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.
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.
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
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.
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.
All in all, they're fine, but they most certainly do not just work for me, and they're not a $600 product IMO.
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.
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.
- The AirPods Pro and AirPods Max generally work well. I've experienced most of the annoyances the OP lists occasionally, but not regularly, although the "autoselect the device want you want" outsmarts itself semi-regularly. (Not quite enough to make me disable it, but it's close.) I have never attempted to control the volume of the AirPods Pro using Siri because it sounds like a bag of hurt.
- My Bose SoundLink II will immediately say it's connected to the last device that it paired with when I turn it on, but sound won't come out of it. Depending on what seems to be random chance, either it'll start playing in ~15 seconds, or it will repeat its "Connected to [Device]" voice cue and then immediately be available for play, or once in a while it will put itself back in "I'm not connected!" mode and I will have to go into Bluetooth settings to manually connect.
- My Vanatoo desktop speakers have Bluetooth, and once they're connected to the phone they don't want to let go. I'll have successfully sent sound to the SoundLink, or the AirPods, or just the phone's own speaker, and then suddenly the sound will mysteriously vanish because the Vanatoos have woken up and grabbed the signal. (This sometimes happens before the Vanatoos have powered up their own internal amplifiers.)
- The Bluetooth pairing in my mother's car consistently has the weirdest behavior: I connect, it starts playing a podcast or music, and the audio just cuts out every four seconds or so at a regular cadence. It seems like it might be playing just a little too fast and there's a buffering issue. If I disconnect the Bluetooth and reconnect it, then everything's fine. But the first connection after the car starts will always be broken.
I mean, I know that's all anecdotal. But at least for me, the AirPods are the least broken Bluetooth audio devices I use. I get that "it works less frustratingly for many people most of the time" is not nearly as catchy as "it just works," but until Bluetooth gets properly sorted out in 2083 or whenever, I guess I'll live with it.
My main problem with Airpods is the physical design, which simply refuses to stay in my ears at all, rendering them totally useless, even if I'm just sitting relatively stationary at a desk.
My Samsung Galaxy Buds have been doing pretty well, though I just started having a problem where the left earbud is extremely quiet.
I've tried many other brands (I had lost two pairs of AirPods from all the travel I was doing) and everything else was an awful experience for anything but simply listening to something. I have to manually disconnect from my phone then re-connect to my computer (AirPods solve this), people could never hear me through the microphones, and generally I was better off not using the "controls" the other brands offered.
I really wanted to like cheaper alternatives, but they're just not good. AirPods, however, are fantastic.
- 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.
Oh, also here's another complaint: when your Airpods are connected to your iPhone, they HAVE to be the microphone. Which is annoying because for one thing, their microphone is way worse than the one built into your phone, and the other thing is in winter I usually have my AirPods concealed under my toque so my ears don't freeze off, but that means literally no sound will make it to the microphone, and I'm just SOL if I want to use my microphone (and when it's freezing out, I'm less likely to want to try typing a message with the keyboard, so it would be nice to just send a voice message to someone, but I can't). Of course no one at Apple will ever experience this cause they're all in California!
Nothing like going out for a run and figuring out 50 feet down the road that your audio is only playing through one bud.
I also noticed the membrane sounds like it’s getting blown out when they attempt to deal with loud noises in the environment.
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.
Airpods seem to be more reliable for that than most bluetooth experiences I've had, but it's still not as good as I'd hoped given it's supposed to "just work"
That's not my problem. That's Apple's problem. There are solutions around this, and they made a choice to use the technology they did. End result is their product. These annoyances aren't because they have wireless headphones. It's because of the choices they made.
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.
We just need a marketing guru to sell people on the 3.5mm wired headphones
- no standard way to have a microphone
- balanced vs unbalanced cables are electrically different (and can damage the headphone)
- high and low impedance headphones are also electrically different (affecting sound quality and volume)
- phone can't implement safe hearing limit laws or any of the hearing health features because it doesn't know how loud the headphones are
Plus there's cable microphonics and the ports on both sides can wear out.
All we gotta do is solve the “I got my cable caught on the door knob as I walked by” issue and 3.5mm will be perfect.
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.
It will connect to my cell phone and computer at the same time. I'll be on a zoom call (computer) and something will make it decide to disconnect and reconnect from my phone - so I'll get a 10 second interruption notifying me of this glitch.
Also, if someone calls me, I haven't figured out how to force it to switch to my cell phone.
Thanks for the recommendation... I almost lost one of my airpods in 18" of snow last week when snowblowing, and I decided it's not a good idea to wear my airpods when snowblowing anymore.
I don't understand why Apple went with that as a default; that part of my ears seems to have evolved so as not to catch debris, and EarPods-style earphones just comes off as they should. And it is not that likely I have a million in one ear leaf genetic subtypes.
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’?
When AirPods are connected, go into the bluetooth preferences, select "Options" next to the connected AirPods. Change the value for "Connect to This Mac"
You're listening on your iPhone but using your computer. Device switching then says "okay since they're using their computer if any sound comes from the computer they should hear it" and then iMessage made a sound.
Had the thing you did been playing a YouTube video or Spotify then it would be weird if your AirPods didn't switch. I think it makes sense for notification sounds to not trigger switching by default but IDK what they currently do isn't totally unreasonable.
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?
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.
I imagine that hands and head create an improvised Faraday cage. Though 2.4GHz Bluetooth signal should nevertheless pass thought the body tissue, likely there is just a signa-to-noise ratio rapid drop which forces Airpods to re-establish the connection.
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.
Semiconductors and consumer electronics are more environmentally sensitive than they were, and can be better than they are. With the lithium and trace metals, AirPods are more damaging pound for pound than bulk waste, and you're right to insist that Apple do a better supporting recycle and recapture. We should also focus on how those materials are mined in the first place.
However, even a repairable AirPod would generate lithium waste as the batteries wear out. If we're going to have consumer electronics, there's going to be a bit of waste. Let's just keep in mind that real problems are coal and SUVs and beef and so on. A business like AirPods (or all of electronics) that generates fractional ounces (or pounds considering everything) of waste per person-year while enabling environmentally-positive changes like remote work is perhaps not the first target for reprobation.
[0]: https://dpw.lacounty.gov/epd/swims/OnlineServices/reports.as... [1]: https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev04.php
Or put another way: people throw away phones after 3-4 years regardless of if you can replace the battery or not.
You can pretty cheaply replace the battery in any phone at a repair shop. But people don't want that, they want the new phone with new look and new features.
Not to mention Apple Music keeps turning itself back on when I turn it off.
All impossible to diagnose why and the only advice is reset and delete everything and start over.
"Just works" is absolutely a statement that should be considered on a time curve! Some products work incredibly in the most trivial use case you test during unboxing, but fall apart when deeply integrated. Others are a PITA to set up, but stop requiring any unproductive attention afterwards.
This was incredibly clear for anyone WITHOUT AirPods during 2019-2020. Everyone picked them up with their iPhone 11 upgrade and immediately started talking about how they "just work". Three months later, you'd see people fiddling with extra devices to keep them charged, or complaining about sending them through the laundry or into subway grates. Then the pandemic hit and they became an entire category of Zoom fatigue due to multiple bluetooth connections.
Through some obscure digging, I found that changing my region language on the ipad from English > UK English and back somehow fixed it…
That isn't always the case, but it tends to be.
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.
Issues I've experienced:
- Loud random static noise (usually for about .25 seconds). It's like someone screaming in your ear. I've experienced this now with TWO pairs.
- Noise canceling/transparency mode just stopping working when you touch them.
- "Hey Siri" just stopped responding (not usually a big deal, but that's usually how I make calls)
- One pair just stopped working entirely. Wouldn't charge or anything.
- Each ear would get out of sync until you took them out of your ears.
AirPods Pro are by far the worst Apple product that I purchased. I regret buying them. I suspect the regular AirPods don't have most of these issues since I think the issues were mostly related to feature specific to the Pros.
I can't imagine how angry I would be if I hadn't purchased AppleCare with them, so many defects.
And it's Apple, so of course you can't turn it off.
Or they'll provide haptic in-ear custom vibrations in AirPod Pros 5, and their slogan will be "Your ears never felt better".
The trouble was that it was hidden somewhere in our messy living room, and the alerts weren’t frequent enough to find it quickly, so I was standing around in my underwear for ages, waiting for each subsequent alert and getting a bit closer each time, because it was too loud to go back to sleep.
The 'device connected' sound is pretty loud as well.
People have been complaining about BEING CAUSED PAIN BY AIRPODS for YEARS and they are not doing anything about it!
This being the top rated comment here further proves it's a major issue for airpod users. What the fuck, apple?
I am absolutely terrified of that painful sound and will regularly check battery to ensure it won't hit me.
Maybe I'm more prone to losing things than the average person. But after losing two of these things over the last couple years I'm not buying them again.
- 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.
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!
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.
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.
https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...
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.
And the audio quality is compromised, although aptX Lossless may finally start changing that.
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.
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.
I guess I like the fact that when I'm in the car I don't have to do anything for it to pair and work but... It seems like there has to be a better way.
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.
Just turn off the auto-connect feature and start using that icon, all the mentioned 'annoyances' will go away :)
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.
I purchased no-name Bluetooth wireless earphones for ~$55 USD before the AirPods Pro, and they were shockingly good for the price (super small, lightweight, long battery; similar observations that your wife reported about the Nothing headphones). I got the AirPods Pro after that, expecting a massive upgrade, but really the only significant difference was the noise cancellation (which is why I still use them primarily). The easier switching between Apple devices is nice too, but for my use case, I mostly use the AirPods on my phone anyways.
So for the price differential between generic headphones, I would expect a massive upgrade, but now it feels like a nice upgrade but pretty expensive for what it does (especially since I'll have to consider replacing them once the battery degrades).
- I can't seem to use them for extended periods of time without running into this issue where one earbud stops playing audio entirely and I have to fully reset them to fix it.
- The audio completely cuts out every 5-10 minutes for a brief (like under a second) moment, leading to these annoying gaps in whatever I'm listening to.
- After pairing, the audio will sometimes be extremely low quality, output in mono or not output sound at all; usually unpairing and pairing fixes this.
- Firmware updates have done nothing to resolve these issues.
I tried reaching out to Nothing support to try to return them but have been unable to get a response. These headphones are unusable and probably the worst tech product I've ever purchased.
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.
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.
If only it were that simple. Unfortunately this config option is not a property of the AirPods themselves, but to each individual device you own, so you can’t just set it once. You have to go to each device you have on your iCloud account and set “connect only when last connected to this device”.
But it’s even worse than that, because the option is only available to be changed when you have the AirPods connected, meaning you have to go to each device you own, connect your AirPods to them, then go to the menu, find the option for connection mode, and set it to “when last connected”.
And if you forgot a device, it will happily steal your AirPods connection “automatically” the next time it boots up or decided it wants to connect them. And you have to search around and figure out what the hell your AirPods are even connected to.
Did I mention Apple will occasionally release an OS update which changes this setting back to “automatically” again? Now you get to do this whole dance over again, but slowly, as your individual iDevices get rolled-out updates.
(I have 5 devices near my work desk that are potential AirPod connection thieves, this is a huge annoyance to me if you can’t tell.)
I don't even necessarily think these are problems. I almost always want whatever I'm playing to stop when I disconnect my headphones, and there are times I don't want the headphones to connect to the last device (ie: I've been listening to something on my laptop, left the laptop behind somewhere, and want to start listening from my phone).
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.
https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-...
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.
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.
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.
Maybe I have not had them long enough to actually start having them annoy me...
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?
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.
Those wired headphones with noise cancelling and transparency modes probably do require eye-wateringly complex semiconductors.
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.
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?
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.
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.
[1] https://www.whathifi.com/features/is-bluetooth-holding-back-...
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?"
https://www.macintoshhowto.com/hardware/extreme-emf-exposure...
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.
Love them a lot and agree. Check out Jabra!
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.
I'm not saying there is a better solution it's just that this product is a massive failure in my eyes.
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.
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 :)
Is there a way to fix this without ditching Bluetooth?
Or, wait for a few years for Bluetooth 5.2 LE Audio be available in consumer devices.
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.
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.
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.
(PS, I also prefer transport belts over robots in factorio, and explicitly constructed objects over dependency injection in programming)
Edit: I have a pair of JBL LIVE300TWS. They're good!
I guess the real thing to take away is, that cable is still the most reliable option (and also saves a lot on battery!)
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?
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.
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".
Still use cord ones in other circumstances. When lying down, for example. I like to have the choice at least.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
I'm back to wired
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.
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).
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.
Or if you want a boom mic, some of the “Pro” or “G” branded logitech headsets.
-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".
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…
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This only seems to happen for Bluetooth. Using a RF gaming headset or a wired connection causes no issue.
keyword: Annoyance 3
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.
There's something to be said for considering the diversity of your market.
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.
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.
When batteries deplete in the middle of a meeting, what are you supposed to do? Connect a spare pair via usb dongle?
Also, hate how sometimes only one side will charge.
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.
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.
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.
A good product would have 1 gripe found by 1 in 7 customers...
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.
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.
Assuming its broken not sure if I trust the product enough to buy another.
I'm back to EarPods now. Don't listen to music on my phone anyway.
Bluetooth is such a crappy technology that blocks for better wireless implementations we could have.
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.
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.
There is a way to turn off this feature in settings, BTW.
Hopefully the Samsung Buds I have ordered are better
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.
Apple will replace AirPods with this issue. For free.
Several of the other gripes are spurious as well.
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.
Other FireTVs have the ability, other headphones have the ability, but this combination is just madness.
If you do a short and intensive sprint, Airpods usually will register a click and skip to the next song...
also no more volume and previous/next buttons :/
forget streaming.....mac m1 cannot Bluetooth
ANNOYANCE 8: Updating the firmware. 'Nuff said...
As headphones yes but good luck using the mic.
But you have a point, I share some of your annoyances
- 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!
oh Apple I get it
you people need to diversify
I can’t use them. And so it goes…
Bluetooth is still a nightmare after being around for over 2 decades. Meanwhile, my wireless mouse with USB dongle just works.
Audio Jack.
Dumb-ass Mac people.
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.
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.
One thing he could've said under gazillions of NDAs: software came much behind the hardware.