Comment by ricardobayes
4 years ago
I sometimes wonder what the world would be like without FAANG. I'm lead to believe the world would be a better place if all companies would have a max company size of Bose, or Sennheiser. Then no stupid decisions could be pushed through by force, like the removal of the 3.5 mm jack. If the market really wants it, they will eventually vote with their wallet. Same goes with social media, fb killed off local country-specific social media, which sometimes had much better features and less agressivity/conspiracy theories/scams.
Of course the true FAANG solution would be to include a 3.5mm jack but disable it in software, requiring £4.99 per month to enable it with a rent-seeking subscription service.
Can I get an audiophile 'Hi-def' tier for $9.99 that's almost but not quite 1982 CD quality?
Seems like that’s more the BMW solution (ref. heated seats subscription)
The market wants what the other segment of the market has, that's the purpose of marketing. Phones with no jacks, like laptops with no i/o, is something impractical that people self-justify because of the logo and the clout it affords. You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone.
Airpods are just about the worst headphones money can buy and people fight over them, despite there being headphones sold for <$100 that blow them out of the water. I have in-ear-monitors that cost a fraction of what an airpod does, has detachable cords AND bluetooth to each ear, and they sound much better and balanced.
Whoever took away the audio port on modern phones should be dragged outside and beaten like an unruly fax machine.
The airpods do one thing much better than anything else I've tried: work with an iPhone.
I went through a few other pairs of bluetooth "true wireless" ear buds and every single one of them would exhibit the normal bluetooth problems. Sometimes one wouldn't connect. Sometimes both wouldn't connect. Sometimes trying to resolve this I'd "forget" them and then not be able to pair them again necessitating pulling out the manual and figuring out how to do a hard reset on some ear buds. And then ending up with only one paired. Etc, etc.
I pretty much exclusively use in-ear headphones to listen to something to fall asleep to, so this is generally happening as I've already wound down and gotten into bed and... now it's tech support time!
I paired the airpods to my phone the first time and have never had them fail to connect immediately since.
This is why AirPods are popular. While this drives audiophiles and geeks who obsess over performance of their technology (not knocking them, I’m one of them for many devices) up the wall, the reality is most people are not audiophiles and can barely tell the difference. What they want are reasonably comfortable headphones that just work, and Bluetooth is so famously bad at this that AirPods stand out.
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The work every time...and my hearing is shot so the last 5% worth of fidelity is lost on me.
And my wife experienced their noise cancelling once on a flight and bought a set the next day.
And we can share the audio between two airpod things when watching a movie, but not with non-Apple products.
I've gone through a few different high-end bluetooth buds from Jabra to Sony.
I keep coming back to my Airpods, something that was gifted to me a year ago, when the other ones break. Most recently, one of my Jabra Elite buds plays audio at 50% volume from one ear 50% of the time.
Not a fan of the tap interface nor the shape of the things nor the need to use a rubber condom (that doesn't fit in the case so I have to remove/add every time), but my Airpods are the ones that I can count on, so I have to give them that.
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This. I am honestly bewildered when I see the tech press comparing true wireless earbuds to AirPods and not mentioning the enormous ergonomic differences.
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>> You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone.
I assumed I was just a grouchy old man (because I am:) but I recently found out what level of social stratification happens for teenagers without iPhone. Immediate judgement, plus the continued dreaded green text box. It is brutal
I thought I was exaggerating the iPhone as a status symbol as opposed to actually convenient / technical solution, turns out I was naive.
(there ARE things that Apple does very well, when it comes to integrating within ecosystem, though some of them are CREEPY - like being prompted to share my wifi password with another person who happens to be looking for wifi around me; just because they happen to have an iPhone doesn't make them my best friend... or does it :P )
Imagine how I feel, I don't carry or use phones, period. The level of outright indignation I experience is pretty high. People resort to levels of disgust when met with someone who openly rejects carrying around a little bother-box in their pocket as if I'm some type of unwashed knave.
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> You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone.
Orrrrr we tolerate repeated mistakes on Apple's part because every time we poke our heads up and look around at the rest of the market (or even try switching for a while!) it's clear we'd just be trading every one problem for three others.
I sincerely wish any other tech companies would at least credibly pretend to actually be competing with Apple head-on, rather than just avoiding them and trying to fill other niches.
The thing I never liked about Airpods is, instead of having one thing that is hard to lose, we now have three easy to lose things.
I see the same happening with a certain new EV that I won't name. It has a nice design, but often gets people stranded, outright bricked through OTA. To the point where dealers advise users not to perform OTA updates. Literal pieces falling off the car while driving. The need to call the tow truck after 2k miles is very common. In normal car terms, it's junk. But people fight tooth and nail to defend it. Exactly because of the 'tribal' thinking you mention. It's our 'tribe', so we close in.
Sounds dire. What car is this, and where can I read about these cars that very commonly fail after 2k miles?
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I am extremely puzzled by true wireless bluetooth headphones to a point where it's hard to find high-end wired bluetooth headphones.
True wireless have so many drawbacks: - lower battery life yet people got convinced that they last long thanks to powerbank, I meant ,,case" which you need to carry.
- bulkier so they stick out of ear one way or another. They fall down easily when changing t-shirts, huddies .. - easy to lose
> it's hard to find high-end wired bluetooth headphones
pre-covid we had an open floorplan office, typical valley startup layout, no noise dampening etc
Everyone had the bose 35 quiet comfort i or ii noise canceling headphones. I was one of the new guys so started off with a $60 panasonic noise canceling headphone, and later when released got the sony ...mx4000? noise canceling headphones because they had USB-C in ~2016 and I brought them with me on my most recent trip here in 2022
I don't know anyone who has ever complained about their bose or sony bluetooth noise canceling headphones. They just work, all the time, every time. Except that one time I forgot to charge them and let them run down to 0% (and it even warned me about an hour before)
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I use them at the gym because I hate having things on my face/head while I'm sweaty. I don't have a use case for wired bluetooth headphones that isn't better served by something with a 3.5mm jack.
> you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone.
You mean "....you have iPhone". Gotta get the weird marketing right if you want to be in the club.
I hope the community will find it in their hearts to be swayed by my humble appeal, I mean no harm. Who will help the widow's son?
I have some Bluetooth speakers from Teufel. They are pretty big and heavy and supposedly good (actually way too bassy for me, hard to listen to podcasts on). And they have a battery, so they are mobile.
They heave this “feature” where they turn off after 10 min of silence. And they’re Bluetooth, so once they turn off, u have to walk to the damn speaker (no remote), push the power button that’s hidden on the back for several seconds (less used buttons are visible on top), then go to your playback device and reconnect the Bluetooth.
People on the forums have been complaining about this for years, and the support still says this feature can’t be turned off.
For a company that supposedly makes very carefully designed, great Audio equipment made in Germany, this user interface is infuriating, pointless and feels never actually tested. (Also, Nowadays nobody reviews products anymore so bad user interfaces are not caught). Btw, I have some Bluetooth speakers with a tiny battery that will stay on for a day and not turn off, idling takes nearly no battery power.
So yeah, this is like the laziest product I have owned, that just dares u to stop a movie for a bathroom or snack break lest it goes back to sleep, and it wasn’t designed by some big monolithic FANG but a supposedly user centric design focused hiish end shop.
3.5mm can go to hell for a phone. I’d prefer the waterproofing we have with iPhones nowadays. If you need an adapter they are available.
Interesting; is there some connection between waterproofing and 3.5mm I'm missing?
There's plenty of phones and devices waterproofed to any given standard with 3.5mm. To my ignorant mind, a USB C or Lightning port is not fundamentally different exposure / difficulty than 3.5mm when it comes to this - this is far from my area of expertise, but a cursory google search, and plentiful of counter-examples, indicates this is just a post-hoc justification for Apple's removal, not a real critical path.
Understanding that "if you need something, get an adapter / live the dongle life" is the core Apple philosophy, and agreeing that most standards should eventually die (parallel port, Firewire, etc), 3.5mm still seems a uniquely standardized, useful, and time proof feature that's is sorely missed with no adequate replacement (dongle, of course, is not it, for many reasons - expense, inconvenience, losing them, and if you want to charge your phone while being on a call things get very wonky very quickly - does Apple even offer a 1st-party solution for this common office-worker use-case?)
Sony solved open headphone jack while being water proof nearly a decade ago. The idea the phone can't have a headphone jack and be waterproof was a lie pushed by Apple to save money on not having to put in a headphone jack.
I've been using Sony phones in the shower and at the beach for years now and only briefly switched to a different company when they tried to pull that headphone jack removal of crap briefly when I needed a new phone.
My understanding was that it’s always been about the physical size and the impact it has on the stack-up of iPhone components. Looking at a standard mini-jack vs. my iPhone 13, the connector itself is close to 40% of the thickness of the phone. Add the additional size for the jack’s structure and you quickly get to a point where the phone has to be thicker.
Now, has Apple gotten too obsessive about thin phones? Maybe - but that’s a different discussion.
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Phones exist that have both waterproofing and a headphone jack. I’m sure it’s a challenge, but it’s not technically an either or decision.
Is there? Last time I checked there doesn’t seem to be a dongle that both outputs and charges my iPhone in the car. Or the non Apple ones have terrible reviews that they set off the persons coffee maker scalding the persons dog or something.
so you're saying that a 3.5mm port cannot be waterproof, yet the stupid Apple proprietary power/data port can?
Lightning is anything but stupid. It’s small, has no breakable bits in the phone side of the port, and is pretty ubiquitous. I don’t have to worry about whether this cable and charger support the Lightning 2-a (IIV) Gold standard ala USB-C.
USB-C just felt terrible to me when I had a Nexus 5x. Port wasn’t as secure, cable was huge. Not a fan.
Some people wreck the 1st-party cables abnormally quickly; they should buy one of those armored cables from Amazon.
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