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AirPods don't “just work”

philip.design

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Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#931

Post by Friedduck »

I’ll add one: if you pair AirPods with one of your devices, it adds them to all devices attached to your AppleID. Remove them from one removes them from all.

This removes one possible solution to unwanted switching between devices.

I know you can turn off automatic switching, which makes connecting cumbersome.

Finally, if you have them in, iPhone will occasionally start a video, or music, at the conclusion of a call even if you weren’t actively listening to it before. Add to that the unremovable Lock Screen play controls and it’s a recipe for not doing what I want.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#932

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #889
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…

This sentiment is seen in almost every response on http://discussions.apple.com , on Apple's subreddits and often in HN comments as well. People are just too eager to jump on behalf on Apple - "but why you would rather not do this instead" ( Why? Because I was looking for something else and I mentioned it for heaven's sake! ) and these hacks and workarounds stack up while "Apple products and services just work" stays…

Any time I search the internet for a solution to a problem with an Apple product or device, I intentionally exclude discussions.apple.com domains from my search results. I have never found a solution there, and the forums seem to be dominated — and I mean DOMINATED — by two or three ‘experts’ whose bottom-line is that Apple’s products work, so you must be doing something wrong.

One guy is convinced that uninstalling Chrome is the solution.

The go-to first response is “run Etrecheck,” after which they’ll chastise you for having installed anything they don’t recognize. And god help you if you’ve installed CleanMyMac. The only solution is to reinstall macOS and never do that again!

(They all seem to ignore that CleanMyMac X is now notarized and sold in the App Store...)

Stackoverflow > Apple’s community support. Every time.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#933

Post by thenerdhead »

mns wrote: post #541
thenerdhead wrote: post #191

Here's a few more: - Airpods sometimes do not charge when in the case. Usually need to pull it out and put back in again. - Knowing what airpod(s) and case are charging. The UI on the phone, the open the case sliding window, the widgets, and the case light itself are not very useful. - Spatial audio working on some apps but you're not usually aware if it's on until you tilt an ear one way to confirm. - Out of ear det…

Ha, the preference list is interesting, I don't know how some stuff works for Apple when connecting the AirPods even with multiple apple ids. I had my girlfriend connect her AirPods to my iPad to watch a movie on the plane. A couple of weeks later I was using airplay to stream a game on the TV, while my gf was in another room wanting to watch something on her phone connected to her apple id. All of the sudden sound g…

Yeah, my big gripe is that I keep my computers docked/clamshelled and whenever you lift them, airpods will ALWAYS transfer. So I've had to learn to stop doing that with multiple devices and prevent them from going to sleep.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#934

Post by thenerdhead »

dont__panic wrote: post #501
thenerdhead wrote: post #191

Here's a few more: - Airpods sometimes do not charge when in the case. Usually need to pull it out and put back in again. - Knowing what airpod(s) and case are charging. The UI on the phone, the open the case sliding window, the widgets, and the case light itself are not very useful. - Spatial audio working on some apps but you're not usually aware if it's on until you tilt an ear one way to confirm. - Out of ear det…

I really wish they'd add an LED per AirPod in the case, as an easy visual indicator that they're properly seated and charging. I don't know if I'm especially oily or something but both pairs of AirPods I've used have had charging issues in the case after just a few months, and it's so frustrating that it's almost impossible to tell if they're both charging in there. Nothing like going out for a run and figuring out 5…

Same. I would be fine with like 3 LEDs where the left and right LED would turn green when fully charged airpod & green for the case as middle one.

While it's charging everything, you might see blinking/orange LEDs until they turn green.

Of course interactions for when the case is charging the airpods and when the case is plugged in, but that's not too difficult I think.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#935

Post by raisedbyninjas »

nsxwolf wrote: post #759
Hokusai wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's untold little quirks you have to deal with when using a general-purpose operating system "Though initial iterations of the software for the original Xbox and Xbox 360 were based on heavily modified versions of Windows, the newer consoles feature operating systems that are highly compatible with Microsoft's desktop operating systems, allowing for shared applications and ease-of-development between personal c…

There's also a lot of little things. Like, you launch a game and there's no audio. Well, Windows at some point decided to switch audio outputs on you. You may have a lot of them. Line out, headphones, a bluetooth headset, a virtual out for streaming software, a monitor with built-in speakers - and now you've got to click the little speaker icon and try to figure out what should be selected, which may be named after t…

You can rename audio devices to be something just friendly.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#936

Post by lukevp »

bpye wrote: post #838
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.

Recently my Hue bulbs have decided to sometimes all show as unavailable in HomeKit, which is annoying. They normally revive themselves in a few minutes but I can’t figure it out. Unfortunately no other home automation platform (Google, Amazon) lets you keep everything on your local network, and using Home Assistant would make using Siri for it harder, so I’m stuck with an annoyingly buggy platform.

You can use home assistant and HomeKit together pretty seamlessly. We have all our lighting automation as a zwave network though hass, and the lights are also included in HomeKit. We can use Siri or hass app or the native home app/widgets in iOS without any issues. And everything runs locally too.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#937

Post by nsxwolf »

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #935
nsxwolf wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a lot of little things. Like, you launch a game and there's no audio. Well, Windows at some point decided to switch audio outputs on you. You may have a lot of them. Line out, headphones, a bluetooth headset, a virtual out for streaming software, a monitor with built-in speakers - and now you've got to click the little speaker icon and try to figure out what should be selected, which may be named after t…

You can rename audio devices to be something just friendly.

Right. You can. A workaround. This is something you don't have to do on an XBox or PS5.

And that's a workaround to make it easier to perform another workaround, the "why can't I hear my game" problem. So we're in workaround Inception now, nested workarounds.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#938

Post by bitwize »

recursive wrote: post #634
bitwize wrote: post #339

You know what Just Work? The $10 Skullcandy headphones I plugged into my phone's headphone jack. Forces greater than us have decided that something so simple yet so functional is obsolete so we can't have it on our phones without a dongle.

"Forces" didn't do it. The headphone jack on my phone is doing great. You can have one too if you choose to.

Most if not all cellphone manufacturers have decided to discontinue 3.5mm headphone jacks on their flagship, if not lesser, models.

So at some point your choices will be to either use a potato (often with a locked bootloader) or muddle through as best you can with an old phone that cease receiving security updates, including kernel updates, in the very near future.

It's the same forces that decided all TVs should be "smart" and have made dumb TVs difficult and sometimes expensive to obtain, especially if they are of any quality. The manufacturers want you to buy whatever drives their own and their partners' profit margins, and the buying public is too apathetic to care.

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#939

Post by sebastien_b »

SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #932
crossroadsguy wrote: post #889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sentiment is seen in almost every response on http://discussions.apple.com , on Apple's subreddits and often in HN comments as well. People are just too eager to jump on behalf on Apple - "but why you would rather not do this instead" ( Why? Because I was looking for something else and I mentioned it for heaven's sake! ) and these hacks and workarounds stack up while "Apple products and services just work" stays…

Any time I search the internet for a solution to a problem with an Apple product or device, I intentionally exclude discussions.apple.com domains from my search results. I have never found a solution there, and the forums seem to be dominated — and I mean DOMINATED — by two or three ‘experts’ whose bottom-line is that Apple’s products work, so you must be doing something wrong. One guy is convinced that uninstalling…

> the forums seem to be dominated — and I mean DOMINATED — by two or three ‘experts’ whose bottom-line is that Apple’s products work, so you must be doing something wrong.

I've experience this first-hand, and it's annoying AF.

I wrote a post on Apple's forum about the years-old iOS celluar-draining bug[1], and one of these high-reputation "experts" (read: Apple apologist/shill) kept insisting that the OS corrupting its own settings and not handling the corruption gracefully was somehow all my fault - when I pointed out this was a clear OS bug (even linking to the Wikipedia definition for 'software bug'), his long-winded pushback reply boiled down to him essentially saying that "bugs aren't bugs". Beyond useless as a help forum with these clowns being allowed to earn those "reputation" points.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29764360

Re: AirPods don't “just work”

#940

Post by MarkusWandel »

Does any bluetooth gadget ever "just work"? Not in my admittedly non-Apple world. The rules for connecting/disconnecting, especially if a gadget is paired to more than one thing, seem to be too complex to understand. It's almost reassuing that even Apple can't make this look 100% simple and easy.
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