I wake up and run early each day. Used to use wired headphones but decided in 2021 to try earbuds (not apple). Most mornings only one will pair so there I am unpairing and repairing several times before I run, I'm generally a calm person but have come quite close to rage destroying phone and airbuds in response. Bluetooth and I are not friends.
I got the AirPods a few weeks ago. I'm still amazed that Apple managed to make me hate bluetooth less than I did previously (coming from a Samsung phone + Galaxy Buds). They really managed to make the everyday bluetooth experience seamless. However, whenever I did encounter those rare issues, troubleshooting AirPods was infinitely more cumbersome than with 'regular' bt headphones.
Airpods are great the only thing I hate is Apple syncs bluetooth settings to all devices using the same iCloud account with seemingly no way to disable it.
I never use my airpods max with my iPhone. Likewise I never use my regular airpods with my macbook. But whenever I put them on, no matter what options I check like "pair with last device", it pairs with the wrong device. I have removed the airpods max from my iPhone but Apple will just add it back.
Things like this are why I don't want to use apple's account services at all.
My no-name Amazon earpods knock offs work just fine, every time, for running. Not sure what fancy features they lack, but they "just work", better than my Bose QC35.
I bought an Apple Watch and Powerbeats Pro headphones just for my morning walks/runs. When it works, it works like a charm and gives me the perfect start to the day. Bluetooth and I are best friends on those days!
But once every two weeks or so, the phones (or at least one of them) decide they aren't having any of it and just refuse to pair, and I have to spend the whole morning trying to figure out what went wrong. Bluetooth and I are blood enemies on those days!
I swear. But it's not just an issue with the cheap, knockoff stuff: my Bose Soundsport Earbuds often fail, too, with the left one connecting maybe two thirds of the time. It's so infuriating. The only upside is that they were a gift rather than a purchase, so at least I don't have to suffer through the fact that I paid for this crap.
Yeah, pretty much. The Internet was full of people telling us why fully wireless ear buds were impossible until overnight suddenly Apple made them possible for almost everyone.
Not OP, but a huge percentage of the no-name wireless earbuds I see are airpod knockoffs. Also, there were no successful true wireless earbuds before AirPods, just a couple of ones that launched a few months earlier to poor reviews.
The earpiece craze started long before. I remember my mono-audio Samsung earpiece that went into one ear and worked perfectly from a decade before Airpods. The samsung charged with a simple USB cable, too.
What is the unique feature of an Airpod that was not present in the successful products that launched a decade before? Status symbol for the apple nuts?
Most people I know use only one airpod at a time. That applies to my two teens in highschool and a multitude of professionals I work with. The same people a decade earlier would just be using the Samsung mono ear pieces or the multitude of other ones that existed.
Airpod has 3 bluetooth chips, one in each ear and the case. All of these are synced, and the individual ear pieces are synced. Their form factor, battery life, ease of pairing, sound quality, build quality, comfort, and price point were what made them better than anything else on the market. Competitors may have caught up but Apple is still offering the best product.
I own airpods because they came free with a macbook I was buying as a gift for someone. I use them.
They are a bit of an improvement over some devices out there, but they are probably a downgrade from Bose bluetooth devices I have owned temporarily (I returned them to exchange for a wired buds pair).
I think you are giving Apple too much credit. I would say Airpods have good marketing and it is smart to give them away for free with their other products to create or perpetuate an illusion of popularity.
I expect devices which go through constant charging/discharging to start noticeably degrading after 500 cycles, and to be very degraded by 1,000 cycles. Have consumer goods progressed beyond this yet?
No, they have not. Companies probably see no reason to innovate here either -- it is one of two major reasons for their customers to buy new devices.
(1) Battery is nearly useless.
(2) The vendor decided to artificially slow the device with forced updates, or worse, the vendor decided to publish a list of CVEs and then declare your device ineligible for the necessary security updates going forward.
