AirPods don't “just work”

AirPods don't “just work”(philip.design)

927 points by knowingathing 4 years ago | 937 comments

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 I first got them.

Apple seems so hot or cold on fixing their own bugs. Certain bugs get rapidly patched in the next iOS or Mac software release. Other bugs languish for what feels like forever. Do Apple execs just not use AirPods? Are they using a different configuration or hardware combination that doesn’t have these bugs? Have they just trained themselves to overlook the bugs because the workarounds have become a reflex? I can’t imagine working at any tech company where one of the flagship products had such a high rate of annoyances without having a lot of engineers diverted to replicating, diagnosing, and fixing it ASAP.

nsxwolf 4 years ago | |

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 don't notice the workarounds they are continuously employing, because it's become a reflex.

crossroadsguy 4 years ago | | |

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 where it was in such Apple users' imaginations.

This is frustratingly weird and quite niche to Apple's user-fans.

For instance Apple's online services - the whole iCloud charade is a living and growing mess.

The SMS sync between phone and mac and in fact difference of basic UX options ("you can't select multiple messages on Catalina Messages app - not sure if it is added in later versions -- if you delete an SMS on phone it will still be synced to your mac Messages). And there apps are opaque in the guise of "simplicity" you just end up getting frustrated. I can go on for hours. Now as an Apple fan - but why would you not want those SMS to sync to mac as well? Yes, even if you delete them! What's the use of multiple message selection on mac Messages app - that's bad use case! Yes, yes, even though it is supported on iPhone - you don't get it!

The problem is the essential duopoly - Android and iOS - rock and a hard place.

p2t2p 4 years ago | | |

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.

vkou 4 years ago | | |

> 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 don't notice the workarounds they are continuously employing, because it's become a reflex.

Not just a reflex, a cargo-cult reflex.

Look at the litany of optimization/debugging nonsense that is parroted across the internet. Registry fiddling, disabling Windows services, setting core affinities, divination by chicken bones, all sorts of nonsense - the impact of which is, of course, not ever empirically measured.

ansible 4 years ago | | |

Yep. For one game, the launcher screen depends on an old version of a Microsoft .NET runtime that is no longer distributed by Microsoft, and the current version (theoretically compatible) is disallowed because the launcher has apparently hardcoded a dependency to a specific version.

Then there was another game where I had to install a different DLL to get it to run.

Then there was IL2 Sturmovik that was just plain broken for a long time on more recent versions of Windows. I of course didn't discover this until after the refund window...

npteljes 4 years ago | | |

I found the same about moving to GIMP from Photoshop. Granted, Photoshop has more conveniences and fancy features. But a good deal of the frustration is not GIMP's so-called confusing interface, just the habits I formed while using Photoshop. Now that I'm a GIMP user for a time, every time I go back to Photoshop, I find myself annoyed in the same way. I think this just boils down to people's natural resistance to change.

eternityforest 4 years ago | | |

The more minimalist a system is, the less people seem to think in terms of "annoyances". In fact, simplicity fans seem to pride themselves on doing a bit more themselves.

Like, manual transmission people think of the constant need to manage it yourself as just how driving is supposed to be.

It's a big problem in Linux, where things can totally break and nobody bats an eye.

Hokusai 4 years ago | | |

> 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 computers and the Xbox line." Wikipedia

> and modular hardware

This is true. There are, e.g., fake GPUs that will make your experience quite bad. I always buy pre-build PCs from my favorite tech store, and I have personally avoided the problem. But Steam forums show that some people is not so fortunate. Also there is people trying to run modern games in very old PCs, consoles solve that problem by not running new games in previous generation consoles.

bryceacc 4 years ago | | |

i feel like i can't identify issues in my life because I am so used to doing workarounds. this is why everything needs to be tested by someone else that is completely separate from the work, their fresh perspective will point out such obvious issues and your first reaction should never be to balk and say "no but you just do it like this"

ChuckNorris89 4 years ago | | |

>A great example is the gaming PC vs gaming console war.

Which war was that? A bunch of teenagers and man-children arguing online between PC vs console superiority is in no way a 'war' and is anything but a great example for "workarounds become a reflex". Online squabbles between rabid fanboys and brand loyalists should be left alone and not be used in logical debates.

>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.

I highly doubt your broad generalization is accurate. Do you have any sources for your claims? Every PC owner and gamer I know both online and IRL openly admits this hobby is not a smooth sailing endeavor. Again, I would love to see your sources for your claims, otherwise I feel HN is degrading into reddit where people make broad fact-less generalizations with no arguments and others upvote regardless because it gives them self-approval and dopamine hits.

>They don't notice the workarounds they are continuously employing, because it's become a reflex.

My personal example would be MacOS, when I, an outsider who never regularly used MacOS, point out various UX quirks that trip me up and cause issues for me rather than make my life easier as I was promised, I saw that everyone I know who is a long time user of MacOS got so used to the quirks that they formed some workarounds that turned into reflexes and just became part of the experience and not viewed as issue anymore but as tolerated and expected behavior. Basically for them MacOS is simpler because they already know the quirks and workarounds inside and out, not because it's objectively simpler than the alternatives. Same goes for long time users of Linux and Windows if you're coming from the other side.

So in the end it's not about one being objectively better than the other, it's about people always will have more issues with the things they don't know very well and be subjectively biased towards the things they already know and like. It's the nature of humanity.

Nextgrid 4 years ago | |

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 between all your devices which is just too slow and is more of an annoyance in practice, but even disabling the behavior made the existing experience much worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30085538

liber8 4 years ago | | |

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.

TrainedMonkey 4 years ago | | |

Whoa I thought that was just me. It used to be pretty easy to switch the device AirPods are connected to. Now, AirPods connect to the right device in 50% of the cases, 30% of cases they do not, but I can click connect on the new device and it works, remaining 20% the only way to get things working is either manually disconnecting on the device they attach to or putting them in the case and trying to get happy scenario again.

To summarize, things are generally better but way less consistent.

Gigachad 4 years ago | | |

Yeah I totally know what you are talking about with it being too slow and unreliable. But it's also the primary reason I use airpods. They are the only device I know of that let me almost seamlessly switch between my macbook, iphone, ipad, and while running they connect direct to my watch. It's worth so much to me that I don't even consider any competitors.

And I will put up with a lot of quirkyness or waiting for connection to have that.

a-dub 4 years ago | |

i don't know if it's limitations of the bluetooth protocol, or necessary optimizations in order to maintain battery life, but in my experience most battery operated bluetooth devices seem to have pairing issues.

i suspect that it's probably a combination of three things:

1) reliability is hard when on a power budget. if power was free, they'd just always be looking to renegotiate, but since power is limited, they probably are very miserly about this process which leads to getting stuck in states that require power cycling to force retries.

2) interoperability is hard with open standards, especially old standards that are complicated.

3) open standards come with limitations that sometimes cannot be worked around. (this is where i'm surprised apple hasn't just cheated as they usually do when open standards result in ux they find unacceptable, this leads me to believe the problem itself, of distributed consensus between multiple wireless low power devices with potentially noisy links, is actually very hard)

when you think about it, the technology behind wireless earbuds is nothing short of astounding. they're little battery operated wireless two node compute clusters that can literally fit in your ears, stream audio and maintain nearly perfect synchronization when rendering that audio in the most absolute basic use case.

epolanski 4 years ago | | |

I can say I have had all of the issues listed in the post with three different bluetooth headphones. Random disconnections, only left or right speaker working, drivers issue on anything that was not an android phone, having to turn off bluetooth on phone when using on pc, having to deactivate phone and mic to boost bandwidth for audio (night and day difference).

I don't think I will ever buy bluetooth earbuds or headphones again, also because those devices are terrible for the environment.

tobyjsullivan 4 years ago | |

I've similarly found AirPods both "just work" from a user experience, especially compared to alternative bluetooth audio devices, and also are quirky from a reliability standpoint. There have been fixes pushed out in past, particularly with the earlier models, where fixes could be done via OTA firmware updates.

The remaining quirks all feel related to Bluetooth tech and, specifically, the low-power available to AirPods (compared to, say, my giant Bose headphones).

I can only speculate but I think AirPods are currently limited by the bluetooth tech itself. What I expect we'll see is apple will ship a version with a proprietary radio system. They probably won't be compatible with non-Apple devices but they'll be 10x better than today's AirPods (more reliable, simultaneous audio from multiple devices, even better battery life, etc.).

There's no guarantee Apple will pull this off. But I'd bet it's far more likely there's a team of engineers dedicated to this strategy as we speak than that Apple just "gave up" on one of their best-selling product lines as soon as the MVP proved there was a huge market.

saiya-jin 4 years ago | | |

Man, you sure are overly optimistic. That part about bluetooth doesn't make sense, tons of products work reliably with similar dimension/weight restrictions as airpods. If Apple with its army of engineers can't make their products work reliably, how could have much smaller companies succeeded? Btw one of biggest disappointments for me with airpods (pro) is weak bettery life compared to competition.

I am currently shopping around for new truly wireless headphones for iphone and not a single comparison has apple airpods/pro as winners in 2 most important categories (for me but I believe for many others too): sound quality and battery life. Same for their smartwatches but thats another topic.

Apple, or any company, sees that even product with such flaws still sells very well, so there is little pressure to fix things asap. That some engineers somewhere are working on next gen (or even 2 next gens in parallel) is expected, but these generational updates are very iterative and never revolutionary (that's what new product lines are for, for much higher price).

One anecdote from today - had a year end review call with my boss while being on sick leave due to covid. He desperately tried to pair his new iphone 13 pro max with his new airpods (not sure if pro or regular) and gave up after some time. It just didn't work and we had good old phone-in-hand call.

arcticbull 4 years ago | |

Extend that to AirPods Pro. My right ear cup crashes periodically - then I can only hear out of the left side until the watchdog timer engages and nukes the left cup too. I frequently have to reset it by holding down the buttons for 10 seconds in order to get it to connect to anything. It frequently disconnects and refuses to reconnect if I take off my mask out from under it. It stops detecting my head occasionally. An iOS bug probably, but I can't change the Mic mode anymore when on calls - it just shows me them menu options but I can't tap any of them. And the ear cups started to smell, lol, but there's no clear way to actually clean them due to their, well, magnets. I bike to work and have to dry them when I arrive because sweat builds up under the cups. They're also just too big to fit into anything practical, so I end up just carrying them around in one hand.

All in all, they're fine, but they most certainly do not just work for me, and they're not a $600 product IMO.

COGlory 4 years ago | | |

Can I ask why you purchased them in the first place? They seemed very obviously to not be a $600 product from their announcement.

initplus 4 years ago | | |

If you are experiencing all of these reliability issues, have them replaced by Apple. My original AirPods Pro had some serious issues. Firmware would update on only one of the pair, and so preventing them both from connecting to the same device. Or one would just crash frequently...

After having both replaced I have had zero issues since. I assumed it was some hardware quirks with earlier models.

asdff 4 years ago | |

>The strangest part is that the annoyances aren’t getting any better over time.

Like most of what apple releases lately. People claim apple maps is better now, but its still missing a lot of data around the LA area especially with local business that Google maps has no issue crawling, and generally shoddy navigational asks (like unprotected lefts). Siri has also gotten no better since its release 10 years ago now (wow), if anything it defers to coarsly googling my terms more and throwing me the first couple irrelevant results as a response. If I wanted to do that I would open a browser and touch to talk into the search field.

deergomoo 4 years ago | | |

The maps themselves are fantastic if you live somewhere covered by the latest round of updates. I think the business data will always be trailing Google Maps though. Google has their entire search engine to grab data, they crowdsource data via app notifications, and in cases where businesses are updating their own info it wouldn’t surprise me if they do it on Google Maps and just don’t bother anywhere else.

Siri does continue to be lame though. Driving is the one place I would want to use it for anything beyond timers and reminders, but I don’t dare because I can’t check to see if it’s doing anything dumb. Last time I tried to text someone while driving using Siri, it got picked up by my Apple Watch, which worked great, but also my phone, which picked the same message up and promptly sent it to a totally different contact.

hsbauauvhabzb 4 years ago | | |

I don’t care, I want google maps and I want the default to be google maps, but there’s no way of setting that, I even tried uninstalling apple maps and now when I click on addresses it prompts me to reinstall it.

Didn’t Microsoft get done for antitrust for similar dark patterns in the late 90s?

lqr 4 years ago | | |

If by "unprotected" you mean "no green arrow", in what part of the LA area is it feasible to avoid unprotected lefts? They are all over the place in my neighborhood.

If by "unprotected" you mean a left from a stop sign onto a street that does not stop, then I agree. They can be almost impossible. Waze was especially notorious for them a few years ago.

JoeJonathan 4 years ago | | |

I hear you, though Google Maps still seems terrible with unprotected lefts in LA. Just yesterday, it directed me to make one one onto a six-lane road.

dannyw 4 years ago | |

Apple seems to only improve peripherals (like the AirPods) with new hardware releases; not software updates. They make money based on units of AirPods moved.

germinalphrase 4 years ago | | |

Not strictly true in this case. Apple added a lot of additional functionality to the airpod pros over time. The tuning is hidden under the accessibility settings, but it’s there.

Gigachad 4 years ago | | |

They have added some things to the airpods over software updates. But I assume they are pretty limited if they are already pushing the hardware to the absolute limit on release. A lot of the stuff they push over updates seem to be things they already planned to have but perhaps didn't have the firmware polished enough yet.

rashkov 4 years ago | |

I recently upgraded from an iPhone XR and a lot of frustrating software problems just went away. Nothing to do with AirPods in my case, but it made me realize the effect of having an older phone with less processing power and less developer attention paid to it. I wonder if your AirPods problems might have to do with having older devices connecting — ie. the other side of the Bluetooth connection.

diebeforei485 4 years ago | | |

It's not always processing power. Some of the older phones had known issues, for example the iPhone 7 often had a faulty audio IC, and the iPhone 6/6+ had low RAM relative to its larger screen size and bigger graphic sizes.

Prior to the 8 and XR, iPhones had Bluetooth versions 4.0 or 4.2, which meant things were slower to connect, and also meant lower microphone data quality. Apple hasn't done any customer education around this. A lot of people with older MacBooks have poor microphone quality when using AirPods - but it's primarily their computer that is the bottleneck.

michelb 4 years ago | | |

I have an iPhone 13 and I have all of the annoyances, often, except 6+7. In fact I have had these annoyances with all my iPhone and Airpods combinations. It's probably all due to bluetooth, even though Apple uses their own W1 chip to connect.

Tycho 4 years ago | |

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).

ivanvanderbyl 4 years ago | |

It's amazing that these issues are exactly the same on both Airpods Pro and Max. You'd think the Max would have a better software stack given the claimed sound improvements.

anothernewdude 4 years ago | |

I enjoy my wired headphones. The annoyances I face are one laptop without a headphone port. That's it.

BugsJustFindMe 4 years ago |

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 before dropping out, and I can control the damned volume without trying a dozen times to get Siri to wake the fuck up because airpods have no built-in volume controls and Siri's voice activation is worse than terrible.

The Airpods are set to connect automatically to my macbook when I wear them AND THEY DON'T. EVER. And then calls on my iPhone will stupidly decide to connect and route audio to airpods that I'm not even wearing while they are just sitting on my desk when the phone was literally moments before using the handset speaker for a video. Know what bluetooth device does not have these problems? You guessed it, the one not made by Apple. Like...come on.

I really want to like airpods, but they're just not good.

thenerdhead 4 years ago |

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 detection sometimes doesn't work well and will drain the respective airpod.

- No preference list of what devices should have precedence over others. Especially when working on 2+ devices.

- Hand-off calls is a weird UX. Why would I answer a phone on my iPhone by default when it's clear I have airpods connected and being used?

- The transparency / noise cancelling dance. Not sure if there's a preference, but it feels random which one is on by default. Always do a double check at the gym or when running as outside noise sounds loud.

Still the best headphones and experience in my opinion and have enabled me to achieve a hell of a lot more because of them. Easily worth the price for how much I use them.

uzbit 4 years ago |

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 (which is a security thing only implemented on things with screens I'm guessing). I'm sure there's more, but I've already dedicated my days frustration to this.

All that being said, I was very happy to "upgrade" to a Pixel 5a for the 3.5mm headphone jack. It's been a supreme experience to live in the past and future.

ho_schi 4 years ago |

3.5 mm jack

Nasty. Yes ;)

I'm sorry but it solves these problems and I think most of us have more prominent issues. Bluetooth - and even overpriced Apple products - are usually working well with one connection only. And the headset profile needs to sacrifice quality for voice input. This is to large degrees a question about priority of the user. If you need good or even excellent quality - opt for a good headset and a jack.

Yes. Some issues can be solved with higher priorities by Apple. Or Apple doesn't care because it is good enough. Maybe Apple need an argument for another bad proprietary protocol to make things worse. I would be happy if I can switch my mouse from Logitech (Bluetooth) between two laptops with coupling them entirely again.

StevePerkins 4 years ago |

I have a $200-250 pair of AirPod Pros, and a $40 pair of Tozo NC7's that I bought for a backup. The Tozo's get way more use, to the point where I regret buying the AirPods.

Your ears may vary, but "dot" style earbuds are WAY more comfortable (and likely to stay put in my ears) than the "stem" style buds. The spatial audio thing turned out to be a pointless novelty that wore off quickly, and isn't even supported on half of my Apple devices.

I also get tired of the weird glitches, where my AirPods will spontaneously decide to drop my connection, and connect to a different device. With other earbuds, it's a mild annoyance having to manually tell one device to drop its connection so another device can connect. But the truth is that I don't have to do this THAT often, and the unwanted switchovers are far more frequent and annoying. Plus, there are a ton of bluetooth earbuds and headphones that accept two or more simultaneous connections, which eliminates the issue and is better than what AirPods try to do, honestly.

gnicholas 4 years ago |

Automatic device switching is hell. These two anecdotes happened since I read this article 10 minutes ago:

I was listening to a podcast using AirPods and my iPhone. Someone reacted to a message I’d sent, which paused the podcast. When I tried to resume a second later, my AirPods had magically connected to my computer instead of my phone. WTF!

Still listening to the podcast and setting up a FaceTime call for my kid on an iPad. Before starting the call, I turned off Bluetooth, so my iPad wouldn’t connect to my AirPods. Regardless, it connected to them anyway.

Did no one at Apple test this ‘feature’?

m12k 4 years ago |

>Annoyance 4: Sometimes, only the left or right AirPod plays sound. Taking them in/out of your ears doesn't fix it, you need to put it back into the case and take it back out, which sometimes, doesn't fix it. So you need to put your AirPods in/out of your case two or three times to fix it.

I run into this too, anyone know what's up with that? Is there some "listen with only one headphone in" feature that I'm accidentally enabling?

dijit 4 years ago | |

It’s not a feature it’s a bug that will affect nearly all Bluetooth in-ears that don’t share a receiver.

The design of Bluetooth buds is such that one of the buds is elected to be the receiver of data from the phone, it then propagates its signal to the second bud.

What you’re experiencing is a disconnection of one earbud to the other.

FWIW: apples AirPods Pro’s rehandshake (from the “slave” side towards the “master” side) every 10s- so you can have a lot of luck just waiting for it to reconnect; that is assuming that the slave device _wants_ to reconnect; it might believe it’s not in your ear.

DoingIsLearning 4 years ago |

I would add to the list that it is environmentally negligent to allow for such a complex device to be near irreparable (specifically on battery replacement).

Unless you are selling medical devices your electronics should never be thrown away because after-sales cannot swap a battery. Then again Google just dropped the Pixel 3 after just 3 years so this is clearly an issue with the consumer electronics business model.

Consumer electronics will remain a vastly wasteful business unless governments force tighter environmental regulations.

kayodelycaon 4 years ago |

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.

glxxyz 4 years ago |

I've given up with AirPods Pro. I had to replace them several times during the warranty period (once was a recall). Even when working correctly they would have annoying connection problems, for several conference calls I had to switch back to an old school wired pair, which just always works.

My attempt to have the case (which only showed life while connected to power) resulted in Apple throwing away my working AirPods and trying to upsell me a whole new case + 2 AirPods (at above market price, with no charging cable, and a shorter warranty).

If you do still have AirPods out of warranty- a support adviser admitted to me that they don't actually service them, and they don't replace one component alone- if you send them in for repair they just toss the whole thing and sell you a new set. So if only one piece is broken just report it as lost and they'll charge you to replace it.

rogual 4 years ago |

Annoyance 8: When I'm using the (good) noise cancelling of the AirPods to eliminate distracting background noise so I can focus, after a few hours the battery will run down to 15% and trigger the EXTREMELY LOUD "PING-pong-pong-pong" low-battery noise, right in my ear, without warning.

And it's Apple, so of course you can't turn it off.

CTmystery 4 years ago |

I'm only an indirect user of AirPods and I really do not like them: Every time my team does a google meet / hangout the folks using AirPods sound terrible to the point that it's distracting. I don't know if it's in the microphone, the bluetooth connection, or the interaction with a google product, but it is much worse than (a) wired earbuds and (b) the folks using Bose QC 35s (which the company gave out a while back)

willchis 4 years ago | |

I was about to post this. People with AirPods really should know this - you sound like you're talking on a 1980s radio when you're on a Slack/Zoom/Teams call.

frosted-flakes 4 years ago | |

Wired headphones have the mic on the wire beside your mouth. Wireless headphones have them around the corner on the side of your head, which is an objectively terrible location for a microphone.

smoldesu 4 years ago | |

Dankpods did a pretty good comparison of wired mic quality with wireless: https://youtu.be/N6Y_Q7RYmmY?t=315

simonista 4 years ago |

Two suggestions that might help OP with some of these annoyances:

- See the "Turn off automatic switching" section of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212204, to take manual control of when they switch devices

- In System Preferences -> Notifications & Focus you can switch any apps notifications from "Alerts" to "Banners" which will make them go away automatically when ignored.

JeremyHerrman 4 years ago | |

Unfortunately the nearby headphone notifications are not generated by an app, so you can't use the normal notification banner settings. The only way I've found to disable them is to go to Bluetooth preferences (while the headphones are connected), click options next to the headphones, and change the "Connect to This Mac" dropdown from "Automatically" to "When Last Connected to This Mac".

I'm not satisfied with this solution since I enjoy the automatic switching between devices, but I'm driven crazy by the notifications that pop up on my mac literally as I'm listening to music with those headphones on my iPhone. C'mon Apple - this is all within your ecosystem!

graiz 4 years ago |

Bluetooth is so broken at a deep and fundamental level. We should really have a low-energy wifi protocol. The listed problems are just the tip of the iceberg.

The fact that my headphones can't be simultaneously connected to both my phone and my computer is ridiculous. The connectivity is awful. The latency of connection and disconnection is embarrassing. On top of that Apple has the worst UI to handle all of of the weird things that can happen.

shakna 4 years ago | |

> We should really have a low-energy wifi protocol.

HaLow? [0] It's been around since 2016, but never saw any great adoption. Which is a huge pity as it can actually achieve some crazy good speeds for such a low power draw. (300+ Mbit/s).

There's also LoRa [1], which _has_ a fair bit of things implemented using it, but unfortunately it's super slow, and has some serious issues around acks that make it unusable for something like wireless buds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa

howinteresting 4 years ago | |

Bluetooth LE is a completely different protocol from Bluetooth classic.

plonkus 4 years ago |

A few commenters have mentioned the service program -- I think it's worth mentioning that if you're experiencing sound issues (buzzing, crackling) Apple will repair/replace AirPods Pro even if they're out of warranty (up to three years after the sale, which currently includes all AirPods Pro). I just sent mine in this week.

https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...

SpelingBeeChamp 4 years ago | |

In my experience, if you are clearly experiencing a Service Program issue, the Program cutoff dates are not set in stone.

nemacol 4 years ago |

It is my opinion that bluetooth headphones are garbage.

I have several - cheap, expensive, ear buds, over ear. They all suffer from issues between devices, one device out of range weird noises, can't decide which device to connect to. Some of the issues I blame on my phone (Pixel3a).

I spend so much time walking around my house turning BT off on all but one device so I can go outside and listen to something.

Much easier to plug my wired headphones into the device I am using. It is simple, reliable, and I don't have to charge my wired headphones.

For me BT headphones go mostly unused except for yardwork/woodshop time, where the wire poses extra annoyances.

TheOtherHobbes 4 years ago | |

BT is garbage except for very simple products like mice: poorly thought out, even more poorly implemented, generally brittle.

And the audio quality is compromised, although aptX Lossless may finally start changing that.

tapoxi 4 years ago | |

I'm a Bose QC-35 II convert. Slide forward on the power button and it'll switch the paired device. Also excellent sound quality and ridiculous battery life.

INTPenis 4 years ago |

It's nice for someone like me who left the Apple ecosystem many years ago to see that an image for producing fancy gadgets does not mean you can eliminate common software issues.

Because this sounds just like any pair of BT headphones I've used in the last 2 years. Since I finally gave in and started using BT headphones

All in all I love them, I love being able to clean with headphones on and not snag on anything. I love being able to bike with them and not be tied to my phone.

But the BT issues are horrendous. After a year of just accepting that BT sucked someone finally said "install the app" so I did and the firmware update that resulted in solved most of the common issues actually.

So what's left now is weird stuff and quirks of Android. Like Android has a default setting to reconnect to connected speakers as soon as it sees them. Just like in OPs post this is supposed to be convenient but 99% of the time it's just annoying to me. Because I haven't even put my bike away coming home and already the speaker is blaring my audiobook in the kitchen, where I can't hear it.

The other issues are the slow connection when you get a call but that's a bit over demanding imho. Since it wasn't connected and you connect as you get the call so it's a bit short notice.

And then there are the rare unexplained issues like once a month I just disconnect and reboot everything because apps are playing, but no sound is coming out on BT.

dont__panic 4 years ago | |

Yeah, there's something comforting about a physical connection I can inspect for defects or just unplug, then plug back in if audio isn't working right. Even when I used AirPods/Pro for a while, I never really trusted the headphones. Sometimes I would take them out of the case and they just didn't connect to my phone. Sometimes they didn't seat quite right in the case and didn't charge overnight, and would be totally dead. Sometimes they would connect, play the sound, show up as the audio output on my phone... then refuse to actually play any audio.

I understand that wireless is a nice convenience for a lot of people. But BT makes wireless such a nightmare I just don't think it's worth it. Incredible that nobody has come up with a competing standard.

diebeforei485 4 years ago |

Annoyances 1 and 7 can be solved by changing the settings for automatic switching. The instructions for that are at the bottom of https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212204, under "Turn off Automatic Switching".

Audiophilip 4 years ago |

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.

robin_reala 4 years ago | |

I stayed with Apple, went through three of the super-fragile 3.5mm adaptors, and now am on a third-party ”heavy duty” adaptor. Let’s see if this lasts.

grujicd 4 years ago | |

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.

TYPE_FASTER 4 years ago |

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 realized the auto connection was configurable.

Annoyance 3 - this happens for my other Bluetooth headphones that have a microphone when using Mac OS as well. It's a Mac OS issue. I've noticed with a recent update that it happens less frequently. The fix is to set the audio output to the computer speakers, then back to the AirPods.

Annoyance 5 - yeah, switching takes time. Based on my experience with Bluetooth devices, I'm not sure how much this is AirPods specific. I ended up buying a pair of the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones because they can connect to two Bluetooth devices. This solved the switching delay, with the caveat that the mic on the WH-1000XM4 is not great so I also bought a cheap USB mic for meetings.

cybertim 4 years ago | |

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 :)

Veen 4 years ago | | |

> triangle with broadcast signal

The AirPlay icon.

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

skinnymuch 4 years ago | | |

Ah wow! This is so obvious to use AirPlay to manage them. Thank you! Will see how this goes.

jmacd 4 years ago |

There is something weird about the AirPods Pro product line. I think a lot of us who are very technology focused can appreciate the marvel of engineering that they are. Long battery life, excellent noise cancellation, the right weight, water resistant, etc.

By many of my friends and my wife, all of who work in non tech fields but otherwise are 100% apple device people, all seem pretty much not impressed by them.

For Christmas I got my wife a pair of Nothing headphones. They are 1/3 the price and I figured it was worth a try since she basically just stopped using her AirPod Pros.

Now she raves about these cheap Nothing headphones. Tells her friends they are better. Less obtrusive, clear so they stand out less, good audio quality, and they don't try to magically switch devices, they just wait for you to decide what you want them connected to.

They support AAC on Apple, but have not great Bluetooth Audio support for Android.

tjpnz 4 years ago |

>After several years of usage, my first two pairs of AirPods both developed a buzzing noise which became unbearable. The only solution I found was to buy a new pair.

Is that really acceptable for premium headphones? My Bose QC25s continue to work fine after almost eight years of daily use. I realise that there's more which can go wrong with the AirPods, but two (?) years isn't much at all. The author should've taken the issue further rather than just giving Apple more money.

capableweb 4 years ago | |

It's acceptable if it's something you're used to the practice. Many Apple users use their products for seemingly infinite amount of time before retiring the device, but even more users keep buying the newest and greatest when it comes out because A) they want to have the latest and/or B) what they currently had broke and the accepted solution is to buy new.

jdavis703 4 years ago |

Some of these problems are because of Bluetooth (see complaints in this thread about Sony headphones — a company that many consider to have a similar product design ethos as Apple).

Others are due to bad configuration defaults from Apple. Forcing AirPods to connect to the last device and turning off “pause music on removal” fixes two of the author’s problems.

This isn’t a defense of Apple or AirPods. They obviously don’t “just work.” But there are things that can improve the experience.

dewey 4 years ago |

I encountered several of these annoyances myself. Turning off auto-switching removed some issues with them randomly jumping between devices but now it's just more manual labor to connect them.

Having had my share of annoying buzzing sounds I wrote these up a while ago, since I got them replaced 3 times I don't have any of these any more though:

- https://annoying.technology/posts/abea6876cf4f2e13/

- https://annoying.technology/posts/d3e6a4bce1e140b2/

I'm still using them every day and despite the annoyances the small form factor and the sound quality are just good enough to put up with it.

dsizzle 4 years ago | |

I got two pair of AirPod Pros replaced twice too. I wonder if OP knows about the defect and program that Apple will replace them?

https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...

mleo 4 years ago |

With one phone and one pair of headphones, many cheaper truly wireless Bluetooth devices will be comparable to AirPods and probably suffer some of the same related annoyances with losing audio in one of the buds.

Moving to multiple Apple devices, the AirPods are amazing, but still suffer the annoyances OP mentioned. I can pair AirPods to phone and then move them to Mac for zoom, watch for exercise, tv for listening to content in kitchen not appropriate for younger kids. Being available across all those devices was automatic.

That said, the annoyances are real.

The weirdest situation I have had recently was some how getting the left AirPod connected to one device and right connected to a different device with audio and mics simultaneously working. Luckily, mute worked on both devices and didn’t have to speak to both at the same time.

IndySun 4 years ago |

"It Just Works"... This is merely a tagline from Apple, an advertising slogan. As such, I have never taken it seriously - let alone the fact that it is also a hollow statement. Who does/did takes it seriously?

That members of the wider YC community do take it seriously, or worse actually believe and re-bark it in the first place, just shows that, in this instance, being fluent in 'tech' is not a panacea for gullibility.

baxuz 4 years ago |

Bluetooth audio is a mess with no way out.

I really think that Apple is going to just drop Bluetooth audio at some point and make their own protocol, with Bluetooth perhaps being the "green bubble" fallback option.

surfsvammel 4 years ago |

Wow. I do agree with some of the annoyances, now that I read them. But, to me, my feeling about my AirPods where the exact opposite. I only got them recently, because I didn't quiet see the point of yet another pair of earphones. But man, They Just Work, has been my feeling about them so far and I have not regretted getting them.

Maybe I have not had them long enough to actually start having them annoy me...

j2bax 4 years ago | |

I've been using Airpods since day 1 and although they didn't quite deliver on the promise of "it just works" when it comes to connecting between multiple devices they have been my favorite new technology since the iPhone released. They feel like the closest thing to a fully realized "wearable" computing device to me. I bought the Airpod Pro's the first day they came out and haven't ever looked back to my wired headphone past. They are the perfect balance of comfort and features for me. Of course I'd like to see them improve and work out the general bluetooth issues, but I can't imagine living/working without them.

knowingathing 4 years ago | |

Basically, yes. That's been my experience. Even though I listed all of these annoyances, I still really like them :)

loevborg 4 years ago |

I don't have AirPods, but every time I've had a meeting with someone who does, the microphone quality has been terrible, even in quiet environments.

The sounds has been muffled to the point where, while I could still understand the person, it took me 50% more cognitive effort to make out what they were saying because of the low quality. It's almost always much better when I ask them to switch to the built-in MacBook Pro mic (which is decent).

It's an insidious problem. People like their setup because they can hear you well. But what they don't realize is that they are themselves barely understandable. They don't hear themselves and people aren't used to giving them feedback.

Is it just me?

vxNsr 4 years ago | |

It’s not just you, but please let them know. I was experiencing this as the AirPods user but wasn’t aware, it’s kinda hard to know because even if you turn on “listen to this device” it’s not quite what zoom/teams sends.

eadmund 4 years ago |

You know what always just works? Plugging headphones into a headphone jack.

It also uses significantly more well-developed technology which does not require the use of rare earth metals and eye-wateringly complex semiconductor manufacturing processes.

And those wired headphones will still be in use years or even decades after those AirPods have corroded to nasty plastic and metal lumps in a landfill somewhere.

criddell 4 years ago | |

You still have that option but you might need to buy an adapter which doesn't seem like such a big deal.

Those wired headphones with noise cancelling and transparency modes probably do require eye-wateringly complex semiconductors.

recursive 4 years ago | | |

You'll never need an adapter if you never buy an audio-producing device lacking a jack.

Passive attenuation seems to be almost as good as active in my experience. And when you factor in that the headphones no longer need a battery, it's a net benefit in my book.

somehnguy 4 years ago |

I absolutely love my AirPods, so much so that when my original AirPods battery started dying early during meetings I bought a new set of AirPod Pro without even thinking.

That said, I experience all of these issues too. Another one to add to the list that I really don't understand. If I'm listening to a podcast on my phone and remove an airpod for a moment (to speak to someone or whatever) the podcast pauses as expected. But then putting it back in my ear there seems to be only about a 25% chance the podcast starts playing again. Most of the time I have to open the Spotify app back up and manually resume.

muttled 4 years ago | |

I've noticed when it doesn't resume, often the music player also isn't on the lock screen. I'm wondering if it's getting kicked out of memory if it happens to be in a non-active paused state when the device decides it needs to free some memory up?

somehnguy 4 years ago | | |

If I had to place a bet - my money would be on your theory. I've noticed the exact same thing, which makes it even worse as I then have to pull up the app drawer and go back to my player app. At least it never gets totally kicked out in that the state is preserved/not reloading like a fresh open.

I guess my question from there would be why does the device suddenly feel the need to release resources when the music/podcast pauses? I'm experiencing it on an iPhone 13 Pro which should have no shortage.

If it was a once in a blue moon thing I would brush it off as just unlucky timing, but it happens very regularly.

gnicholas 4 years ago |

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?

ynniv 4 years ago | |

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.

gnicholas 4 years ago | | |

I completely agree. I actually just wrote a blog post called The Best Accessibility Features You've Never Heard Of, which details some of these features that Apple, Google, and Amazon hide within accessibility settings. [1]

1: https://beelinereader.medium.com/the-best-accessibility-feat...

ahepp 4 years ago | |

unless you were deaf in the other ear, why would you want to use ANC in one ear only?

gnicholas 4 years ago | | |

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 simultaneously.

Causality1 4 years ago |

if you instantly play the music you were listening to right before the call by clicking the play button on your keyboard, your music will play at a lower audio quality

I don't recall the names of the specific bluetooth profiles, but I wish Airpods and bluetooth headphones in general gave you more control over this. Sure, the older headset profile is noticeably lower quality but it's also virtually lag-free. I have a shitty old headset I use when gaming on my phone specifically because there's no noticeable latency.

Nextgrid 4 years ago | |

It's AD2P vs HSP profiles. One gives you good (well, compressed but decent enough) stereo audio one way, one provides shitty audio but both ways.

I'm surprised as to why Apple couldn't come up with a better protocol that would manage to do both or switch number of channels & quality seamlessly.

Causality1 4 years ago | | |

Nobody seems to care, is the thing. Qualcomm is now deprecating APTX-LL in favor of APTX-Adaptive even though it's 50% laggier even under ideal circumstances.

resfirestar 4 years ago |

I really hope Apple decides to improve things for their ecosystem within the framework of Bluetooth rather than go their own way as some people here have suggested. That route would almost certainly lead to a proliferation of proprietary PAN standards and allow cell manufacturers to tax (or just acquire) consumer audio companies, many of which are struggling to compete with AirPods already. Anyway, we're going to find out soon: Apple has all but confirmed that they're working on something to solve their Bluetooth bandwidth problem [1]. Could just be a new Bluetooth profile, and I feel for the Apple users because that would almost certainly just multiply these annoyances rather than fixing them (wider audio quality gap = more people notice when the connection is inexplicably stuck on the ultra-low quality voice call profile which happens all the time, causes the OP's Annoyance 3 and is one of the causes of Annoyance 4). But I think we'll be better off in the long run if Apple and others in the industry work on Bluetooth improvements that everyone can use without paying up to Qualcomm.

[1] https://www.whathifi.com/features/is-bluetooth-holding-back-...

jonwinstanley 4 years ago | |

The bluetooth standard seems to move very slowly though. We've had bluetooth headphones around for so many years and they usually leave a lot to be desired.

jhaile 4 years ago |

Annoyance 5 is the worst for me: the 5-7 second delay when switching from Mac to phone.

I'm usually on my Mac during the day, Zoom calls, Spotify, etc. Then I get a phone call. If I just answer, it doesn't auto-switch fast enough. And if I manually switch, it regularly doesn't switch at all on the first try. And even when it does switch, there's a 5 second delay while the other person is going "hello? are you there?"

tarunkotia 4 years ago |

I love the AirPods but stopped using it because of what I have been reading about EMF radiation emitted constantly even when not in use by AirPods. I still need to read-up more about it till then I am using the wired headphones.

https://www.macintoshhowto.com/hardware/extreme-emf-exposure...

greggman3 4 years ago |

Well, since we're ranting about Airpods

My Gen 2 Airpods work great. I tried Airpod Pro's and Airpod Gen 3. Both have the crappy "pinch" controls instead of the awesome "tap" controls. Pinching requires more fingers free so for example walking home from the grocery store with heavy bags in both hands and trying to control my Airpods (next song, pause), is much easier with tap (single finger, knuckle, palm) than with pinch (2 free fingers). Also while cooking, can tap with knuckle if hands are dirty but can't pinch with dirty fingers.

Otherwise, they've worked for me 98% of the time. A few times they've failed to connect to one device or another and the only solution was to re-pair them (only ever used them on Apple devices). The other is they suck in crowded places like busy trains and stations in Japan, they'll cut out OFTEN! (Shibuya, Shinjuku, rush hour).

My current ones cut out in my living room. No idea why but it's really annoying, I'm 1-2 meters from my M1X Mac and they're cutting out quite often.

But overall I like them alot.

Raed667 4 years ago |

For anyone who wants something very close to "just works" checkout the Jabra Elite 85t or 75t.

bamboozled 4 years ago | |

I have the 65t, absolutely love them, insanely solid, always seem to have charge, pair to everything instantly. I wear them during workouts and they get covered in sweat and chalk still sound beautiful.

Love them a lot and agree. Check out Jabra!

Raed667 4 years ago | | |

Had the 65T for years and can confirm. They are very solid and sound great.

I only upgraded when I lost them. And appreciate the smaller size on the 75 model.

I still very much recommend them to anyone on a budget.

pbc 4 years ago | |

I use jabra 75t and personally I'm not that impressed with them. Connection to 2 devices at the same time indeed works fine, mic quality for earbuds is also very good.

But they have other issues like if you remove the right earbud from your ear the left one stops (due to their choice of tech for bud to bud connection), sound glitches randomly when paired to m1 macbook, in ear fit is ok but not great.

jugg1es 4 years ago | |

I've never had a single problem with them besides the fact that they think that they are in my ears when they're actually in my pocket so they will unpause whatever you are listening to.

soheil 4 years ago |

I never found AirPods convenient, there are just so many moving parts. There are just so many pieces you need to be mentally aware of, the left/right pods, the case and the charging cable. You need to then think about how this is going to connect to your device, you can't just physically plug them in and be assured they will just work. They run out of battery. The case will separately run out of battery. The BT quality isn't great and degrades depending on the conditions. You can't use one motion with your hands to take them out of their case and plug them in your ears like you can with wired headphones. You are more prone to losing the case or one of the disparate ear pieces since there are three different pieces. There is a bulge in your pocket if you keep them there, which is kind of even more visible and annoying if you wear something other than jeans.

I'm not saying there is a better solution it's just that this product is a massive failure in my eyes.

nneonneo 4 years ago |

Annoyances 1 and 7, at least, can be solved by disabling the automatic switching logic. When connected to the AirPods, under Bluetooth -> (AirPods name) -> Connect to this {iPhone/iPad/Mac}, select "When Last Connected" instead of "Automatically". Repeat for each Apple device.

It's a simpler mental model and it works way more reliably. No more weird handoff prompts and no unexpected switching. Yes, you have to select the device manually, but that takes just seconds from the control center or audio output menu.

I definitely agree with some of the other annoyances, although my AirPods have been generally very reliable (and much more so than my other set of wireless buds!). The weirdest one to me is that Apple is still using the crappy HFP profile for bidirectional audio, leading to annoyance #3; I'm surprised Apple hasn't just engineered their own bidirectional audio profile, because the sound quality drop is so noticeable that it's laughable.

knowingathing 4 years ago | |

This is true... but I like the automatic switching when it does work :)

I try my hardest not to adjust Apple defaults too much because on the whole, I really like their design decisions and their UX. So I don't want to start straying too far away from their core defaults. It's a slippery slope :)

easton 4 years ago |

The "low audio quality after/during conference" problem as I understand it is because of the SCO codec used for Bluetooth microphone stuff (which is lower bandwidth but allows you to speak and listen at the same time). It takes a few seconds for the AirPods to switch back to their usual codec.

Is there a way to fix this without ditching Bluetooth?

archepyx 4 years ago | |

Get a headset that has Faststream or bidirectional APTX-LL A2DP vendor codec, and use it with BT stack that implements these codecs (e.g. Linux/Pipewire). Such devices are very hard to find, and aptx-ll in most devices is not bidirectional. I know only some headsets by Avantree that have it.

Or, wait for a few years for Bluetooth 5.2 LE Audio be available in consumer devices.

tomrod 4 years ago | |

I have the same issue with Samsung earbuds on Linux. My solution was to get a nice webcam with a solid camera, or to use an external mic. Win-win -- good quality sound, video, and mic.

kbos87 4 years ago |

AirPods are great when they work, frustrating when they don’t. Mine seem to be in a frequent pattern of not connecting to my phone automatically lately, and I couldn’t tell you why. I don’t feel like that was happening nearly as often a few months ago and I’m guessing it has something to do with the many updates and changes they’ve made to how Bluetooth connections between AirPods and iPhone seem to work.

I’ve also experienced my fair share of quality issues - static coming through when noise cancelling operates, which Apple replaced my AirPods under warranty for.) Now I’m experiencing a very tough to describe effect where one AirPod seems to cut in and out of transparency mode repeatedly and in a subtle way.

All in all they are a great product and I agree with some of the other commenters that for all their flaws they are miles ahead of anything else I’ve tried.

scrollaway 4 years ago |

A list of a variety of bugs isn't what I expected from the title.

Airpods are nice, but outside the Apple ecosystem they're horrendous (and somehow still better than most alternatives...). The proprietary chip / protocol in use makes me sad, but what makes me even sadder is that they're not actually even working on supporting them as a good product on Android.

Maybe it makes economical sense but it's really sad that we got to the point that a company can release hardware and go out of their way not to support a significant amount of potential customers. This feels like what anti-monopoly regs try to prevent, but it's not a monopoly either so ...

Also, the microphone quality is a lot worse than people say it is (I'm using the Pro version). They are barely usable for calls in a loud environment.

recursive 4 years ago | |

Apple has always gone to lengths to prevent their products from interacting outside their walled garden. The last straw for me (more than a decade ago) was when a firmware update closed a gap I was using to load music onto my ipod without going through the hateful ITunes synchronization process.

gullywhumper 4 years ago |

My annoyance is that gen3 audio controls are significantly more difficult to use. With gen2 it was possible to simply tap the side of the airpod to pause, skip, or go back, and the user had the option to set which side controlled that functionality.

Gen3 has a sensor that has the same functionality, but it is more cumbersome to use. The sensor is small and angled in a position that makes it more awkward and difficult to access. It requires some precision and dexterity - a pinch rather than a tap. The sensor is on the stem of the airpod, so it feels less secure to press. There is also a small click when the sensor is pressed that gets annoying.

I live in a cold environment and frequently have to wear multiple layers of gloves, mittens, hoods, and hats when I go for long walks, so I lose that functionality.

bajsejohannes 4 years ago |

Personally, annoyances like this is enough for me not to want wireless headphones. My wired headphones work 100% of the time. It's obvious what they are connected to.

(PS, I also prefer transport belts over robots in factorio, and explicitly constructed objects over dependency injection in programming)

the-alt-one 4 years ago |

Good to hear the gripes with AirPods are identical to my $80 earpods, nothing missed out on in other words :-).

Edit: I have a pair of JBL LIVE300TWS. They're good!

Grumbledour 4 years ago | |

It feels really good to hear that the expensive models have mostly the same flaws as the cheap ones. So the people who tell me it must be my 40€ anker models, because theirs always work fine probably just don't use them as much, but at the same time, spending more money would not have given me better functionality (except noise canceling).

I guess the real thing to take away is, that cable is still the most reliable option (and also saves a lot on battery!)

jhkiehna 4 years ago | |

I had the same thought. These issues might just be issues with bluetooth in general, and not much apple can do about it.

tluyben2 4 years ago | |

I decided on the same pair of headphones vs AirPods: do not think it was a mistake.

justinator 4 years ago | |

Or my $30 ones...

shaunpersad 4 years ago |

Airpods are by far the worst Apple product I've ever owned, for all the same reasons the author listed. I genuinely don't understand how they can still say they Airpods are "fantastic" and "wonderful".

I would say on average I encounter these issues 50% of the time. Most of my day is doing Zoom calls and either myself or the other party (using Airpods as well) will spend the first 30-60 seconds either switching out for another pair of headphones or trying to get theirs to connect.

I'm sure most of these issues actually have to do with Bluetooth, but the criticism still stands. Have we just convinced ourselves that they're great for some mysterious reason?

matthewdgreen 4 years ago | |

Airpods work wonderfully compared to previous headsets! Apple vastly improved the pairing process and reliability over previous products.

What Apple needs to polish is the multi-device support. If you're going out for a walk with your phone they will work (nearly) 100% of the time. If you have a Mac and a phone and are switching back and forth for Zoom calls, they will reliably annoy the crap out of you. Before WFH I assume Apple thought this was an edge case, not something we'd be doing for hours each day.

PS Google Meet deserves some blame here, too. I often end up with "Airpods for output, Mac speaker for input" and this is entirely due to Meet's burying these weird defaults in a Settings menu.

morelish 4 years ago |

I have found HomePod (mini) to be not great. Doesn't work well with third party services like Spotify or radio providers, so it's content is limited. There's also a very large lag (5 seconds ish) for the sound to stream from my phone or Mac to the HomePod. Pausing or starting sound is delayed by 5 seconds (ish). The lag is so large you cannot really use the HomePod as a speaker attached to a Mac, if you watch a video, the sound comes in 5 seconds delayed. Bit of a pity. Hopefully the next versions will improve the lag. Even providing physical audio cable input would be good. As the speaker itself is fairly nice.

mgoetzke 4 years ago |

As for 1) You can configure devices not to auto-connect unless previously connected

lowercased 4 years ago | |

That simply doesn't work for me. Regardless of what options I set, about 60% of the time, if I'm talking on an iphone with airpod pros, and I walk within a few feet of my mac (which does have a connection to the airpods), it will switch from the phone while I'm talking and... there's no reliable way to get that back. In the phone app, clicking 'airpods'... is slow as molasses and sometimes shows them as connected again, but... no sound. Speaker works - the call is still ongoing. If I walk far enough away, sometimes it will reconnect, but not usually. The only near reliable way is to disconnect the airpods in the bluetooth menu, then wait, then reconnect. This is annoying as hell for the person on the call to have to sit through.

Yeah, sorry Apple support... I've only got the ios 15.x from a couple weeks ago. No doubt upgrading to the very latest will definitely solve all extant problems, everything will magically 'just work' and there will be absolutely no new problems introduced. /s

When I describe this to some Apple store folks (2x last fall), they seemed 'shocked' (couldn't tell if it was fake or not). "Wow, never heard of that - no one's ever told me that before, that doesn't seem right. We have some training classes next week you can sign up for".

jdminhbg 4 years ago | | |

In case you don’t know this, since it isn’t obvious, you have to set them not to automatically connect on each device they are paired to. And if you unpair and re-pair them you have to do it again. This is annoying but not as annoying as auto-pairing.

smoovb 4 years ago |

Back to my $15 Xiaomi Mi earbuds after trying the Airpod pros. While not great for calls, battery life after a year of use is 10x better than the Airpods. Plus a better fit for my ears and 0 fear of loss.

faebi 4 years ago |

Wow, this was a perfect description of my experience. An additional factor is the release date of the used devices. My experience improved by a large margin when I replaced my late 2018 Macbook and my 2019 iPad. Another example are calls which ring on multiple devices. I'm using my iPad and somebody calls me on my iPhone, but the iPhone sends the call also to the iPad. The same when I have MS Teams on my Macbook and my iPhone. Once I put the Airpods in my ears anything can and does happen. Sometimes one Airpod is lost in these situations.

JohnJamesRambo 4 years ago |

Still loving my cords and headphone jack…

blueflow 4 years ago | |

Best thing: They are dumb. They don't even need a power supply! They don't have many ways to go wrong.

thefz 4 years ago | |

A million times. The "inconvenient" audio jack+cord does not run on batteries that will end in landfills. And it's barely an inconvenience at all.

martneumann 4 years ago | |

I'm not using Apple ear phones, but wireless head phones are seriously practical. Anytime I have to use my corded ones when walking the dog I get reminded of how they are actually pretty handy.

Still use cord ones in other circumstances. When lying down, for example. I like to have the choice at least.

AdmiralAsshat 4 years ago | |

The list of phones that still have a headphone jack is ever dwindling.

rootusrootus 4 years ago |

I do get some of the quirks, but not nearly that full list. If I'm on a call or listening to music through my AirPods when connected to my Mac, and then open my phone, they do connect to the phone, but it does not switch the audio away from the computer unless I tell it to on the phone.

I also have a pair of fancy Sony noise canceling wireless headphones, and they're much more finicky about connecting and staying connected than my Airpods are. Fundamentally the problem seems to be that bluetooth kinda sucks.

mrtranscendence 4 years ago |

The most annoying thing about my AirPods Pro, which I generally like very much ... my phone starts playing music from its speakers when I take the AirPods out of my ears (and was not previously listening to music). Not all the time, but maybe 15% of the time, enough to be annoying. I have no idea what's going on. I've tried googling it, but nobody else seems to be having this problem. I've combed through settings but nothing seems applicable. I think I'm stuck with it.

initplus 4 years ago | |

Do you use Spotify? There is a really annoying feature on IOS Spotify where it hijacks the system volume control, and syncs it with the Spotify desktop app running on another computer. Sometimes even when the mobile app is closed!

And inevitably because I don't use the desktop app volume adjust just the system volume, it syncs my phone volume to 100% every time.

mrtranscendence 4 years ago | | |

Nope, Apple Music. You'd think if any music app worked properly with the AirPods it would be that.

dnhz 4 years ago | |

I don’t have AirPods but this sometimes happens to me when I turn off my Bluetooth headphones. Usually it’s Spotify that begins playing on my computer. I agree that google searching has been unhelpful.

qwertox 4 years ago |

My "it just works"-setup is the following: all devices are connected via a cable to a cheap audio mixer, including one Bluetooth receiver to which my phone can connect to.

The mixer has a long cable to a well positioned spot in the apartment and the cable ends with a Bluetooth transmitter. A small (4cm x 4cm x 1cm) Bluetooth receiver has wired in-ear headphones connected to it and that's it.

This receiver has small a magnet glued to it, and the desk has another magnet glued to it. The USB-charging cable also has a magnetic adapter so that the micro-USB end is left in the receiver, and when I leave the desk I just have to pull the receiver way, which stops the loading process since the USB cable is also easily separated. When I get back to the desk I just snap the receiver to the magnet of the desk, and if I feel that I should charge it (no issues with using it 6 hours without charging it), I just snap the magnetic end of the cable to the receiver.

Every device which wants to send me audio can do it, and I can move freely around the apartment without any interruption.

When I go out I use another Bluetooth headset connected to the phone.

The annoyances listed in the article would drive me absolutely mad.

---

Basically 3 of these: https://www.amazon.de/1mii-Bluetooth-Transmitter-Dual-Verbin... (one for phone, long cable sender, magnetic receiver)

one of these: https://www.amazon.de/Moukey-Mischpult-Mikrofon-Keyboard-B%C...

one of these: https://www.amazon.de/JEEREE-Magnetisches-Schnellladung-Magn...

and all the cables needed to connect the devices to the mixer.

I have this setup for some years now, so my gadgets are not the ones listed here, but an older equivalent. APTX-LL removes any noticeable delay between video and audio.

whynotminot 4 years ago |

I would posit that the AirPods used to be the most magical "Just Works" Apple product I've ever owned, but over-time as Apple has added more features and complications to them, they've lost the magic.

Those first generation AirPods were a thing of beauty. Newer ones now are technically better--better sounding, longer lasting, ANC, etc. But I've experienced a lot of the same annoyances that OP is complaining about.

I still love them, but the experience is definitely a little fiddly these days.

lifewallet_dev 4 years ago |

> AirPods are wonderful products. But I just wish these annoying gripes would go away.

What's wonderful about all that? Our fanboyism is re-defining the word "wonderful", Annoyence 4 and 3 made me think AirPods broke and they happen so frequently, I also have the Sony wh-1000xm4 and I cannot configure the mic without degrading my audio quality. I'm back to wired, I have a Beyerdynamic DT 1990 PRO, and none of these overhyped products match its quality, I can live with the cables :)

JohnBooty 4 years ago | |

    I'm back to wired

Same here. Absolutely don't understand the appeal of wireless headsets for people who are sitting at a desk.

I've snapped up a bunch of used Bose QC25s from eBay, their last model that used a removable standard AAA battery.

Great sound, solid noise canceling, the wired mic is fine, they work even if the battery is drained, sound is better than Bluetooth. I keep a little AAA battery charger on my desk so it takes 10 seconds to swap out a depleted AAA for a new one; IMO far less hassle than remembering to charge headphones with non-replaceable internal batteries.

I expect the QC25s to last more or less indefinitely, aside from occasional replacement of the (insanely comfortable) earpads.

loginatnine 4 years ago | | |

Yea I went wired at the beginning of the pandemic, QC-35 wired with a wired antlion mic, works like a charm. 3 main reasons I went with this setup : 1- Reduce the audio lag (bluetooth comes with a noticeable lag in video conferencing) 2- Not having to worry about battery life (going wired vastly improved the QC-35 battery life) 3- Keep the stellar comfort (at least for me) of the QC-35.

I personally don't understand why people endure the sucky audio quality of bluetooth handset profile. Couple this with a very ordinary battery life for airpods (I don't care if it charges in 10 minutes, when it's out and you need it you're stuck), I don't understand why this product is so popular.

ActorNightly 4 years ago | |

Yep, back to wired for me as well.

Run the wire under the shirt. Need to switch from phone to laptop for a meeting? Unplug/replug. If I need to remove headphones to talk to someone, i just let them hang down. Never worry about charging them, loosing them, easily replaceable due to price (and with good sound quality as well).

kop316 4 years ago |

Heh, I got my spouse a pair of AirPods, and long ago she went back to a pair of wired earbuds due to various issues with them. IIRC, noiuse cancelling didn't work well and causes a lot of sudio issues, there were connection issues all the time. The cheap wired heaphones work much better for her.

Out of curiousity, does anyone have a good recommendation for a good pair of 3.5mm wired headphones with a microphone? I still have an old pair of Bose Sport headphones, but they are only wireless now.

lowercased 4 years ago | |

I generally like the QC20, but I think those were recently discontinued. The mic wasn't the best, but for regular conversations generally didn't have problems if I clipped the mic to a shirt. If it bounced around and rustled on a shirt that wasn't good, but that's going to be a problem with any mic on a wire, I'd think.

kop316 4 years ago | | |

Yeah it seems that all of the (in-ear) Bose wired headphones were discontinued.

falcolas 4 years ago | |

Sennheiser Momentum.

Or if you want a boom mic, some of the “Pro” or “G” branded logitech headsets.

ryguytilidie 4 years ago |

My favorite part is how on Monday mornings when I have a meeting I can just 100% count on one of these things happening:

-One of them will have a dead battery, even though they've been in a perfectly clean case that charged it yesterday and will charge it tomorrow. -They will no longer be paired with my phone for some reason. -They will pair with my phone, but just not recognize that they should be the primary audio output and calls will just play on speaker phone.

But sure, they "just work".

notapenny 4 years ago |

I've "enjoyed" most of these including the occasional loud blast of white noise when trying to connect, and my favourite; they disconnect immediately when there's no output for a few seconds and then take a few seconds to re-connect. Mac OSX also doesn't seem to enjoy that, immediately reconnecting takes a bit and often fails. They're nice but they suffer from "trying to be smart" but end up being annoying.

boardwaalk 4 years ago |

Meanwhile I’ve given them up since the charging contacts have gotten so bad at reliably touching. Most of the time I’ll pick them up and they’re dead or I’ll spend several minutes (not exaggerating) putting them in the case and taking them out to get them to activate properly.

No amount of cleaning or other finagling really helps.

And this has happened to me in the very first AirPods and the AirPods Pro.

I’m not sure how this bad design survives but fool me three times…

ushakov 4 years ago |

my personal complaint: sometimes the left earpod doesn’t boot

both are fully charged, but when i put them into ears, only the right one actually connects

i have to put the left one back into the case and take it out again to get it to connect

i assume this is a software issue

throwaway287391 4 years ago | |

If you're within the warranty period (or have AppleCare) you should definitely bring them into an Apple store. It might be a hardware issue. If you describe the problem to them they will almost certainly take your word for it and give you a free replacement left AirPod. Even if it's not a hardware issue you'll get a fresh new battery for one ear :) I've done this several times between my two pairs of airpods.

addicted 4 years ago |

Wow, annoyance 1 itself would lead me to trash the headphones. Is there no way to avoid that?

I’ve been using these Bose in ear noise canceling head phones for 5 years (actually, this specific piece for a bit more than 4 years…the one I bought was in the first batch and had a known defect where the outer covering would peel off, so Bose replaced it in my 10th or so month of using it…it’s a genuine recall and nobody had to sue them to offer the recall either!).

$300 headphones, working for the past 5 years, and Inhave no complaints whatsoever. There are a couple of random gym equipment I’ve occasionally had trouble connecting it to, but I suspect that it was the gym equipments fault.

Admittedly, the mic could be better, and Bose had a ridiculous issue of tracking the music you played on your phone, which thankfully they’ve ended.

But it’s a trustworthy device which actually “Just Works” and I see no reason it wouldn’t last another couple of years at least (there is no physical damage I can see, despite using it in the gym nearly everyday, and all day long to listen to music).

serverlessmom 4 years ago |

I only ever bought one pair of air pods and I ended up giving them away after that update was released where they were supposed to be able to switch seemlessly between devices but the feature was cumbersome. I don't think I managed to find eight distinct issues with during that time, but I can say I've switched to galaxy buds which I much prefer.

arthurmorgan 4 years ago |

I regret getting my AirPods Pro. I have them for two years now and went through 2 cases and 4 earbuds. The quality just does not match the expectation and price tag. My Sony headphones work like on the first day after 3 years, however they don't share the same form factor. :) I wonder how the WF-1000XM4 perform especially in combination with iOS.

kristjansson 4 years ago |

Most of the authors complaints are valid. I'm definitely guilty of the 10-second 'Hello? Hello?' dance at the start of phone calls. However, AirPods are such a good product I can forgive them all of those flaws and more.

One hidden feature: I was walking around my city listening to something on AirPods Pro. A truck in the lane adjacent to the sidewalk braked hard, making painfully loud squeal. Except I didn't hear it. The AirPod on the street side entered noise canceling mode quickly enough to silence almost all of the sound, and stayed there for a few seconds afterward before reverting to ambient sounds. I'm not sure if that was a purposeful feature, or just a volume limiter for the ambient-noise mode kicking in. Regardless, it was one of the most delightful experiences I've ever had with a product. The thing just quietly, casually making my day a little bit better, then getting out of the way again.

adh636 4 years ago | |

So if I'm understanding this correctly, you had the device set to let in ambient sound, but a motor vehicle slamming on the brakes was filtered out, and you consider this to be a good thing? Sounds dangerous to me.

kristjansson 4 years ago | | |

It was still audible, but filtered from 'damagingly painful' to 'perceptible', and only on the side that was directly exposed. I don't find a lot of navigational value in listening to someone's poorly maintained brakes while I'm walking around.

agency 4 years ago |

I just upgraded to a pair of AirPods Pro after my old AirPods were slowly losing battery life until they can barely get through a single podcast ep. It was pretty cool and eerie putting them in for the first time and having the noise cancellation activate and just drop out all the ambient noise. I've never used active noise cancellation and it really makes you realize how much ambient noise you tune out.

Beyond that I'm not 100% sure how I feel about them yet. They definitely don't fit quite as well in my ears as the originals and anecdotally a couple coworkers mentioned returning theirs because they were falling out. And they definitely don't fit in their case in the same way as the original. The way the originals just magnetically fall into place perfectly is an amazing piece of product design. Really makes them feel like some otherworldly artifact. The Pros are definitely not the same in that regard.

jonahx 4 years ago |

My addition...

Annoyance 0:

The default behavior is to pause when you remove a single earbud while listening to music/podcasts. But, especially when working out, this is not what you want, because you just wanted to scratch or wipe off your ear. At minimum, this should be an option I can set ("only pause if both buds are removed"), but afaik it's not.

xg15 4 years ago |

> I get that Apple is trying to be clever and anticipate your moves, which I genuinely appreciate, but when it gets in the way it's annoying.

I wonder how long until devices regularly do eye tracking to figure out which device we're currently paying attention to. I think that could both be useful and extremely scary...

r00fus 4 years ago |

Reviewer didn't say which ones he has nor which phone.

My view of "AirPods" has changed over the years - had them since the OG launch with my iPhone7. A lot of the gripes make sense with the older models. Then I upgraded my iPhone to latest, and got the AirPods3.

With the v3 I finally feel it's a great product. I turn off the "automatic connection" BT settings for all but one device (iPhone) and it works as I expect. The spatial audio is great.

I tried a non-Apple AirPods equivalent for a while (cheap now, $30) and really missed the "find my" feature, plus the sizing was off.

My favorite new feature is the Find My where you can play MarcoPolo with your missing AirPod. THAT was much better than with my OG pods. Of course, the "your AirPods have been left behind" is often spurious so that needs improvement but better a false negative than a missed positive.

AtNightWeCode 4 years ago |

It is a fashion and convenience tool. Poor sound quality. Comes with the general Bluetooth problems.

The funniest problem I had was on the subway and some bored kid next to me opened and closed the lid back and forth. For some reason this spammed my phone with connectivity messages to the point that I could not use my phone.

duderific 4 years ago | |

I think the sound quality is remarkably good given the size and form factor. It's not comparable to over the ear headphones of course, but that is a different use case.

atombender 4 years ago |

Annoyance 1: Go into the AirPods settings (which are, paradoxically, in your phone's Bluetooth settings, and only when connected) and set "Connect to This iPhone" to "When Last Connected to This iPhone". This will disable the wonky automation.

I've never experienced 2, 2a, or 2b.

3: This is a Zoom problem, I believe. I find that Zoom periodically enables the microphone even though I'm not in a meeting, and you can see this in the latest macOS by looking for the orange dot in the upper right corner of the screen. The workaround is to quit Zoom, or go into Zoom's settings and change the microphone device to your Mac's.

6: You may have hit a hardware problem with early models. Happened to me, and I also often experienced a screaming feedback tone when I put the earbuds in my ears. Apple will replace them for free.

4, 5, 7: Definitely.

jeremyjh 4 years ago | |

Annoyance 1 almost made me give up on the AirPods until I found that setting, I'd often have my phone at the very edge of bluetooth range and so it would keep reconnecting to it while listening to music from my laptop. I much prefer just explicitly connecting to the pods from the device I want to use, though this is more steps than it should be on iOS.

chias 4 years ago |

Annoyance 3 -- or something very similar -- is going to be the case for any bluetooth headset. There simply isn't enough bandwidth in a bluetooth connection to have a high quality audio stream and a microphone stream going at the same time, so a bluetooth headset switches between high-quality-headphones and low-quality-headset modes. You can experience this in action by listening to music via a bluetooth headset then performing something which toggles them to headset mode (e.g. navigating to a Google Meet page or whatever).

I suspect there is a brief delay when switching modes, so the AirPods don't switch while actively playing anything. So immediately firing up some music before the AirPods switch back to headphone mode probably keeps them in headset mode.

jakereps 4 years ago |

The absolute worst annoyance, IMO, is that if you are listening to audio with an iPhone, AirPods (Pro), and an Apple Watch, and set a timer on your watch (say, a 1.5 minute rest timer at the gym) it will disconnect from your phone to play the alert from your watch and then fail to play music from your phone again without sometimes requiring full Bluetooth cycling, or another 1.5 minutes of fiddling - removing any and all convenience of the device ecosystem. There are support issues open on the Apple forums going back years, but it’s still unresolved. To contrast, my Bose SoundSports can seamlessly achieve the above example just fine, so it’s not a fundamental flaw in the use case, just Apple’s implementation of some part of it.

throwaway22032 4 years ago |

I barely ever use my headphones with my laptop, but my Sony headphones on an Android phone work 100% perfectly all of the time.

I've never had a hiccup.

Okay, I mean, if I'm in an area with thousands of others using headphones, I might get some interference. That's it. Otherwise, totally fine.

paines 4 years ago | |

>....if I'm in an area with thousands of others using headphones, I might get >some interference. That's it. Otherwise, totally fine.

Which imho is completely unacceptable because it annoys the hell out of me. I was using AirPods with an Xiaomi 8 Pro phone half a year ago. And this happended constanly and most of the time at street crossings in urban areas where 2-3-4 people would cross your way. Since I switched to an iPhone this never happened again.

PS: Why was I using AirPods with a cheapish android mobile phone? I tried lots of air pods like products from various vendors and each and any of them worked nicely for a couple of days until I would charge them overnight which killed the charging box where the headphones resided in or the headphones themself. Or like other useres in this thread described: one headphone would pair the other suddenly not anymore...

fab1an 4 years ago |

Yeah, they're great, but definitely not quite perfect / magical. Another thing I noticed is that using the noise cancelling ocassionally gives me terrible, luckily short-lived tinnitus. Never encountered that with other (over or on ear) noise cancelling devices.

bamboozled 4 years ago | |

Pretty sure I had that from my QC 35 II

mbreese 4 years ago |

Annoyance 1 actually has a setting. You can setup the AirPods to actively switch to a preferred source (your phone), or stay connected to your computer. This one bugged the hell out of me for months before I found the option.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/switch-airpods-betwee...

> To prevent AirPods from automatically switching between devices, go to Settings > Bluetooth. Tap the Actions Available button next to the name of your AirPods, tap Connect to This iPhone, then tap When Last Connected to This iPhone.

medbrane 4 years ago | |

Note that you have to configure that on each device separately.

mbreese 4 years ago | | |

Very true, and it's not very intuitive, but at least the setting is available.

I guess that's the problem with "it just works" magic -- when it doesn't work, you need to have a few settings available. And unfortunately, those are rarely included.

leokennis 4 years ago |

I would be a happy man if I could tell my AirPods:

“You only need to be paired to my iPhone. I don’t need you synced to all my devices via iCloud and you never need to accept audio from and switch to anything but my iPhone. That’ll do earbuds. That’ll do.”

tpict 4 years ago |

I swear that the automatic switching feature was almost flawless when it first shipped, but at some point the "is the user paying attention to this audio source" heuristics were changed. It now seems very eager to switch to my phone and reluctant to switch to my Mac.

There was also a bug for a period of months–I need to check to see if this still happens, I've conditioned myself not to trigger it–where

1. I put in my AirPods

2. I click them in the audio drop-down in the Mac menu bar to connect

3. The "Connect to AirPods" notification appears

4. I click "connect" because I'm already connected and it's the biggest target to dismiss the notification

5. the AirPods DISCONNECT! Come on...

sorahn 4 years ago | |

I have slightly the opposite problem. My AirPods are too eager to reconnect to my Mac.

If I’m in a phone call with someone, on my phone, using my AirPods, and my Mac decided to play a single alert for whatever reason (slack, mail, text, whatever) the AirPods IMMEDIATELY connect to the Mac to play that one single notification, and leave me trying to shout across my house to my phone to tell the other person to hold on.

Super frustrating.

bradgessler 4 years ago |

Apple could get away with introducing their own wireless audio I/O standard the eliminated the need for Bluetooth for sound. This new wireless protocol would ideally:

1. Allow AirPods to be connected to multiple audio devices at the same time and eliminate the need to have to switch between exclusive audio sources.

2. Eliminate the problem where a Zoom call (or any call) downgrades audio quality.

3. Allow the playback of lossless audio wirelessly.

I know there’s a crowd that will absolutely hate this idea because it’s yet another step away from a standard (Bluetooth), but the protocol has so much baggage that it’s not delivering a great experience for people in the Apple ecosystem.

deergomoo 4 years ago | |

Expect this soon. There was an interview with an Apple manager in What HiFi recently and some of the stuff he was saying strongly suggested that they’re considering doing their own thing.

0xbadcafebee 4 years ago |

I highly recommend Jabra bluetooth earbuds as a replacement for AirPods. They stay in your ears well, they're comfy, have pretty decent audio quality, good connectivity, good battery life, ANC, wireless charging. If you watch their website, they sell refurbished units for pretty huge discounts. The Elite 65t's may be old but they're still really good and super cheap now: https://www.jabra.com/deals#?pfs=discountedprice-desc&pff=2f...

cromka 4 years ago |

I have many of those issues mentioned in the article daily with iPhone 13 Pro and MacBook Air M1.

Whatever Apple advertised as AirPods Pro features, it's all false advertising. I can't get anything to work reliably. Anything. I don't trust them at all with any sort of serious meeting at this point, either, since they recently started to randomly switch from being actively used with my MacBook to an idling iPhone in another room. Seriously, Apple?

The experience is getting worse and worse. And I seriously wonder why isn't it yet another class action – they well deserve it.

stephc_int13 4 years ago |

I've only had bad experiences with Bluetooth devices so far, especially audio.

Speakers, headphones, keyboards or mice.

Drivers issues, spurious disconnect, hard reboot needed for no apparent reason, delays when connecting, sometimes even noise on the line, difficult to believe given that this is a purely digital channel AFAIK.

Lately I am relying on good old analog electronics for audio, and wires for keyboards/mice.

Not only those are more reliable and serviceable (I especially like dumb headphones in that regard) but without batteries, software update or even drivers, they'll probably last much longer.

tomxor 4 years ago |

> when clicking the active AirPods in the bluetooth list, there is a short 3~ second delay which makes you think they haven't been disconnected, leading you to click it again. But your first click did actually fire leading you to be confused as to what state you are currently in.

There is a known correct way to do this in UIs: no large delays for UI state change, even if the underlying function takes a humanly perceptible duration.

Apple used to be good at this stuff, it's just attention to detail in UX... it's not like this is an area of opinion.

jon889 4 years ago |

It would be nice if audio from all your devices played at once through AirPods instead of it trying to switch by guessing which one you want to listen to. In exactly the same way you can hear all your devices at once if not using headphones, the advantage being only you can hear them and not anyone else.

Eg if watching TV on a laptop with headphones but you get sent a TikTok or short clip on your phone it plays over the TV and you just tune out the TV for a few seconds like you would if your were at home watching TV while using your phone.

Friedduck 4 years ago |

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.

juramento 4 years ago |

Yeah, I suggest trying -other- brands of bluetooth earbuds and then write a comparison. After experiencing more frequent and odd annoyances, for me AirPods really do "just work".

teekert 4 years ago |

This is very good to know. I have all these issues with basically all my wireless headsets and was thinking: I should invest in Apple Airpods to get rid of this mess... Guess I'm not.

DrZootron 4 years ago |

Annoyance 8: More for those on a call with people using airpods or listening to them be interviewed on a news show - the audio quality is akin to that of a a tin-can-and-string phone.

kawfey 4 years ago |

Regarding annoyance 6, Apple replaces crackling airpods for free. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-airpods-pro-free-repla...

I've had my left one replaced twice now, no charge. But since my left pod is new, and my right is old, the right has a rapidly decaying battery life, which cannot be replaced free of charge.

visarga 4 years ago |

My AirPods2 switch to low quality audio - they sound like a 5$ pair of phones, presumably on account of the microphone being activated.

I am very disappointed, already looking for my AirPods1 to replace it. It's just not as easy to use as the old ones. They fall off my ears, they die suddenly with no warning (old ones were better in this regard).

I mean, Apple makes the AirPods, Apple makes my laptop, so why don't they ... you know ... make sound? They fail at performing the main functionality.

unethical_ban 4 years ago |

I didn't read the whole article, and this is quite a conversation. However, I have to ask: Why oh why is digital voice quality downgraded to telephony quality, when the computer and buds both play crystal musical audio? This happens for me in Windows, and IIRC in Mac as well. What about the audio device being headset vs. speaker changes things at a technical level?

This only seems to happen for Bluetooth. Using a RF gaming headset or a wired connection causes no issue.

keyword: Annoyance 3

sovietmudkipz 4 years ago |

Mine play a high pitched prolongated shrill ping at the highest volume it can. It happened 3 times before I threw them away and went back to hard wired headphones. It hurt. The first time I reacted quickly to get them out of my ears.

I figure it has something to do with the noise cancelling feature. I also figure it has something to do with me using my AirPods to run, thereby being exposed to moist conditions for prolongated times. I no longer trust headphones like I did.

spoonjim 4 years ago |

I bought a pair of AirPods Pro and I loved how they sounded but hated how they made me look, because my skin is very dark and the little white things stood out like sore thumbs on Zoom calls. I returned them for the Jabra Elite 85t which are less comfortable in my ears but which match my skin color much better. Apple lost more than $249 of revenue because they don't make them in black.

There's something to be said for considering the diversity of your market.

SigmundA 4 years ago |

I turn off auto switching, it causes too many issues. Otherwise for me they have worked better than any other wireless headphone / earbuds.

They need double the battery life and they would be basically perfect for my use, I am hopeful ver 3's will do this along with maybe some crazy move away from bluetooth which I still believe is the root of all the issues that even Apple can't fully solve without just making some different wireless protocol.

mung 4 years ago |

I've had the sound on a video playing on my mac disappear, only to find that the mac decided to randomly connect to the AirPods... that are in their case.

soheil 4 years ago |

> Annoyance 7: When moving from working on my iMac to my MacBook, I get a notification asking me if I want to switch my AirPods over to my MacBook. The notification isn't an issue, but the fact it doesn't go away after you ignore it is

I have the same issue with Do Not Disturb notification on Mac. There is no way to have it not show up if you have a set time for DND unless you completely disable all notifications.

cabirum 4 years ago |

I want so much the wireless headphones fad to go away.

When batteries deplete in the middle of a meeting, what are you supposed to do? Connect a spare pair via usb dongle?

mmcdermott 4 years ago | |

I don't generally struggle with battery in meetings (I prioritize battery life when buying ear buds), but I keep a set of wired earbuds with a USB-C in my laptop case as a backup. They don't come out often, but they have gotten me through a couple of meeting marathons.

suresk 4 years ago |

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.

drewg123 4 years ago |

For me, the most annoying "feature" of airpods vs other BT audio was that Siri started announcing incoming calls, and reading the contact name in full, or the full phone number, both of which take forever. I finally found a recipe to shut that off.

I don't recall siri being this invasive with my Bose BT headphones. I wonder why airpods got this special (annoying to me, likely wonderful to others) treatment.

Nextgrid 4 years ago | |

> I don't recall siri being this invasive with my Bose BT headphones

I think it's just because Apple is intentionally gatekeeping the feature to AirPods even though it can technically work with any headphones, so in this case your Bose headphones were spared the annoyance because of Apple's anti-competitive practices, whereas AirPods have it on by default. Fortunately it's easy to disable in Settings -> Phone -> Announce calls.

AndrewWarner 4 years ago |

Most of my frustrations with AirPods could be eliminated if they connected to multiple devices at once. The back-and-forth does not work well.

bvogelzang 4 years ago |

I just got Airpods for Christmas and I love them. Most of these annoyances revolve around the fact that you're using two devices at the same time. I do the same on a regular basis and run into some of these all the time. One that is not on this list:

Sometimes when I switch from my Mac to my iPhone, Spatialized Stereo does not kick in until I toggle the setting on my iPhone from off to on.

orkon 4 years ago |

I seem to experience troubles like that with any kind of Bluetooth devices. E.g., sometimes they don't connect or disconnect or lag. At this point, I am suspicious of the entire Bluetooth technology. The same is with WiFi actually: it does work well most of the time but sometimes it does not (for whatever reasons, bugs? changes in environment?).

ConceptJunkie 4 years ago | |

I find Bluetooth to be the flakiest of the common technologies I use. There are just way too many times that it just doesn't work for no discernable reason.

I have 3 cars with Bluetooth and they all have their quirks, but they generally work. The Ford Fusion, which boasts the Sync system "by Microsoft" is the worst, though. It will always show the little Bluetooth icon soon after starting the car, but when you try to switch to your device, it says there is no Bluetooth device and I have to connect manually by selecting the phone (which Ford lovingly places behind about 8 knob turns and clicks). And of course, sometimes it simply refuses to acknowledge there is a phone at all, so we keep an analog audio-in cord handy.

And I have had a couple of different Bluetooth phones. My previous phone was a Samsung Galaxy 4 Mini that I replaced about 6 months ago with an A52. Bluetooth always worked fine with both phones, but again, there are quirks. In my Honda Civic, the old phone would automatically connect to the car's system and start playing whatever music I'd left off within about 20-30 seconds, whereas with the new (and much nicer) Samsung A52, it takes 2 or 3 minutes... or until I get impatient and select the phone manually.

TrisMcC 4 years ago |

Not quite related to airpods, but is Apple's Bluetooth stack awful?

I got three pairs of iClever BTH-02s and they all connect fine to our hand-me-down LG android phones, but they fail to connect to a brand new (but low end model) iPad. It says they connect, but the upper left corner does not show the headset icon and the sound goes through the external speakers.

It's awful.

londons_explore 4 years ago |

When one customer finds 7 gripes, and they aren't an outlier, the product is bad.

A good product would have 1 gripe found by 1 in 7 customers...

rabuse 4 years ago |

Had a problem with my AirPods just the other day trying to show someone some "cool features" they can use them for. I go to put them in, and they essentially disappeared from my iPhone's bluetooth list, and it was not possible to reconnect them until I restarted my phone. I just said "they're great when they work..."

errcorrectcode 4 years ago |

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.

break_the_bank 4 years ago |

If there are other runners here, with enough ear sweat the AirPods starts beeping, the noise makes you want to pull the AirPods away immediately. After some cool down they start working again, though my right AirPod now starts "hissing" sooner than it beeps. This is when I run at 100+ Fahrenheit. Still a great product though.

becurious 4 years ago | |

My original AirPods started to not charge reliably. It was corrosion from the sweat from running. I now have a pair of AirPods Pro which are supposed to be sweat resistant but I’m skeptical. If I do a long run in the summer there’s a lot of sweat.

jcpst 4 years ago |

Sounds like a lot to deal with, for the price. I’ve never had to replace the pair of wired earbuds that come with an iPhone.

nneonneo 4 years ago | |

I've had to replace...a lot of wired earbuds. I have an entire shelf full of dead wired earbuds, from all sorts of manufacturers (Apple, RIM, cheapo $5 earbuds, Sony, Shure, ...), which almost uniformly failed in the same weird way: the right earbud becomes intermittently staticky after a few months. I checked with multiple devices (phones, computers), so it's probably not the socket, but more likely something to do with the way I tug on the cord when I run or walk?

Anyway, after burning through a lot of wired headphones, I've had the current AirPods Pro for over a year with no trouble, and the sound quality is the same to me (plus, noise cancellation is useful).

MarkusWandel 4 years ago |

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.

nvarsj 4 years ago |

My first gen AirPods had the annoying habit of simply not playing audio about 5% of the time despite showing as connected in Bluetooth and everything. I still have memories of standing in the rain, at dark, after work, trying to un-pair and re-pair just to get them to play some damn music. Other than that they worked well.

the_watcher 4 years ago |

Annoyance 4 is the one that really bothers me (although to be fair, I have Beats Studio Buds that have exactly the same issue). Also, they get _really_ dirty and are very irritating to clean. Really not sure how Apple hasn't produced a good cleaning tool (or at least identified one and listed it in the store).

skinkestek 4 years ago |

More annoyingly for me they didn't show up in "Where is" or what that feature is called in English, even if they had power and were close to my phone and had been for hours.

I recently wasted an hour or so thinking I must have left them behind at kids soccer training while they were just out of sight next to me.

Invictus0 4 years ago |

I have the "listen for Hey Siri" thing enabled on my iPhone and also my MacBook. I would like to be able to use this to start playing music on the Macbook. But when I say hey siri, and both devices are in range, they both answer, then the macbook shuts off, and siri proceeds only on the iPhone.

victorbstan 4 years ago |

I hope someone at Apple listens to these things. There are a lot of little things that can be improved in general regarding Bluetooth devices. Currently, if my MacBook restarts, I can’t use my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to input my password, I have to use the built in keyboard. Using Logitech devices.

hbn 4 years ago | |

I don't know if it's the same for third party peripherals, but I know I thought this was the case for a long time with my first party Apple wireless keyboard + mouse, but it turned out it just didn't automatically connect on the login screen, and if I just hit any button on the keyboard it would connect in a second or 2 (I'm guessing that hitting keys while it's disconnected sends out a signal to pair)

ulzeraj 4 years ago |

Within less than a year of use my AirPod Plus now makes very annoying buzzing sounds when the microphone is used or any other vibration happens. Its like having a wasp inside your ear. This only happens in transparent and noise reduction mode.

Assuming its broken not sure if I trust the product enough to buy another.

dsizzle 4 years ago | |

This happened to me on two separate pairs (!), and Apple replaced them both for free.

https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...

BTW, you mean AirPod Pro (not Plus).

martini333 4 years ago |

Annoyance: When I use AirPods Pro and turn on my car, my iPhone automatically switches to the car-stereo's Bluetooth as expected. If I take the AirPods out of my ears for the first 5-10 secs after the switch, the iPhone pauses whatever was playing. I need to wait, or resume manually.

weedfroglozenge 4 years ago |

Something I've found annoying is if I'm using the airpods with my iPhone, and I'm chilling on the couch and decide to Chromecast, if I have already started chrome casting to the TV and then take my airpods out it will pause the show despite audio already going through TV?

d23 4 years ago |

I have many of these problems plus: the advertised tap-to-control behavior never seems to work when I want it to. It only activates when my AirPods are misinterpreting my adjusting them as trying to pause what I’m listening to. And, of course, tapping again doesn’t restart playback.

dep_b 4 years ago |

I had AirPods since the launch day. The battery was not great to begin with and they decayed pretty fast. After that they're basically trash as replacing the batteries is about as expensive as buying new ones.

I'm back to EarPods now. Don't listen to music on my phone anyway.

namelosw 4 years ago |

I'm using AirPods Pro & Max and multiple Macs. They're frustrating sometimes, but still substantially better than most Bluetooth devices especially Bluetooth headphones.

Bluetooth is such a crappy technology that blocks for better wireless implementations we could have.

bredren 4 years ago | |

I also think these are overall the best wireless headphones on the market. Not just in Bluetooth connectivity.

brezelnbitte 4 years ago |

Airpod Pros are great for running but that’s it. I’m genuinely surprised to see them used in meetings given battery life and well with my ears they would fall out immediately. I can’t chew or talk without them wiggling out. I tried beats fit pro and were worse.

maerF0x0 4 years ago |

I wish there was a "cast" (eg chromecast) style setup that could just connect to my headphones over wifi. Why cant I just stream music to my headphones and have the Mbps of throughput and range of my wifi? Similar to how I can with video to my TV

hamandcheese 4 years ago |

I’m curious if any of these annoyances are better when using with an M1 mac.

For example, plugging in my dock (with two 4K monitors attached) is always super slow and janky and takes several seconds for the monitors to display anything. Supposedly on the M1 this is instant.

Pxtl 4 years ago |

Honestly, the whole Bluetooth pairing process is an industry-wide failure. I'd throw out all the pairing logic industry-wide and say "Connecting to Bluetooth peripherals requires NFC. NFC-tap a Bluetooth device to its host to connect".

toastal 4 years ago |

This Bluetooth headphone trend I think is mostly just to sell more products and bundles. Remove the headphone jack and now people need to buy the matching headphones they don't really want but the OEM is offering a $10 discount. Then they all have their own proprietary "app" for configuration that isn't cross-platform (have a Linux phone? add this to the pile of "sucks to be you"). Said apps always include tracking and phone homing and more permissions than needed because the other part was to sell your user data as the side hustle to Bluetooth headphones.

I'm sad I fell for it after buying a newer ASUS laptop without a headphone jack and picking up a pair for my girlfriend too. The issues Bluetooth has caused me have wasted company money as I try to 'fix' my headphones for telecommunication. Active noise cancelation is nice, but not disrupting-my-work nice.

gnicholas 4 years ago |

I also find the automatic device switching to be super annoying. In my experience it is both under inclusive and over inclusive. I have no idea how this passed muster for release at a company like Apple.

There is a way to turn off this feature in settings, BTW.

myko 4 years ago |

After replacing mine 3x and my latest Pros just shitting the bed (the left one has a weird echo sound in it, but the Apple Store says it's fine so they won't do anything) I'm done with AirPods

Hopefully the Samsung Buds I have ordered are better

maerF0x0 4 years ago |

Annoyance, today I left my airpods when I left the hotel, I didnt get the left behind notification because I had the case with me. Phone + Case (and airpods not connected) doesnt seem like a good proxy for "You have your airpods"

neycoda 4 years ago |

I don't have these issues with $8 wired earbuds. Manufacturers are removing headphone jacks from mobile devices, causing us to buy expensive buggy Bluetooth ones that are easier to lose. Our world is getting dumber every year.

sgspace 4 years ago |

Another annoyance I have is if you are working on multiple Apple devices using different Apple IDs, you have to go in Bluetooth settings, disconnect and set up the AirPods as new on other machine. Have to do it again to switch back.

bitwize 4 years ago |

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.

recursive 4 years ago | |

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

bitwize 4 years ago | | |

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.

Bud 4 years ago |

His gripe about the buzzing sound in AirPods is easily fixable and he obviously didn't even bother checking. Just went straight to blaming Apple.

Apple will replace AirPods with this issue. For free.

Several of the other gripes are spurious as well.

toolcombinator 4 years ago |

This is part of Apple’s problem right now.

They’ve lost focus.

TV shows, cars, VR headsets, six different iPad models.

So the small stuff suffers: iOS. OS X. AirPods. Airdrop.

Airdrop just stopped working for me recently. The clock app in iOS still only lets you have ONE reminder.

arendtio 4 years ago |

A fatal combination are AirPod Pros + an Amazon FireTV Stick 4k. You pay 250€ and can't even change the volume...

Other FireTVs have the ability, other headphones have the ability, but this combination is just madness.

poink 4 years ago |

Annoyance 4 is the biggest one for me, with the additional annoyance that "only one works sometimes" extends to charging, too. One of my AirPods will be dead when I go to use them ~10% of the time.

chaostheory 4 years ago |

Annoyance 1 drives me insane. I don’t understand why it would switch when I’m actively listening to something. It should ask first on the new device instead of automatically switching.

globular-toast 4 years ago |

I've bought 2 pairs of headphones and 2 pairs of earphones in my entire life so far (I'm 36). And guess what? They just work. Is it really worth it just to not have wires?

activitypea 4 years ago |

I recenty got the AirPods Pro and they're really underwhelming. Apart from their durability, everything they do can be found on headphones half the price e.g. Anker

dijonman2 4 years ago |

Airpods Max are a disaster! I had trouble with bt range on my qc35 ii, switched to sony and will never go back. just wish I could return my airpod max, they’re engraved

gman83 4 years ago |

My airpods broke so I bought some €25 Bluetooth earbuds and honestly they work just as well for my needs. The best thing is not worrying about losing or breaking them.

danielyaa5 4 years ago |

For annoyance 1 I use a bettertoutchtool shortcut to connect to my AirPods . I also noticed BigSur will have a notification pop up asking if you want to reconnect

jugg1es 4 years ago |

I highly recommend the brand Jabra if you are an Android user. Basically all other bluetooth buds have horrible UX in my experience besides Jabra and AirPods.

husamia 4 years ago |

I have the best Sony noise cancelling earbuds and headphones. I thought the AirPods are better but from what you describe. I feel Sony did a pretty good job.

hyakosm 4 years ago | |

I have the Sony XM4 headphones but it's not perfect. It takes nearly 30 seconds to connect to the computer with the voice saying "Power on", "Device 1 connected", "Device 2 connected". When I restart the computer, I must restart the headphones manually and wait. And Sony has not released a MacOS software to manage them.

BenderV 4 years ago |

Agree with the point of the blog, but the biggest hurdle for me:

If you do a short and intensive sprint, Airpods usually will register a click and skip to the next song...

jasonnchann 4 years ago |

My Bluetooth connection has become less and less reliable on my Airpod Pros, which tell me a new one is probably coming soon. Funny how that works :)

DavideNL 4 years ago |

Annoyance 8: Apple Music desperately tries to make you use it by automatically opening the Music app (even though you use Spotify 99% of the time)

jensensbutton 4 years ago |

Annoyance 8: I get anxious when I get on a video call and see the other person is wearing airpods because they're always cutting in and out.

baby 4 years ago |

For the pros, I don't understand how anyone can use these air tips, they never stay in my ears :(

also no more volume and previous/next buttons :/

tambourine_man 4 years ago |

I'm reminded of Alan Kay's quote on the Mac. Similarly, AirPods might be the first wireless headphones worth criticizing.

dools 4 years ago |

You can disable that automatic connection behaviour in the airpod settings from each device, that resolves a few of the issues

theginger 4 years ago |

Why is this article is dated 28th of January 2022? It is the 26th of January 2022, (maybe the 27th in a very eastern timezone)

NoblePublius 4 years ago |

I have a $20 pair of Sony wireless headphones that charge via USB C that have equivalent audio quality to my $199 AirPods pro.

bironran 4 years ago |

My one mega-annoyance is no mute button. Not being able to mute a Zoom call (or a phone call) using just the Airpod hardware interface is... annoying. I don't use Siri that often and would honestly remap long click as mute/unmute. I'm willing to pay premium for that feature alone. Hell, I'm willing to subscribe that feature. Apple, "take my money", just give me a mute button that works without the phone (or watch, or laptop).

ZitchDog 4 years ago | |

The worst part about the click is that it hangs up your call. I was on hold with the IRS for 3 hours and hung up on the representative when I adjusted my airpod. Rage inducing!

kderbyma 4 years ago |

SIRI....disable it....plug in airpods...suddenly she is back and demanding your attention....

forget streaming.....mac m1 cannot Bluetooth

elwell 4 years ago |

Not comparing Apples to apples, but my Beoplay B9 are a joy to listen to; I have no affiliation with B&O btw.

fastaguy88 4 years ago |

I wonder, does "just work" mean work perfectly 100.000% of the time. Or is 99% of the time close enough?

ChrisMarshallNY 4 years ago |

Annoyance 1 (the biggest one), and Annoyance 4 are the standouts for me.

ANNOYANCE 8: Updating the firmware. 'Nuff said...

sancho_panza 4 years ago |

It's so nice being able to bt connect to my Apple watch for the lovely ambience of tick, tock, tick.

pjerem 4 years ago |

If you think you have Bluetooth issues with AirPods, just try Apple Watch. It works, yes, but rarely.

skinnymuch 4 years ago | |

In what way[s] for the Apple Watch?

ianthiel 4 years ago |

I've experienced most of these issues. Also, it appears this blogpost is from the future?

p2t2p 4 years ago |

AirPods Max _often_ just work. Anything else involves manual switching almost every time.

imron 4 years ago |

Try using them on Linux. Then they really don’t just work.

As headphones yes but good luck using the mic.

KSPAtlas 4 years ago |

The date on the article is either wrong, or the article was made by a time traveller

Lamad123 4 years ago |

28 January 2022?! First time in my life reading something before it was published!

omgitsabird 4 years ago |

Does no one else view "it just works" as an incredibly annoying phrase?

erwincoumans 4 years ago |

I wished they were using a low latency bluetooth codec, such ad AptX or Aptx-LL.

floatingatoll 4 years ago |

Too bad they didn’t turn in those buzzing AirPods for the buzzing noise recall.

dilliwal 4 years ago |

Annoyance 0. Your blog post date is wrong

But you have a point, I share some of your annoyances

jgrahamc 4 years ago |

I had one pair of AirPods and left the charging case on a plane; getting a replacement case was a pain because I had to prove the AirPods were mine. When the battery died in them I gave up on them completely. Battery life too short, too easy to lose, and environmentally not sound.

brenelson 4 years ago |

Try getting another set of Bluetooth earphones, then weigh in the quality.

fungiblecog 4 years ago |

i don't find that any of my apple products "just work". they all have annoying "features" that sound great as a sales pitch but are crap in real life use

nfRfqX5n 4 years ago |

a lot of these annoyances can be solved if the author slightly changed their behavior. I still think AirPods Pro are some of the best new tech of the last 5 years

apricot13 4 years ago |

My airpod pros work better than my airpod pro max's but both buggy.

- if your listening to your airpods and answer a phone call on your apple watch the speaker it chooses is not the airpods its your watch! so I'm thinking wow they're speaking really quiet only to realise its coming from my watch!

- switching audio devices while on a call takes far too long

- when I switch my audio output on my iphone sometimes the whole phone hangs. Seems to be fixed now but it was a problem for such a long time that I'm too scared to change audio devices on my phone

- when I connect to my mac sometimes they just wont reconnect and I have to reboot

- when I connect to my mac, then my phone or I disconnect them for a while when they come back the audio jumps up to max. I'm scared to use them with my mac because of this!

I_am_tiberius 4 years ago |

Without Apple device a firmware upgrade is not possible.

IMAYousaf 4 years ago |

Does anyone have the AirPods 3? Are they worth it?

vernie 4 years ago |

CBB? Yes. Better than the alternatives? Also yes.

pluc 4 years ago |

how the hell does a list of annoyances about a product makes it to the #1 of HN

oh Apple I get it

you people need to diversify

recursive 4 years ago | |

We also have Tesla annoyances and NFT haters. That's pretty much all I could hope for.

amelius 4 years ago |

Are AirPods safe for audiophiles?

robertlagrant 4 years ago |

I use Airpod Pros (no Apple, I will not say "Airpods Pro"). Some of the gripes are familiar; some not.

mucholove 4 years ago |

The worst thing about AirPods—specifically the AirPods Pro is that they provoke tinnitus.

I can’t use them. And so it goes…

philjohn 4 years ago |

re: annoyance 1, there is a setting to disable this behaviour

rcfox 4 years ago |

e aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwws

j_m_b 4 years ago |

relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2055/

Bluetooth is still a nightmare after being around for over 2 decades. Meanwhile, my wireless mouse with USB dongle just works.

danielktdoranie 4 years ago |

Mine work great.

smaudet 4 years ago |

Two words:

Audio Jack.

Dumb-ass Mac people.

Nextgrid 4 years ago |

AirPods used to work. They no longer do.

I got AirPods shortly after they were released and they were great. They were basic Bluetooth headphones with a decent, minimalistic UI that "just worked". They wouldn't try to be smart and just remain connected to the last device they were on, which worked well 90% of the time and the last 10% wasn't a problem because the connection process was very quick. Under the hood it was presumably just bog-standard Bluetooth which is good enough and can actually be reliable given my experience.

But then Apple couldn't leave "well enough" alone and decided to over-engineer and fuck everything up. They tried to do the whole multi-device thing where it's supposed to automatically & seamlessly switch between them, and the problems in this article arise from this - presumably they've now overlaid an extra management layer & protocol on top of the existing Bluetooth. Even disabling the automatic switching feature doesn't help, as the extra complexity seems to still be involved in the background and makes once quick operations take much more time.

Connecting to AirPods from the audio menu on another device now takes much longer and doesn't always work - sometimes it'll keep spinning and eventually time out for no reason. Connecting via the Bluetooth menu always works and is faster - I wonder why the audio menu doesn't just do whatever the Bluetooth menu does? Same story on iPhone - connecting via the audio menu is now error-prone and I sometimes have to try again using the Bluetooth settings.

Also a problem I have which I suspect is an isolated bug but is still annoying is that since these new changes, I simply cannot get within range of my Macbook without my music playing though AirPods on an iPhone stopping. I suspect the automatic switching garbage they introduced, which despite being disabled, still plays a part. The AirPods don't even actually switch so it's not like the setting didn't apply, they remain connected to the original device but merely pause, so in the end it's the worst of both worlds as it's not even giving me the extra functionality and just ruins something that used to work perfectly.

Not to mention, in typical Apple fashion, all these overlay protocols have zero observability and you can't even tell what's going on beyond a spinner that eventually times out. Same with AirDrop, HomeKit, etc but at least those are used infrequently enough that they aren't too big of a deal in practice, but AirPods are particularly problematic especially in a post-pandemic, fully-remote world.

Of course, given the recent changes to iPhones, wired headphones are no longer an option either unless you keep dongles around. They should've either switched the new iPhones to USB-C or added a Lightning port to Macbooks so that wired headphones could be used without a dongle you'll inevitably be missing when you need it.

dt2m 4 years ago |

All valid annoyances, but I really think OP should try using another brand of Bluetooth headphones for a week just to get some perspective of how well AirPods "just work" compared to the competition.

Manually having to re-pair once in every blue moon, one earbud playing while the other isn't, no automatic device switching without having to go through the Settings app everytime, A/V desync, dodgy mic quality, earbuds not waking up correctly when removing them from the case, etc are all part of the non-AirPods Bluetooth experience.

I recently switched to a pair of Sony Bluetooth headphones as I don't like the too-neutral AirPods Pro EQ curve, and while they sound excellent, the UX really leaves a bit to be desired.

baybal2 4 years ago |

One of my past coworkers worked on AirPods hardware.

One thing he could've said under gazillions of NDAs: software came much behind the hardware.

davidbenhaim 4 years ago |

deleted

HatchedLake721 4 years ago | |

Can people stop overusing and throwing the word “monopoly” every time they’re not happy with an Apple service or product?

What’s next? Apple is monopoly on ARM? Smartwatches? Monitors? Touchpads?

It sounds like a cheap internet attempt to bash a company using a lately popular but completely irrelevant word in relation to AirPods.

I use both AirPods and Bose QC35 II for years, everyday for hours, without any issues. I haven’t had my Bose quality of experience degrade, so I don’t know what you’re on about.

You enable pairing mode, select your headphones in list of Bluetooth devices, that’s it.

They even swap between Mac and iPhone without much issues.

soared 4 years ago | |

Apple has not degraded 3p Bluetooth - that is bullshit. My Bose work just the same as they did years ago and behave similarly to my AirPods.

You cannot expect Apple to not develop better features in their own products.

This is not anything close to monopoly and it’s wild to say that.

tksb 4 years ago | |

> …Airpods have a ton of extra UX settings in iOS that are not available to other bluetooth headsets.

To be fair, AirPods have "a ton" of hardware capabilities built in that are also not technically available, but that's kind of exactly the point, right?

Nextgrid 4 years ago | |

> My bose headphones that used to work great now don't work as well as airpods.

My AirPods experience has also declined the past couple of years so I think it's just over-engineering and ruining the perfectly functional Bluetooth and/or audio stack rather than an intentional attempt at ruining non-Apple headphones.

justinator 4 years ago |

Oofta. Is anyone having trouble with white text on black background? That was a design anti pattern that I thought died out in the early 2,000's.

d23 4 years ago | |

How’s that an anti-pattern? With dark mode, it’s more in style than ever now.

justinator 4 years ago | | |

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.

misterS 4 years ago | |

This is called "dark mode" nowadays, and it's a feature.

martneumann 4 years ago | |

Same for me. It produces some glare for me and I use dark mode almost everywhere.

I also don't like the huge font. Looks almost what I'd expect an h2 to look like.

justinator 4 years ago | | |

There IS also a difference (as well) between Dark Mode and pure white text (or close to it) on pure black background. Usually a Dark Mode will have the contrast be slightly less (both text and bg are grays).

Sorry to point this out, but it IS a UI design site, and the person is griping about the minutia problems of an Apple device, so: fair game.

UI_at_80x24 4 years ago | |

I actually prefer it. It's easier on my eyes.