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AirPods don't “just work”

philip.design

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Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#871

Post by justinator »

notapenny wrote: post #192
justinator wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of sheer curiosity, is it just the white on black and would a "softer" light-grey on dark-grey be better for you? Or just generally light on dark?

The problem in general is the stark contrast between white and black. My editor is set with a grey background with grey text (or low chroma colors), and it works great.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#872

Post by grishka »

asimilator wrote: post #868
grishka wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managing device connections with software is always going to result in a subpar user experience, period. When you use wired headphones, you don't have to rely on a UI to tell whether they're connected or not, and to manage that connection. To move from your laptop to your phone, you unplug them from the laptop and plug them into the phone. That simple. Impossible to mess up and works every time.

Yeah, but wires are also a subpar user experience, period. Rolling them up to store them, untangling them to use them, getting caught on things, routing them to the device, etc. There's a reason bluetooth headphones are still popular despite the downsides.

For me personally the wires are such a non-issue compared to all these software-related problems and having to run the whole thing through a noisy, unreliable, shared medium.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#873

Post by errcorrectcode »

If you have more than one iDevice or use ear security tips where the case lid can't close all the way, the iDevice fires a modal popup to show you battery info on half the screen.

Oh, and if you want to make a call with the phone itself, it switches to the AirPods twice, even when you don't want them and they're not in your ears.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#874

Post by nemothekid »

Hokusai wrote: post #771
marcan_42 wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the OS technology in use, it's about all the practicalities of how it is deployed on consoles vs. on desktops. Things like immutable OS volumes, fixed configuration tested on the hardware, the extent to which they build higher level automation to do what the user expects, etc. "The Xbox One runs Windows" ignores all these details which make it a much more seamless experience than on a PC. The PS4 runs…

> When was the last time a driver update broke game on a console? Ever had to install support software to make a game work well with a particular controller? Issues with overlays and system feature integration? Unexpected performance loss due to weird configuration? Mysterious DRM malfunction issues? Windows Update gone wrong? I agree (I don't get why people downvotes). My argument is that a quality PC does not have…

>My argument is that a quality PC does not have that problems.

Part of nvidia's drivers often contain workarounds and hacks specific to games. Sometimes they have gone wrong and bricked a game until the developer or nvidia can fix it. Buying a "quality" PC doesn't alleviate you from having to use nvidia drivers.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#875

Post by hiteshsharma »

p2t2p wrote: post #827
nsxwolf wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like "workarounds become a reflex". This is a very succinct way of describing one of the causes of why people often claim to have no issues using something that universally has issues. A great example is the gaming PC vs gaming console war. PC gamers often seem to refuse to admit there's untold little quirks you have to deal with when using a general-purpose operating system and modular hardware to play games. They…

Apple's stuff _always_ have issues and annoying ones. My Homepod stopped seeing any HomeKit devices. Reboot didn't help. I didn't feel like digging into it so I just went to bed. Couple days later out of all a sudden they start seeing stuff again.

> Apple's stuff _always_ have issues and annoying ones

True. I’m fully into apple ecosystem with iMac, Apple tv, macbook and phones. So, naturally I use airdrop a lot, to the point that sometimes I depend on it to work. But, every few days it just stops working. Even after turning off Bluetooth, wifi on phone and mac it just doesn’t shows the device. Sometimes I just give up and sometimes when I don’t feel like giving up I go up to even restarting devices. This is something that I don’t expect from Apple.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#876

Post by Tycho »

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…

Most ridiculous bug I’ve encountered is that if you have Notes open in list view and with an external monitor, it will consume 100% CPU non-stop, killing the battery life and overheating the Macbook Pro and eventually physically damaging the device (screen connection fails).

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#877

Post by nemothekid »

dnadler wrote: post #740
guntars wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know any bluetooth headsets that don't have similar quirks to what the post talks about, let me know, because otherwise I'm thinking this is Bluetooth and it wont get better until we ditch it. Quirks of Bose AE2 that I'm dealing with: 1) Switching to the low fidelity Bluetooth headset mode when the mic is activated. Why does this still exist? I'd be happier if they just didn't add a mic if they can't support b…

So, I just switched from Android to iOS, and I've noticed that the bluetooth reliability is significantly worse than what I've become used to. I switch from a Pixel 4a to an iPhone 11, and both my Bose QC 35 headphones and Sony wireless earbuds are having lots of issue that I never head on the pixel. So, my takeaway is that iOS is behind here, though I don't know enough about the underlying tech to say anything for s…

FWIW, Android is now on it's 3rd (4th?) Bluetooth stack rewrite (latest being Gabeldorsh?). I haven't done Android dev in a long time, but bluetooth reliability was a real pain to get sorted even for Google.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#878

Post by psychomugs »

uzbit wrote: post #231

I think most of these annoyances can be taken broadly from the fact that everything about any Bluetooth experience is just absolute trash. Why does it take several tries to pair sometimes? When paired, why does it sometimes auto-connect and sometimes not? Why does it just never pair at all? What's with that pair code that it says to enter, but auto fills (sometimes)? And only sometimes do you have to use that code (w…

I've found the best compromise to be a Bluetooth receiver with 3.5mm input. I feel comfortably untethered to the desk, I can still use them while charging, and I can quickly switch between other 3.5mm devices.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#879

Post by gnicholas »

fomine3 wrote: post #862
gnicholas wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use one ear at a time, both for battery purposes, and so I don’t have the two AirPods communicating with each other through my brain. I realize that we think nothing bad happens from the emissions from AirPods, but this may change in the future. Some have pointed out that prior studies involved devices that were not stuck quite so far into our ears. Since I listen to podcasts and books, I have no need to use two si…

The question is that why you want to enable ANC even if you use single bud? Anyway noise is come from non plugged ear. My answer is that ANC helps reducing playback volume to battle with noise so it still worth.

You're right that noise comes from the other ear. But I am able to listen at a lower volume when ANC is activated. I often listen while walking near traffic noise, which the ANC is fairly effective at defeating. With ANC — even in just one ear — I can preserve my hearing a bit.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#880

Post by mjevans »

mschuster91 wrote: post #854
p2t2p wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's stuff _always_ have issues and annoying ones. My Homepod stopped seeing any HomeKit devices. Reboot didn't help. I didn't feel like digging into it so I just went to bed. Couple days later out of all a sudden they start seeing stuff again.

At least their issues are relatively benign compared to the hot mess that is Windows. Had to re-install a friend's Asus all-in-one PC last weekend and god this was not fun. Took over a day worth of downloading Windows updates, battling Realtek's audio driver and Intel's chipset drivers until everything was finally working as expected (and most of the drivers are from 2016 - only God knows how much exploit surface the…

It's only bad for 3D because nVidia has their secret sauce (and corner cutting) in the driver and locked down firmware blobs that have very restrictive distribution.

If you have an Intel or AMD GPU everything either just works, or works with the latest drivers (might require an added repo if the card came out after the last stable release).

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