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AirPods don't “just work”

philip.design

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Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#51

Post by evrydayhustling »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #4

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.

> Apple stuff "just works" until it doesn't.

"Just works" is absolutely a statement that should be considered on a time curve! Some products work incredibly in the most trivial use case you test during unboxing, but fall apart when deeply integrated. Others are a PITA to set up, but stop requiring any unproductive attention afterwards.

This was incredibly clear for anyone WITHOUT AirPods during 2019-2020. Everyone picked them up with their iPhone 11 upgrade and immediately started talking about how they "just work". Three months later, you'd see people fiddling with extra devices to keep them charged, or complaining about sending them through the laundry or into subway grates. Then the pandemic hit and they became an entire category of Zoom fatigue due to multiple bluetooth connections.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#52

Post by DoingIsLearning »

I would add to the list that it is environmentally negligent to allow for such a complex device to be near irreparable (specifically on battery replacement).

Unless you are selling medical devices your electronics should never be thrown away because after-sales cannot swap a battery. Then again Google just dropped the Pixel 3 after just 3 years so this is clearly an issue with the consumer electronics business model.

Consumer electronics will remain a vastly wasteful business unless governments force tighter environmental regulations.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#53

Post by bajsejohannes »

Personally, annoyances like this is enough for me not to want wireless headphones. My wired headphones work 100% of the time. It's obvious what they are connected to.

(PS, I also prefer transport belts over robots in factorio, and explicitly constructed objects over dependency injection in programming)

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#54

Post by justinator »

d23 wrote: post #15
justinator wrote: post #11

Oofta. Is anyone having trouble with white text on black background? That was a design anti pattern that I thought died out in the early 2,000's.

How’s that an anti-pattern? With dark mode, it’s more in style than ever now.

It's an accessibility problem, especially for people (like me) who have astigmatism. But y'all don't look away from white text on black background to a bright light source (like a page of black text on a white background) and get a "burned in" impression of the previous page in your vision? Lucky you.

Dark mode is fine, please let the user choose to have dark mode when she wants to.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#55

Post by StevePerkins »

I have a $200-250 pair of AirPod Pros, and a $40 pair of Tozo NC7's that I bought for a backup. The Tozo's get way more use, to the point where I regret buying the AirPods.

Your ears may vary, but "dot" style earbuds are WAY more comfortable (and likely to stay put in my ears) than the "stem" style buds. The spatial audio thing turned out to be a pointless novelty that wore off quickly, and isn't even supported on half of my Apple devices.

I also get tired of the weird glitches, where my AirPods will spontaneously decide to drop my connection, and connect to a different device. With other earbuds, it's a mild annoyance having to manually tell one device to drop its connection so another device can connect. But the truth is that I don't have to do this THAT often, and the unwanted switchovers are far more frequent and annoying. Plus, there are a ton of bluetooth earbuds and headphones that accept two or more simultaneous connections, which eliminates the issue and is better than what AirPods try to do, honestly.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#56

Post by martneumann »

justinator wrote: post #11

Oofta. Is anyone having trouble with white text on black background? That was a design anti pattern that I thought died out in the early 2,000's.

Same for me. It produces some glare for me and I use dark mode almost everywhere.

I also don't like the huge font. Looks almost what I'd expect an h2 to look like.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#59

Post by cromka »

I have many of those issues mentioned in the article daily with iPhone 13 Pro and MacBook Air M1.

Whatever Apple advertised as AirPods Pro features, it's all false advertising. I can't get anything to work reliably. Anything. I don't trust them at all with any sort of serious meeting at this point, either, since they recently started to randomly switch from being actively used with my MacBook to an idling iPhone in another room. Seriously, Apple?

The experience is getting worse and worse. And I seriously wonder why isn't it yet another class action – they well deserve it.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#60

Post by lowercased »

mgoetzke wrote: post #16

As for 1) You can configure devices not to auto-connect unless previously connected

That simply doesn't work for me. Regardless of what options I set, about 60% of the time, if I'm talking on an iphone with airpod pros, and I walk within a few feet of my mac (which does have a connection to the airpods), it will switch from the phone while I'm talking and... there's no reliable way to get that back. In the phone app, clicking 'airpods'... is slow as molasses and sometimes shows them as connected again, but... no sound. Speaker works - the call is still ongoing. If I walk far enough away, sometimes it will reconnect, but not usually. The only near reliable way is to disconnect the airpods in the bluetooth menu, then wait, then reconnect. This is annoying as hell for the person on the call to have to sit through.

Yeah, sorry Apple support... I've only got the ios 15.x from a couple weeks ago. No doubt upgrading to the very latest will definitely solve all extant problems, everything will magically 'just work' and there will be absolutely no new problems introduced. /s

When I describe this to some Apple store folks (2x last fall), they seemed 'shocked' (couldn't tell if it was fake or not). "Wow, never heard of that - no one's ever told me that before, that doesn't seem right. We have some training classes next week you can sign up for".

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