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AirPods don't “just work”

philip.design

31–40 of 966 posts

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#31

For me personally, one of the most infuriating product design decisions that Apple made was the removal of the headphone jack from the iPhones and iPads. This is literally the only reason why I switched to Android, despite being a long-time Apple user.

I stayed with Apple, went through three of the super-fragile 3.5mm adaptors, and now am on a third-party ”heavy duty” adaptor. Let’s see if this lasts.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#33
post #3

Annoyance 8: When I'm using the (good) noise cancelling of the AirPods to eliminate distracting background noise so I can focus, after a few hours the battery will run down to 15% and trigger the EXTREMELY LOUD "PING-pong-pong-pong" low-battery noise, right in my ear, without warning. And it's Apple, so of course you can't turn it off.

You'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams in your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on and the battery is almost empty. The flagship Sony headphone is so bug ridden it's a joke if you ask me.

There should be an option to have this information shown as an alert on the device. iPhones already show the battery charge level of the headphones so why not make it an alert banner?

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#34
Wow, this was a perfect description of my experience. An additional factor is the release date of the used devices. My experience improved by a large margin when I replaced my late 2018 Macbook and my 2019 iPad. Another example are calls which ring on multiple devices. I'm using my iPad and somebody calls me on my iPhone, but the iPhone sends the call also to the iPad. The same when I have MS Teams on my Macbook and my iPhone. Once I put the Airpods in my ears anything can and does happen. Sometimes one Airpod is lost in these situations.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#35
post #3

Annoyance 8: When I'm using the (good) noise cancelling of the AirPods to eliminate distracting background noise so I can focus, after a few hours the battery will run down to 15% and trigger the EXTREMELY LOUD "PING-pong-pong-pong" low-battery noise, right in my ear, without warning. And it's Apple, so of course you can't turn it off.

Agree completely. My ears actually hurt when this happens, cannot be healthy.

The 'device connected' sound is pretty loud as well.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#36
post #3

Annoyance 8: When I'm using the (good) noise cancelling of the AirPods to eliminate distracting background noise so I can focus, after a few hours the battery will run down to 15% and trigger the EXTREMELY LOUD "PING-pong-pong-pong" low-battery noise, right in my ear, without warning. And it's Apple, so of course you can't turn it off.

You'd be no better off with a Sony Headphone that screams in your ear that a device connected, the device is turned on and the battery is almost empty. The flagship Sony headphone is so bug ridden it's a joke if you ask me.

You can use the android app to disable the device connected/disconnected dialogue.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#37

Apple stuff "just works" until it doesn't. As much as a fan I am of Apple, the lack of feedback when things stop working is absolutely infuriating.

And sometimes it "just works", but only if everybody is within the Apple ecosystem. Otherwise, it's just a net exporter of problems. See, for example, SMS message of "Liked an image.", email attachments converted into icloud download links, .DS_STORE files scattered everywhere, and so on. Any time Apple comes up with a new feature that would require improving capabilities at a lower level, Apple instead makes a new layer of abstraction on top. And oh how conveniently, that new layer of abstraction is transparent only to Apple users.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#38
post #13

>Annoyance 4: Sometimes, only the left or right AirPod plays sound. Taking them in/out of your ears doesn't fix it, you need to put it back into the case and take it back out, which sometimes, doesn't fix it. So you need to put your AirPods in/out of your case two or three times to fix it. I run into this too, anyone know what's up with that? Is there some "listen with only one headphone in" feature that I'm accident…

Yes, there is a listen with only one headphone feature.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#39
post #13

>Annoyance 4: Sometimes, only the left or right AirPod plays sound. Taking them in/out of your ears doesn't fix it, you need to put it back into the case and take it back out, which sometimes, doesn't fix it. So you need to put your AirPods in/out of your case two or three times to fix it. I run into this too, anyone know what's up with that? Is there some "listen with only one headphone in" feature that I'm accident…

It’s not a feature it’s a bug that will affect nearly all Bluetooth in-ears that don’t share a receiver.

The design of Bluetooth buds is such that one of the buds is elected to be the receiver of data from the phone, it then propagates its signal to the second bud.

What you’re experiencing is a disconnection of one earbud to the other.

FWIW: apples AirPods Pro’s rehandshake (from the “slave” side towards the “master” side) every 10s- so you can have a lot of luck just waiting for it to reconnect; that is assuming that the slave device _wants_ to reconnect; it might believe it’s not in your ear.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#40
I have many of these problems plus: the advertised tap-to-control behavior never seems to work when I want it to. It only activates when my AirPods are misinterpreting my adjusting them as trying to pause what I’m listening to. And, of course, tapping again doesn’t restart playback.
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