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AirPods don't “just work”

philip.design

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Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#571

Post by smoldesu »

kristjansson wrote: post #468
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the big deal here, Apple? People have been complaining about BEING CAUSED PAIN BY AIRPODS for YEARS and they are not doing anything about it! This being the top rated comment here further proves it's a major issue for airpod users. What the fuck, apple? I am absolutely terrified of that painful sound and will regularly check battery to ensure it won't hit me.

Just to provide my own ancedata, I've been an AirPods users for a long time, and don't find the alert sounds particularly loud or annoying. I think the volume of complaints and popularity of AirPods this speaks to wider variations in human hearing perception than one would expect. The main body of users have no problem, but enough people experience those sounds as painful to generate a volume complaints.

Conversely, it might just speak to the different kinds of music we listen to. "Dynamic range" is a pretty big phrase you'll hear in the mixing industry, and Airpods effectively have no way to determine how loud your music is before sending an audible notification. If you're listening to a song that's mixed at -12dbLUFS on Spotify or Apple Music, the alert will play at the exact same volume as it would when you're watching a Netflix show mixed at -25dbLUFS. The difference in sound is, quite literally, an order of magnitude apart, and could quite easily account for having such a loud and annoying sound blowing up your ears and ruining your listening experience.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#572

Post by gnicholas »

Apple doesn’t allow you to use ANC on AirPods when you have only one ear inserted.

But there’s actually a setting — buried deep inside the Accessibility preferences — that enables this feature.

Why wouldn’t they make this the default? Who would want ANC to work only some of the time? And what does this setting have to do with accessibility/disability?

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#573

Post by hellomyguys »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #465

It's weird to me how many people are like "yeah but every other bluetooth is worse". I have Airpod Pros and experienced every one of these issues and many more on the regular with them, but my several years old now Bose QC 35II never have any of these problems, still last like 5 times as long on battery after years of recharge cycles, interact better with two simultaneously connected devices, have better signal range…

Yeah, using my AirPods Max is one of the most frustrating experiences. In the past week I've had to force reset them so many times and it almost seems arbitrary when it actually connects. I can't imagine a non-savvy tech person being able to easily debug it.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#574

Post by mensetmanusman »

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.

Aha, just experienced this yesterday when I couldn’t update or download any new app on my child’s iPad with the newest OS because it refused to ever finish accepting my iCloud password.

Through some obscure digging, I found that changing my region language on the ipad from English > UK English and back somehow fixed it…

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#576

Post by Veen »

cybertim wrote: post #442
TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #374

Annoyance 1 - you can configure auto-connect per device. I have three computers and an iPhone that have been paired with my AirPods. I only have my iPhone configured to connect to my AirPods automatically. Annoyance 2 - since you hear the "connect" tone when the AirPods connect to a device, my guess is the author's AirPods have connected to a device they are not looking at. This is what was happening to me before I r…

And to add to this, i learned to not use the 'bluetooth' icon to manage the AirPods, instead use the 'triangle with broadcast signal'-icon found next to the volume in the control centre or on many other different locations on your ipad, iphone or apple tv. Just turn off the auto-connect feature and start using that icon, all the mentioned 'annoyances' will go away :)

> triangle with broadcast signal

The AirPlay icon.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#577

Post by liber8 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #141
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #47

I generally enjoy my AirPods. They are occasionally quirky, but most of the time they really do “just work” for me. The annoyances are annoying when they happen, though. The strangest part is that the annoyances aren’t getting any better over time. At first I assumed that they were growing pains of an early product launch. Yet now we’re years into the AirPods experience and they continue to be just as quirky as when…

In my experience, the annoyances actually get worse over time. I got my AirPods back when the original ones were released and the experience probably was as good as physically possible (short of including multiple radios so they can maintain connections to multiple devices in parallel and simply mix the audio client-side). They then (2 years ago?) released this new feature where AirPods could automatically switch bet…

I agree. When I got my first pair roughly two years ago (after years of using various versions bluetooth earbuds you could buy on Amazon for $20) they seemed like magic. Take them out, they automatically and nearly instantly connect, and almost never had any issues.

I just bought v3, and while the sound is noticeably better, the connections are all over the place. At least once a day, the connection simply dies. Multiple times a day it decides to connect to another device that I'm not using. If you answer a call and then put an airpod in your ear, it's got about a 50% chance of connecting, after a multi-second delay. Sometimes it says its connected, but it's not, so the iphone isn't emitting sound from its speakers and nothing is coming out of the airpods, leaving me sounding like an idiot repeating "can you hear me now?" until I manually kill the connection and use the built in speakers. Absolutely infuriating.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#578

Post by suresk »

I had frustrating issues where they would halfway connect, then disconnect, and only a reboot of the Mac would fix it. Finally trawled through system logs to realize that Spotify was preventing it from fully connecting. Apparently, an app can register callbacks of some sort that get called during the connect/handshake/sync process, and those can cause it to fail?

Also, hate how sometimes only one side will charge.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#579

Post by ynniv »

gnicholas wrote: post #572

Apple doesn’t allow you to use ANC on AirPods when you have only one ear inserted. But there’s actually a setting — buried deep inside the Accessibility preferences — that enables this feature. Why wouldn’t they make this the default? Who would want ANC to work only some of the time? And what does this setting have to do with accessibility/disability?

I've had it run with only one ear, and it feels uncomfortably lopsided. Maybe if you could only hear in one ear or had a hearing aid in the other you would want to enable this. In general, accessibility settings seems to be a place immune from the simplicity police at Apple. There are often useful features in there.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#580

Post by grujicd »

Audiophilip wrote: post #18

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.

Too bad Android manufacturers want to emulate Apple even with bad decissions. Headhpone port is getting rarer with each new release. Samsung S21 line doesn’t have it in any model afaik.
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