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Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

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Re: Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

#11

Post by dwood_dev »

Kirby64 wrote: post #4
likeabatterycar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think an 'off' button is not used by 'common users' and is restricted to audiophiles? This is also solved by using $8 earbuds and not shoving overhyped $200 hazelnuts into your ears.

I’d suggest the “off” function on AirPods is used by… almost no one reasonable. I don’t know why an audiophile would use it, honestly. It sounds measurably worse than turning on ANC or Transparency. The only use is if you truly truly need the extra battery life. If ANC bothers your ears, the much cheaper regular AirPods should be your buy… or any number of cheaper non-ANC buds.

I use "off" most of the time when in single ear mode(which is most of the time if I'm on calls or listening to a podcast). Transparency mode gives me weird artifacts and I have never liked it, for me the only two modes I use are "off" and ANC.

The new change in iOS 18 was highly annoying for me and took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get the previous behavior back.

Re: Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

#13

Post by spaceguillotine »

cjoelrun wrote: post #9

My Airpod Pros literally screech at an unsafe noise level if they're in Transparency or Noise Cancellation. I think some part of them got damaged ruining any kind of processing. I've been able to continue to use the in the Off mode for over a year. Hope this isn't too annoying to opt out of.

sounds like a microphone is broken or clogged up with human skin goo

Re: Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

#14

Post by Kirby64 »

aoanevdus wrote: post #7
Kirby64 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d suggest the “off” function on AirPods is used by… almost no one reasonable. I don’t know why an audiophile would use it, honestly. It sounds measurably worse than turning on ANC or Transparency. The only use is if you truly truly need the extra battery life. If ANC bothers your ears, the much cheaper regular AirPods should be your buy… or any number of cheaper non-ANC buds.

I used “off” when my AirPods had a broken microphone that caused the other modes to make weird noises. Only necessary until I could get them replaced by Apple.

Sure, that’s a valid reason for a broken use case … but it’s still a broken use case. If your mics weren’t broken then the other modes would be better.

Re: Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

#15

Post by maudlins11 »

exabrial wrote: post #5

I don't understand why people buy Apple devices then expect to maintain control over them. The Literal CEO refers to your purchases as "their platform". The thing you bought... is his. This is just part of the Apple experience these days. Don't get attached to anything.

fan bois

Re: Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

#17

Post by spenvo »

st3fan wrote: post #16

Nobody is asking the most interesting question: why. Why is the option to use the AirPods in “normal” mode being removed? Is Apple hit with some lawsuit or something?

My theory, from the post: "All of this is likely tied to a relatively new feature called Loud Sound Reduction that only works if AirPods are in an active “Noise Control” mode. So Apple perhaps recently decided that everyone needed this feature enabled, and that’s why they made all these annoying changes to Noise Control? I can only speculate."

And yes, as JamesonNetworks suggested, the cynical side of me thinks Apple execs knew that this would negatively impact a subset of users' batteries and were at least OK with that (despite environmental/shortened-product-lifecycle implications)

Re: Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

#18

Post by JamesonNetworks »

st3fan wrote: post #16

Nobody is asking the most interesting question: why. Why is the option to use the AirPods in “normal” mode being removed? Is Apple hit with some lawsuit or something?

Off hand guess: reduce apparent battery life in order to nudge people to upgrading, thinking their batteries are going

Re: Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

#20

Post by hombre_fatal »

It's basically a UI/UX problem.

Apple rolls out features like the loud sound reduction feature that only work if you're in a non-OFF state.

Exactly how it should work really depends on the expectations of the average user. If they turn on loud sound reduction, for example, are they just going to be confused when nothing happens? How many people really understand how to toggle between the 3+ states and that additional processing might only apply to a subset of them?

And airpod state is already confusing: You have Off | Active cancellation | Transparency | Adaptive. My parents who have used airpods for years didn't even know about the airpods menu that shows you these states. They understood pinch-and-hold to change state but didn't know the third state was the OFF state. It just kinda sounds like a crappier unwanted state.

The TFA trade-off might have been the most sensible decision given these complexities. Replace OFF with one of the other states as the default and then give more techy users a switch to add OFF back into the possible states.

Granted, TFA points out there's a bug with this impl.

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