We need to talk about AirPods Pro

My lack of faith in humanity can see #4. Another great thing nerfed by dumb people.

Regardless, the firmware releases are an embarassing fiasco that demonstrates a lack of coordination and communication within Apple.

Although I'm not even sure if that's how sound waves work, and recently there was Bose's investigation into their firmware update that didn't actually reduce their ANC despite user perspective. It's a fun theory up there with the fake existence of Finland.

However, about 1 month later I noticed that noise cancelling (and passthrough as well, which was even more annoying) wasn't really working on one side. I tried factory-resetting them, tried everything I could think of, and nothing helped. So I scheduled an Apple Store appointment. To Apple's credit, they replaced the one on the side that wasn't working, for free, with very few questions asked.

However, that's when things got weird.

Now the older one wasn't cancelling/passing-through as well as the brand new one. It was doing something, just not as much, which led to a really distracting audible asymmetry. This was confirmed by the fit test not working in just that one ear. Again I tried updating the firmware, factory-resetting, etc.

Eventually I found this thread on MacRumors: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airpod-pro-ear-tip-fit-...

tl;dr, it seems that some of the meshed gaps/microphones the Airpods Pro use to calibrate their various special audio features get very easily clogged by ear wax, skin oil, etc. And they're extremely sensitive to this, to the point where you have to clean them out very frequently to prevent degradation. I went through and rigorously cleaned them - rubbing alcohol, cotton swaps, etc. - and even then mine still have problems. The only way I can prevent the asymmetry it is to turn off the "active sound" features altogether. But this means that not only don't I get full noise-cancelling, I can't even safely use them just to listen to music in any spaces where I need to be able to hear my surroundings. They are now worse than the regular Airpods that I gave up when I got them.

This is completely unacceptable for a product that costs $250, but at this point I'm exasperated. I'm tired of going to the Apple Store, and it's presumably not even open right now with the virus going. I wish I could just turn them in and get a refund, but I think it's been too long. If I could do that I'd probably even buy a new pair of the regular ones and just go back to those; mine had worked mostly without problems for over a year. At this point I don't know what to do about it all except hope there's a recall-like process like they did with the butterfly keyboards.