51–60 of 87 posts
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 disagree with author here. I wish I didn’t, because that would mean that customers are much more aware than they really are. In reality I doubt that adding those features to existing models had any impact on sales at all. If Apple had data that people would buy headphones for those features, they would 100% made them exclusive. AirPods are just the best in its class, that’s why people are buying them.
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, th…
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I was forced to buy them. I was happy with my first generation AirPods, until one night they automatically upgraded to the latest firmware, which had a bug and they stopped working.
> I was forced to buy them Who held the gun to your head?
My first HN comment. It’s the monopoly tie in… so many features that other just cannot provide. Hey siri… handover to name a few. It’s a total disgrace IMHO. To think how much Microsoft got fined for just bundling IE..
How dare Apple sell me exactly what I want: an integrated computing environment
2-3 years for earphones are a good metric? My Sony WH-1000X M3 are now almost 6 years old and still work perfectly (just replaced the pads once last year)
Normies in my life get significant utility from AirPods. It may frustrate many that this continues to be brought up as the bar when discussing apple products, but getting the old folks onto wireless headphones was impossible prior to AirPods. I have multiple 80+ year olds in my life and they just use them. Never asked me a thing about pairing. When things go awry they go to the apple story and pay $75 for the replace…
This. AirPods made wireless earbuds usable for the general population. They made it friction free. You'd be surprised at how "difficult" something as simple as pairing a bluetooth device to a phone or computer is for a lot of people.
It's a tax I'm willing to pay too. Yeah, there are much better products out there, both for quality and durability, but the convenience and friction free experience if you are in the ecosystem can't be beat.
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> I was forced to buy them Who held the gun to your head?
Tim Cook sent me a firmware update overnight. After that, kappom! He also locked me into the Apple ecosystem, and I've been trying to escape since 2020, but no luck so far. The AirPods Pro and watch pulled me right back in. Unfortunately, these gadgets work too well with my ridiculously overpriced iPhone.
You made a choice, you could have made different choices. You can still make different choices. You have agency, exercise it instead of complaining that Tim Cook is locking you to an ecosystem that you can freely leave at any time.
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 al…
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How dare Apple sell me exactly what I want: an integrated computing environment
What I want: the ability to integrate tooling I roll myself or find on the internet just as easily as apples often slopware.