to the whole ecosystem I'd be back on a Linux laptop by now - too bad I can't stand Android.

But I guess that's why quality has been allowed to decrease - the customers aren't leaving, myself included, so why would they bother until it's a real danger to their marketshare.

edit I'm also not sure who to put the blame on for software quality. I'm not entirely sure if it's Cook's direction, Craig, or a combination of a changing culture within Apple.

Re: AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

#47

I've never used AirPods but I can say their microphones are awful: whenever I'm talking to someone who is on AirPods, I can immediately tell it from the very low audio quality. This happens with many, many people. When they switch to their iPhone mic, it literally sounds like the audio version of upgrading from 144p to 4K.

I've had a couple coworkers attempt to use AirPods with Windows computers, and the audio quality has been awful and unusable. They sound super distant even with sound turned up all the way.

Re: AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

#48
post #30

I don't agree at all. I love the product but I have to buy a new pair of airpods every few years very consistently. It's either battery capacity loss, or crackling audio issues, or both to the point of not being usable. The Apple Genius always comes up with a story like "well it's out of warranty and the cost of repair is about the same as just buying new ones so you make the call dear customer."

Just FYI.

I have several pair, because I thought the batteries were going too quickly.

Turns out, I should have just not left the case on the charger, all the time.

Nowadays, I just let them charge for a couple of hours, every few days, take them off the charger, and leave them in my coin tray.

I haven’t had a single battery issue, since; even on the ones I thought were “dead.”

But I think it’s a big design error, that this happens. Everything else has”smart charging.”

Re: AirPods succeed by not selling you a new pair

#50
post #2

Wait, y'all can still use your 3 year old AirPods? On mines, the battery went nuts in ~18 months, and I don't even use them that much.

Not using them much could actually be responsible for more battery degradation, since extended time spent fully charged is not great for batteries.
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