There's like a next-level Apple marketing babble on that page:
"AirPods introduce an effortless wireless listening experience packed with high-quality audio and long battery life. These magical wireless headphones use advanced technology to reinvent how we listen to music, make phone calls, enjoy TV shows and movies, play games and interact with Siri, providing a wireless audio experience not possible before."
As much as I've also become an apple hater recently because of what they've done to iOS10 and the new macbook pro, I think criticizing a marketing copy for being a marketing copy is not fair.
Actually it is a bit more than "a pair of fucking headphones". As someone who spends a lot of time throughout the day listening to music, and finds Apple's Earpods to be some of the most comfortable nice sounding headphones I have owned, I'm rather excited about some innovation being done around this space.
A few features that make them new/innovative:
• Smart switching between multiple devices logged into iCloud. You need only pair with one of your iCloud devices and the rest will auto pair.
• Auto-pause when removed from ears.
• Auto-mono when only one is in your ear.
• Carrying case that charges them rapidly and keeps them safe in your pocket.
Edit: I said AirPods when I meant EarPods (the current wired ones). I don't currently have the AirPods.
Edit 2: Another reason I'm excited about these: I absolutely abhor talking on the phone (like holding the phone up to my ear) and find single ear bluetooth devices to be lame in both function and appearance. I might be a smidge hard of hearing, so I much prefer to have both ears in on the action. I've tried a handful of Bluetooth headsets in the past, and they've all left me seriously wanting. Connectivity isn't consistent. Audio quality isn't great. If something doesn't just work like my wired headphones, I'm not going to switch. If these turn out to have the same issues, I'll gladly report how inaccurate Apple's marketing was and how disappointed I am.
Like with most things Apple, they don't necessarily create the first product in a space, but they define the category by refinement of user experience and inventing the necessary tech to support that.
This Plantronics case isn't that great. You have to open it with two hands in front of you, and carefully place the awkwardly shaped headset in. You probably have to look at it while doing so. It's rather large, and the clear plastic cover looks like it can break pretty easily. It's also only one ear, and it's a $30 accessory.
The AirPods can be opened one-handed while in your pocket, and you can place them in without looking. They're also smaller, the case looks quite a bit more durable, and they work with the charger you already have as an iPhone user (lightning). The AirPods and case were designed with a broader UX scope - the entire user experience, from opening to listening to putting away - as one unified product.
The process that most hardware teams typically take is more narrowly focused on the core product hardware, rather than the entire scope of its use. If Plantronics had designed their headset with a broader UX scope in mind, they probably would have designed the headset itself differently, because its awkwardly shaped and hard to store. Instead I imagine they optimized the headset design for solely when its on-ear, and then asked how they could make a case for that shape. Such are the little differences that distinguish between regular products and category-defining ones (see also: iPod with iTunes).
Indeed. The fact that the first use experience is (from what I've heard) the very best pairing experience for any bluetooth headset ever tells that story quite well (all thanks to Apple's proprietary W1 chip, of course).
I've got a pair of Bose QC 35s and though their pairing experience is standard annoying bluetooth pairing, their support of multiple devices/easily switching between them is the best I've seen in bluetooth headphones I've purchased. The AirPods are, apparently, comparable to the Bose in this regard, with a better onboarding experience.
"The fact that the first use experience is (from what I've heard) the very best pairing experience for any bluetooth headset ever tells that story quite well (all thanks to Apple's proprietary W1 chip, of course)."
From who? They're not available, not even any pre-release reviews around.
Beats headphones with the W1 chip in them have been available since the the iPhone 7 release. I am, admittedly, assuming that the AirPods will be as good at this as the Beats headphones with the chip, but I believe that's a reasonable assumption.
>• Smart switching between multiple devices logged into iCloud. You need only pair with one of your iCloud devices and the rest will auto pair.
Genuine feature, and a neat one at that. Previously I had to rely on stuff like NFC or saved pairs, which is still more than 1 pair.
>• Auto-pause when removed from ears.
Also a genuine feature. Takes some real thinking to make that a priority in the UX.
>• Auto-mono when only one is in your ear.
Is that really a feature? I mean I guess that's cool, but it seems like a play on the previous feature sensing if in use or not.
>• Carrying case that charges them rapidly and keeps them safe in your pocket.
This is a necessity rather than a feature per say.
Wired headphones don't need to be charged. Wireless headphones with a headphone port for backup also don't require a charge.
Most modern headphones are a single unit, so they don't need a case to be kept from getting lost.
That said, many have cases to keep them from getting tangled or damaged in transport, the latter which is true for the airpods, however if your case were damaged, so is your charger.
> If these turn out to have the same issues, I'll gladly report how inaccurate Apple's marketing was and how disappointed I am.
If they have the same issues as other Bluetooth devices, hopefully you find out about it before you spend your money on some expensive tech.
>Is that really a feature? I mean I guess that's cool, but it seems like a play on the previous feature sensing if in use or not.
I think the distinction is that its not just turning off one of the phones. Its switching from stereo to mono so you can still hear everything you previously required both sides of the stereo mix (left + right) for. Definitely not a big jump from the other feature, but still goes to show how they are thinking about the small details.
That's true, it shows some attention to detail in the UX of the device.
I don't think however people were having a "crippled" xp when using just one wired earbud in "mono" rather than "combined stereo"
I think the feature really should be "senses when individual pods are in use" and because of that feature, some automatic tasks can be applied like combining stereo or pausing the music.
I guess I am just complaining that it feels like they used one feature and got two marketing points out of it, which is fair game.
Do you actually have them in hand? How is the sound quality? What headphone did you use before the AirPods and are they better or worse in terms of sound quality?
I'm probably not switching soon because I love my Atomic Floyd's sound quality (don't get me started on their customer service) but I'm just curious how they did with the sound quality aspect, which feels like the most important thing to me.
Sorry, edited my post after I realized I said AirPods and not EarPods. I don't have a pair. I would imagine they will be the same. Which is my hope because the EarPods fit my ears perfectly... I have pretty big ears (not sure if that typically translates to ear holes), which caused more than a little fun poking back in school, but apparently they are a good size for Apple's design spec. Take that BILLY you little jerk!
I have nil fashion sense, but I think the single-ear Lt. Ohura look is much better than headphones with the wires hanging. But I only like them for voice conversations.
I'm not sure if you have a bias against Apple or not but you're distilling your adjectives down to the simplest level in order to attack them. I do not believe that is a fair assessment.
The AirPods include some interesting UX changes not typically seen (open case to connect, etc) and while some abilities have been done before (the tiny ear buds, the recharging case, etc) it also has some interesting aspects with voice commands and gestures.
Yes I wouldn't necessarily call them world class but a "pair of fucking headphones" seems possibly even more inaccurate to me.
That's important to notice. Just adding "fucking" in front of what something is isn't a very good argument. You can do it to anything that people love or consider to be great. The Beatles is just a fucking band. Tesla just makes fucking electric cars. A cure for cancer is just a fucking medical discovery.
I can't speak for the other guys above, but I must have missed something. I am baffled why this particular set of wireless headphones has received as much press as it has. It seems so overblown that I have to wonder if people with iPhone 7s have actually been refusing to use existing wireless headphones because they are actually waiting for these.
I've had a set of $25 Motorola wireless (Bluetooth) headphones that I use on my daily walking commute to and from work for many years. They work and sound great. They double as a wireless microphone and playback controls. I charge them every day via a USB cable. Woohoo.
I can't see anything specs-wise with the Apple headphones that is interesting. Auto-pause? Okay, cool, but I can press the pause button on my Bluetooth headphones from 2010. Switching between devices? I can enable or disable Bluetooth on my devices, I guess, if I had wanted to use the headphones with more than my phone (though I do not want that).
These new features seem incremental at best. The clamor for these—and the fact that their availability is a high-ranking news item on HN—seems to suggest I am missing something very fundamental. And yet, it feels that I am not. These are wireless headphones with a couple incremental features and an Apple logo.
> I can't speak for the other guys above, but I must have missed something. I am baffled why this particular set of wireless headphones has received as much press as it has.
They're tiny, they pair to multiple devices trivially, and are well designed. They're one of the big reasons Apple is supposed to have removed the headphone jack off the iPhone 7. "You don't need it, let us show you why" kind of thing.
The other reason is that this is releasing MONTHS LATE. It was supposed to be released at the end of October, now it's coming out end of December. That's HUGE.
When was the last time Apple screwed up the launch of something big like this? The biggest one people can recall is the white iPhone 4 which basically released 9 months late. At that point most people just waited the extra 4-5 months for the iPhone 4s.
Ignoring that they're neat little headphones, this is big news today because APPLE SHIPPED LATE. That just doesn't happen. Maybe quantities are low (Apple watch), but not a flat out delay on a major product after announcing a release date.
Eh, they'll pair trivially to other Apple devices (which ... NFC assisted pairing is not new).
It's months late, it's still not here yet, AND there's a "big" warning on the page that even when it is here it will only be in limited quantities and that prospective buyers are "advised" to check online for stocking levels... very un-Apple.
Looking at the list of specs you mentioned, yes, you missed something. There's another guy right above talking about the non-music related features, take a look.
The other two from that message that I didn't mention were auto-mono and a carrying case. Are those the other features you're referring to?
Auto-mono: I guess I see some people listening in only one ear sometimes, but that's not my way of listening to music or podcasts. The cheap Motorola headphones I use are traditional "headphones" and not earbuds. I prefer headphones over earbuds. But even if I used earbuds, I'm not interested in single-ear listening.
Carrying case: This is a big deal? On my walks, I "carry" my headphones on my ears. When I get home, I charge via a USB cable.
Whatever; I suppose I don't begrudge anyone for being excited by Apple headphones. I just find the hype level amusing and silly.
I would agree that old Bluetooth devices (especially those from around 2005 or earlier) often sounded poor. But modern Bluetooth devices (say 2009 onward) have generally sounded fine/great. I would go so far as to say that if you're listening to MP3s and not FLAC, then Bluetooth isn't your biggest signal loss.
I haven't done work in the Bluetooth space for years now, but a big problem with audio streaming in the Bluetooth 1/2 days was that devices wouldn't reliably adjust their page and inquiry scan intervals (time the radio spends listening for connections and answering device discovery requests, rather than sending data).
The effective remaining bandwidth fell far short of what the default Bluetooth codec, SBC, required. SBC was already pretty low end, more like MPEG Layer-1 audio. Even so, for point to point streaming if the devices cooperated well there was enough bandwidth for fairly good audio quality. It's just that it was a crapshoot what any pair of devices would get you.
The other big issue is that there wasn't, at least at the time, any standardized method for synchronizing the audio sampling rates of the source and sink. This could have been achieved by slaving the audio PLL to the connection master's frequency hopping clock, which the slave has to follow to even maintain a connection, but there wasn't any requirement to do so. Plus it'd be a massive layer violation in the Bluetooth stack. We basically ran a software PLL on the sink side to try to match what the source was giving us, but packet retransmissions due to loss could gum up the timing. You could get a pitch-bending effect as a connection was starting up, or had just suffered a lot of loss.
> I imagine they've sorted most of that out by now.
I think they have. Giving some leeway to my bluetooth Motorola headphones since they are super-aural, to my ears—and I feel I am fairly picky—they are not significantly worse than my circumaural Sennheiser HD 380 pros on my workstation. I suspect the principal reason I feel my circumaural headphones sound a bit better is simply that they are circumaural.
I believe modern Bluetooth headphones are indistinguishable from equivalent non-Bluetooth headphones. If you can tell whether headphones are Bluetooth or not—the other components being equal—then you have particularly acute hearing. And if that's you, then you are probably a FLAC aficionado.
For what it's worth, I listen to MP3s on Bluetooth headphones and they sound great.
(Though to be clear, I've not actually researched the bit rate of Bluetooth, though I suspect it's high enough for 44 KHz stereo. To my ears, Bluetooth is indistinguishable from an analog 3.5mm connection.)
The quality has nothing to do with Bluetooth, it has everything to do with the digital-to-analog converter. A $25 headset is going to have the cheapest chip the manufacturer could find. Non-Bluetooth headsets don't process digital signals and don't have to do this conversion, it's up to the device you're listening on.
Again, that's my point. Bluetooth has a undeserved/outdated bad reputation for adversely affecting audio. I contend that, all else being equal, I could not distinguish a modern Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired headphone.
Yes, as you point out, they also need a DAC. So I will clarify my contention: all else being equal, I could not distinguish a Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired USB headphone that uses the same DAC.
It's not all about the codecs. On my Sony MDR-1RBTs — which are admittedly a few years old at this point — you can hear the radio buzzing when there's nothing playing. I don't know if it's possible to design a pristine, noiseless set of Bluetooth headphones when there's just so little room in the earcups.
Just go grab a pair of BT headphones with aptX support and you should be fine. Unless you are a tube amp and $1.5k headphone kind of person - then you most definitely aren't in the target segment.
I had a pair of wired Sony's wayyyyy back in the day in this wrap around ear/neck band form factor that I really loved when I was a kid. Lately though, I find anything that covers my ear too warm and uncomfortable. This is why I'm excited about the AirPods. I wouldn't really classify these Motorola's as truly wireless because of the connecting band.
That's cool with me. A sense I have picked up from your reply and another message in this thread is that Apple is attempting to evolve the definition of "wireless headphone" to require no bridge between the two ears. I think that is a vocabulary change that is causing a lot of us to scratch our heads in confusion. Conventionally, "wireless headphone" has meant no wire to the device—no headphone cable and no 3.5mm connector. And by that definition, wireless headphones are old and boring.
That said, I'm not a fan of earbuds, wired or otherwise. So whether removing the bridge wire is a revolution is lost on me since I'm not interested either way.
Yeah... My bad, agree on the terminology. I think a more appropriate way to refer to them would be 'wireless earbuds'. In that case, I would say anything connecting them would be cheating and taking away from the truly amazing feeling of having audio delivered to your ears with no connecting wires to get caught on things, pull, vibrate when turning your head etc etc.
I could buy a dozen of the Motorola wireless headphones I use and I expect the results would be consistently satisfying. In fact, a couple years back I did buy two spare pairs that are new in box in case I ever lose my current pair. At $25 a pop, I figured why not have some insurance.
But I understand you. If you've not previously used wireless headphones and you're satisfied with Apple quality, this new offering is a known quantity. I'm still not really feeling the innovation. Except of course, as someone pointed out, this is a subtle redefinition of "wireless" to mean not just removing the wire to the device, but also any bridge between the two ears. For me, that bridge isn't something I care to remove. But okay, that's cool.
It's Apple. Pretty much anything and everything Apple does right now gets lots of press, much of it of the fawning variety. Apple has a strong brand affinity, so people will shower love on anything Apple-related.
It's like calling a Tesla "an electric version of the same cars that were on the road for decades". Each headphone has a new chip that could probably run a whole smartphone few years ago - but I mean, if the fact that they are wireless is not impressive, then I don't think we can convince you.
He's probably not impressed by the fact they're wireless because wireless headphones aren't new. I mean, even stodgy grumps like me have a pair that works well and cost $20. Wireless headphones just aren't impressive technology in December 2016. They've been done. Again and again. This isn't a Tesla situation by any means.
Apple might have executed particularly well, but I see his point.
I'm not saying they're the greatest ever, but sync was easy, they play music without any problems, they hold a charge for a few days, and they haven't broken. What more does it take for a pair of Bluetooth headphones to work well? My expectations are pretty low.
They could absolutely be better, if for example, the charge lasted two weeks, or the sound was higher quality (I'm no audiophile but I'm sure if I was I'd find they could be better) but they're Good Enough.
Wireless headphones aren't new. Wireless headphones at that size/feature set/price point seem to be. The only comparable thing I know if is Samsung reportedly had some similar but they only had like 90m of battery life.
I'm curious how well the battery life claims hold up. It's impressive but sometimes the real world battery life doesn't measure up. The new MacBook Pros are a good example of this (even if the current battery life is temporary and may be fixed by OS updates).
Eh, you said it... YOU believe them. A lot of people here don't anymore.
Let's wait to see what real world use looks like. I mean, if you take the emoji touch bar at face value it's the coolest thing since sliced bread. However, real world use indicates that it might not be as useful as Apple wants it to be.
I think you misunderstood me. What I said is that Apple's numbers are highly accurate FOR WHAT THEY TESTED.
The problem here is that Apple hasn't given numbers about what it's like under heavy load. Or really any load it all. If you stick to doing the kind of things Apple does in their battery life test you WILL get what they say.
Unfortunately as we seem to be finding out if you go outside of that you're screwed. Obviously harder workloads always hit the computer more, but this year the delta seems much much higher. They are cherry picking tests that make their battery life look reasonable.
I should also note that this is not the first time Apple did this. The quoted battery life on the iPhone 7 is basically the same as before, but they made a slight change to the wording. This year there tests are all with wireless headphones. This is likely because it's always been down that using the speaker on an iPhone to listen to music will lower your battery life pretty significantly, and now that the new iPhone 7 has a double speaker arrangement it's likely an even bigger effect than before.
Apples not lying like so many PC makers used to do, they're playing lawyer games and choosing their words incredibly carefully.
This is not a good turn. Apple giving real life accurate battery estimates used to be one of the things that put them above PC makers in my mind. If they're going to start redefining the workload to doing nothing on your computer... why bother?
Honest question: can you point me to some other earbuds of the same size that are totally wireless (not even a bridging wire) and that also include a microphone, etc.?
The AirPods honestly do seem like a somewhat unique entry into the market to me, but it's such a crowded market that I could have easily missed a competitor somewhere.
That said, the lack of any sort of wiring is actually a negative to me, because that's primarily what makes it seem like these will be so easy to lose.
The Bragi Dash and the Samsung Gear Icon X both do this, and also include fitness tracking functionality. The Samsung ones can even be loaded with music and cache your fitness data so you don't need a phone with you.
I think this is hilarious, even as someone who owns multiple Apple devices. "This is revolutionary. Nothing else does anything like this." "These do." "Well they cost more!", or "doesn't look as cool". Moving goalposts.
And eh, I realize that Apple almost never goes below MSRP/list, but don't act like the "after $50 off" is some special promotion. It's not a rebate, even an instant one, just 'cheaper than list'.
Your lack of awareness of the market does not mean that it does not exist. It is not helpful to pretend that your unwillingness to do simple research on the matter makes you an expert.
- Apple Airpods ($160) W1 Chip to quickly switch devices+, Can use either headphone independently+, 24 add hrs of charge in case, only comes in one size- -- 5 Hours
yeah this falls under "that isn't exactly the same product," above. I'm not sure, for instance, why you left 'can use either headphone independently' off the Gear IconX entry, because you can. I'm not sure why about half of these entries leave out the charge-case entry, because a lot of them have it.
But it's irrelevant. You can say "apple's product is better." You can say "these other products are terrible." You can even say "I hate everything that is not from Cupertino." But the claim here is that these things are some kind of revolution. The claim we are trying to rebut is not "apple airpods suck and are not worth buying." I, and many others, are merely explaining that there is nothing magical or even particularly new about airpods. They are an iteration on an existing product segment.
You, so far, have done nothing to demonstrate otherwise.
> A pair of headphones a month later than they should be that look exactly like their old headphones
??? Maybe we have different standards on what 'look different' should be, but these are functionally and design-wise worlds apart from their existing headphones.
What are some of the things you hate about iOS 10? I've also disliked a few changes they've introduced, but after spending more time with the OS, I've discovered that some changes were not as bad as I'd initially considered. It was more a matter of getting used to.
I guess people don't like changes to the things they've grown accustomed to.
There are a lot of small things that are making me hate iOS 10.
1) Unlock process: When the fingerprint reader fails it now takes several presses on the home key to get a keypad to pop up so I can input my code. With previous versions I could just swipe when I knew the fingerprint reader would fail (e.g. wet hands).
2) App updates: When apps are updating on my phone it decides it really wants to stay on the home screen. I can swipe to get to the other screens, but it goes back before I can tap any apps. Also, when I can get into an app they tend to lag and crash more when updates are happening in the background.
3) Control Center (bottom menu): Trying to slide the brightness or volume controls on the control center menus usually gets interpreted as a swipe to the next control menu. I have to be very precise when touching them for the sliders to actually work.
4) Safari: Auto-hide of the control buttons does help page visibility, but showing them seems to be glitchy as hell. They appear and then disappear before I can move my finger to tap them.
5) Crashes: At least daily now the whole phone crashes to a black screen and then comes back to the lock screen a few seconds later. Seems to involve location services.
Also, not exactly iOS 10, but the new Watch OS completely broke the usability of the Weather app for me. Something that was fairly intuitive and useful is now cumbersome and basically useless to me.
I'm really glad that I'm not the only one who's been frustrated by iOS recently. Their user interactions have become so inconsistent and there are so many places (like control center) where simple tasks like pausing music playback have additional friction for really no reason. Why would they split it into 2 screens when one worked just fine? Why did they eliminate slide to unlock? (My conspiracy theory here is to upsell people new devices because the home button unlock is absolutely horrible to use on anything < iPhone 6s). There are lots of places where things are just downright much more difficult than they have to be. In the end, I switched to android after using iOS for the last ~5 (maybe more?) years and I have to say my phone actually feels smart again
Good news/bad news for 5. Try backing up and restoring. It's a huge pain and shouldn't be required, but it does tend to fix outlier issues.
A friend has a 16gb iPhone and has managed to deal with that little space until just recently. She'd run out of space completely, I'd hand-update apps one-at-a-time trying to free up temp download space. Deleted her local music. A few weeks later deleted her local photos. iMessage claimed 1gb of space, it's a little opaque and manual to clean delete things. I finally convinced her to delete all messages older than 1 year. She got 500mb back. The next day her phone was full again without an obvious reason. Backed up her phone and restored. Everything seems to be there and now she has 5+gb free.
I was having the battery issue they're fixing the 6s for. Because I knew they'd ask I restored my phone (and grabbed yesterdays update because that had a fix related to this, too). It seems to be fixed as well by restoring.
...but all of this is souring me on Apple. I wish I was more confident about other options.
You can clear out a lot of space by trying to download a huge movie from iTunes. Just trying is enough. It will first purge all accumulated cruft before telling you you still don't have enough space.
Even though people disagree, what Apple does there makes sense to me. It's like all of my kind of tech savvy friends always complaining they're out of RAM. It gets freed when you need it. Having empty space does you no good, deleting caches prematurely wastes resources both deleting and regenerating it. It does suck not having an accurate count of how much free space you have when you're making sure you have space to download an app or take pictures for your trip. I think it's terrible for so long Apple only sold 16gb phones and the next size up was 64gb. They're also so stingy on iCloud space that most people I know can't keep an iCloud backup.
However, in my case had I tried this and it didn't work.
I also had your issue 5. I can't say for sure, but taking a fresh backup, then restoring from that backup seemed to have fixed it for me. Best of luck!
2 & 5 don't appear to be happening here, and 4 only seems to happen with the embedded browser view in some apps, not the 'normal' browser. At least, that's how it is for me.
Not the OP, but I hate the 2-page swipe-up screen. I can't get used to it. Having so much real estate dedicated to crap like AirPlay, AirDrop and NightShift makes zero sense to me.
I'm not in love with "click to unlock" either, although the 7 makes it bearable with raise-to-wake (it's just stupid on my 6, though).
There's an option for the home button under "Accessibility" called "Rest finger to open". Turn that on, and you'll be able to unlock your phone with no clicks. It probably doesn't work for non Touch ID phones.
My lil complaint is that the "notification actions" are much less smooth then they were in iOS9. This is the feature where you can reply to a text or snooze an alarm or whatever directly in the drop-down notification while the phone is unlocked.
Also I've found that apple music CONSTANTLY loses my place if I pause my music for more than a couple minutes. This never used to happen with the old music app.
This is exactly what I meant by apple pushing their own agenda instead of making user experience the priority.
They are pushing this new notification thing which is pretty out of touch with how people actually use the phone--they think interacting directly from the notification is how people want to use it, when most people feel claustrophobic and would rather see the whole thing before making any action--and because of this, it introduces another step for people who just want to open the app and do the damn work
> I guess people don't like changes to the things they've grown accustomed to.
Trust me I used to be one of those people who would say the same thing you're saying. I was like "What's the big deal? These people just don't like change. They'll get used to it."
Except that you don't anymore.
The reason I hate these changes is because things just don't work smoothly and disrupt your workflow, not to mention the UI being messy design-wise (I have NEVER complained about Apple's design changes ever since the first iPhone).
And this is all because of the new features they introduced they're trying to shove down user's throats. Most of these features are built to satisfy Apple's agenda instead of making it easier for users to use. Just read what others have already said, these are features built for Apple, not for users.
What is "Apple's agenda"? It seems to me you just dislike the changes (which is fair) and are dressing up your dislike as a conspiracy theory. Have you considered that the designers simply thought they were making it better?
Yes they are. Apple forces you to upgrade all the time. They keep sending push notifications until you find the option hidden somewhere in the settings and turn it off.
You're assuming all changes are progress. They are not.
How the hell do you turn that off? I'd love to know, because I'm not going to upgrade to iOS 10 until I'm sure it won't hose my phone, and I'm sick and tired of being bothered about it twice a day.
Perhaps, considering that I don't recall having ever had Automatic Updates turned on, and yet my phone had downloaded 10.1.something and was nagging me about installing it. (Automatic Updates already wasn't turned on when I followed the steps to disable it.) Deleting the update from the storage UI is a piece I hadn't previously run across, and I've gone ahead and done it.
I'm now seeing the 10.2 update available, but it hasn't (yet) been downloaded; if a day goes by and it still isn't, then I'd have to say I owe you a beer, or several, for pointing me at a way to relieve what was getting to be a real pain in the neck. (Although why I failed to find this clue for myself is a curious question in its own right - it's certainly not for want of looking! In any case, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to point it out.)
Update: Looks like I owe you a beer, or your preferred alternative beverage! The email address in my profile is a good place to send details of how I may remit the requisite funds; or, if you're in the Baltimore area and want to pick a bar, a day, and a time, I'm good with that too. (Preferably not Fells, though; crowds of drunk twentysomethings and the occasional mugger aren't really my idea of a good time.)
Thanks again! That was really getting on my nerves.
Having long since ceased to trust automatic app updates in any case (cf. Uber location awareness creep and YouTube's perennial UI brokenness du jour), I see no problem there.
On the other hand, I'm increasingly sure I have never had automatic updates enabled on this device, yet I had the iOS 10 update downloaded regardless. Perhaps I forgot having done that by hand, or perhaps the setting doesn't apply to OS updates; in any case, time will tell.
The things mentioned by other people - message notification lag, stupid slidy cards for brightness and volume, lockscreen press home button to jump through hoop. Also
- Photos. Wtf is the distinction between 'photos' and 'albums'. Why does Photos pretend to be a chronological hierarchy of Year -> Month -> Day but then drop to Tumblr style 'related' links, while Memories contain your grouped photos in any order, but so does Albums. Albums also try to dynamically group things by 'location' and 'selfies' and 'video' and 'camera roll'. Oh, they're all showing the same thing - the last thing I recorded? Useful. It's a complete mess and super frustrating to use.
- The changes to take and send photos in iMessage. Used to be that taking a photo meant pressing and holding the photo button, sliding up to take a video. Now it's more steps, and the camera shutter button is awkwardly at the bottom of the screen, then there's another slider to the left to reveal another camera button, to switch to the camera app, to take a video. More steps for everything, which also displaces 'insert a previously taken photo'. Who benefits?
- Video editing (trim) was glitchy in iOS9 and still is in iOS 10. Seriously, take photo, play with trim, randomly the video stops changing with the slider position, then the screen goes black, have to task-end the Photos app and try again. Video playback in Safari, also glitchy - pause somewhere, or skip forwards, get it playing from the start at 10x framerate (or more) with no audio, to 'catch up' to the new seek location. Seeking is still fiddly and often doesn't work well.
- Still need to care about WiFi vs. Cellular because "we changed our App icon to a Christmas one" still means tens or hundreds of download.
I hate the apple apps. People have loved to hate Apple apps for years but I've been ok with them.
However, more and more I'm running into things that are just stupid or buggy or both.
The TV app is the latest annoyance. All our purchases are under my wife's account, and there seems to be no way to view family sharing purchases with the app.
I'm using a beta of iOS and I keep hoping it'll be added, but this is the seventh beta I think, and I've pretty much given up.
im using the previous version of ios 10 (one before current) and it has some weird battery draining bug and will shut off my iphone 6 plus at 30% and it's very hard to repower on without a charge source (e.g. ext charging battery). it also drains my battery heavily.
the current version supposedly fixes the battery drain (not sure about the shutdown bug) but introduced a bug into another app that i use and don't want to risk upgrading for either.
and this is the problem. apple charges premium prices but their software has gotten sloppy. macos and ios10 included. i upgraded to the latest macos version, sierra, and my escape key would not work for some reason (i was using vim and ended up doing ctrl-c? to activate) then i find out that killing siri on mac would fix the problem. then i found out a couple days later that their new macbook pro would not have an escape key. gee i wonder why they never caught this bug in testing?
Brand new mbp on 10.11.6. Opening new tabs in safari then cmd-L to put focus in the location bar would beachball safari for multiple seconds.
The solution after much debugging was to disable com.apple.imklaunchagent
These lazy engineers really should be ashamed of themselves. This was an out of box install on a brand new laptop on their browser with minimal 3rd party software installed (chrome, brew, intellij, but nothing that should interfere with the os.) I wasted 5 free hours trying to make the damn browser work.
thanks for this. i don't have a 6s. either that or it thinks i've already had a battery replacement. which could be true? this is my third 6 plus.
my original's lcd screen had the touch disease, since it was just inside warranty they "replaced" it by just giving me a new phone.
the replacement died within a week. serious wtf. so i went in and got yet another one.
this one has been fine, mostly. but i'm probably not going to get a iphone for my next device. not saying no other devices do this but that touch disease should be fixed even if you're outside warranty and not be charged with the $329 it cost. my original phone was susceptible to it and only by sheer "luck" did it happen within my warranty.
I hate the control center. Its almost impossible to control the screen brightness. Whenever you try it, two-third of the time it takes me to the music control. It was something which was perfect in ios9.
Atleast they could have given an option to choose if you don't want the separate music tab in the control center.
Health: The iPhone 5s+ automatically counts my steps anyway, so I started entering my weight and blood pressure every few days. It felt really satisyfing to look at the Health dashboard every day.
I could probably buy (and trust!) third-party dashboards that use HealthKit. But instead I just stopped using Health. Chances of me getting an Apple Watch for health tracking: now zero, even if it was free.
Game Center: I'm aware that people hated the old and the new design, but Apple didn't kill it, they moved the invitations functionality into (gasp) a Messages mini-app. Syncing your game progress between iOS devices is a hodgepodge of Facebook, iCloud, Game Center, and most commonly, "not at all". That's not going to change if Apple cares so little about its own frameworks.
Messages is an utterly perfect, textbook example of software bloat.
There are now so many garbage features, tangential to the core purpose of the app — self-deleting audio blips if you move the phone this way, internet GIF search if you swipe that way, weird drawing pad, stupid variable-location popup to add "HA HA HA" animation, recently-played music grid, full-screen-or-sometimes-not fingerpainting applet, image editor, heartbeat monitor, fucking kiss simulator (what the fuck), and I know from sorry experience (usually when trying to send a message with one hand while carrying something heavy and awkward) that there's more shit buried in here that I can't even figure out how to navigate to right now, like a signature editor — that I have had to help my dad, my wife, and my kids figure out how to get back to where send a fucking message with it, repeatedly.
You could use iOS 10 Messages to create a 6-episode TV miniseries called Software Design Gone Horribly Fucking Wrong and surely win an Emmy award for best documentary.
Yeah, I really wonder who's in charge of this mess.
Like I said somewhere else in this thread, all these new features are for Apple, not for users.
If they designed it for users, they would have NEVER made it so that they have to tap twice to take a photo before sending. Not to mention how they don't even allow you to open the camera as fullscreen.
Isn't it really ridiculous how nowadays when you want to take a quick picture and send it while messaging, you have to close the messages app, open the camera app, take the photo, and share it back to messages? Used to be: tap the camera button. Take the pic. Send.
Except you don't have to do that. If you need the full-screen camera, just swipe right from the smaller camera view. You'll get access to your full-screen camera and any previously taken photos/videos in your library.
Thanks for the tip. I guess this will make it slightly easier.
But my point is exactly this. How many taps did it used to take to quickly take a pic and send? One.
Now with iOS10, you tap the camera button, swipe to the right, and then tap the "real" camera button one more time. That's 3 times the number of gestures it used to take pre-iOS10.
p.s.
How did you even discover that swipe feature? I'm pretty sure most people have no idea that's how it works. I am an iOS developer so I'm not exactly a laggard, either.
It wasn't that difficult. There's an arrow on the left of the screen. The first time I tapped the arrow and nothing happened so I swiped and got the camera. People complain about discoverability but that's exactly the way discoverability works, I think.
Before iOS10, you could press the little camera button from the messages app and a camera would just launch. You take the pic, and send.
Now all you get is this tiny preview rectangle at the bottom. It doesn't launch a full camera so is useless for most cases. That's why I have to open the "real" camera app and take the picture and come back.
Next to the "tiny preview rectangle," there's a gray arrow indicator that suggests swiping right. If you do that, you'll find a button you can tap for the old functionality.
So now it's tap-swipe-tap instead of just tap, but in exchange the old functionality of sending an existing photo has changed from a long series of actions to just tap-tap-send.
A lot of the time it seems like Apple just changes things on iOS just because, not because there's actually any tangible benefits to doing so. The UI changes for Messages iOS 10 is a perfect example - it feels cramped and complicated where it used to feel intuitive and easy to use.
In the past it may have been true. That's why a lot of people hated iOS7 just because it was different.
But Apple's recent updates are all bad because the root cause goes up to how Apple is trying to push their own agenda--they want to become the "Services" company, because the wall street thinks their device growth has stalled. For example their stickers is an attempt to monetize their user base with app purchases. They don't care that people would rather be able to take a photo and send with one tap, because they know users have no choice anyway.
But this is super short sighted, Apple's recent moves reminds me of how Windows lost significant size of their users with Vista and went downhill.
Messages is a terrible example of that. In fact what you are talking about makes absolutely no sense.
The reason the UI is designed this way is because they decided to cram 100 features in a space that simply can't accomodate it properly. Stickers, Apps, Photos, Animations etc all of that takes space.
In 1/10 cases, it takes me over 20 seconds to unlock my phone. The new "click twice to unlock" feature combined with apparently hard-to-detect fingerprints is really annoying.
I'm not an Apple hater. I've always loved Apple and I will always stick with Apple. They have always come through for me and they are still the same wonderful company they have always been.
In fact, it is MORE of a fad these days to be an Apple hater than an Apple fanboy. Why do you have to be a follower and hate on Apple? Try thinking for yourself.
Actually they do. What's "magical" and "reinvented" is the fact that the AirPods seamlessly switch to whatever device you're currently using, so you can switch between your desktop, laptop, iPhone, and iPad without having to actually do anything to trigger the switch. In addition, it automatically pauses your music when you take your AirPods out of your ears (and resumes it if you put them back in).
> The AirPods seamlessly switch to whatever device you're currently using, so you can switch between your desktop, laptop, iPhone, and iPad without having to actually do anything to trigger the switch.
Wait... Honest question: How?
Does it switch based on which input source is currently playing audio? What if more than one is playing at a time?
It's based on Handoff. Your devices already have a notion of which device you're currently using, which it uses to trigger Handoff (so you can resume an activity on your new device that you were just doing on a previous device). AirPods hook into that and switch input to the "current" device (but I believe only if it plays audio; that way picking up your iPhone won't disconnect you from your computer if you're not doing something audio-related. Of course, I don't have AirPods myself, so I can't verify, but I believe that's how it works).
My Plantronics headset [1] has been doing most of this for years. I keep it connected to my work laptop and smartphone simultaneously and can take calls on either device with seamless switching. It also detects when it is on my ear or not.
It sounds like that's just taking calls on both devices, right? AirPods intelligently route all audio, not just calls, and it does it based on the notion of what your "current" device is rather than whatever device is emitting audio (e.g. if you're using your iPhone, AIUI it won't switch to your computer just because your computer started playing audio).
Is it actually seamless? As in zero seconds? I have headphones that "seamlessly" switch between multiple bluetooth connections. It has about a half of a second silence between switching which is a bit annoying though. That delay is what I thought a limitation of bluetooh, or are you talking about something different?
Both the magical and reinvent I'll happily concede, but in defense of the "not possible before" I think there's an argument to be made that their pairing UX is so much better as to constitute a whole new experience versus standard bluetooth?
[Of course, I say this as someone who has been happily using wireless Jaybird earbuds with a variety of iOS and macOS devices for the past three years without many complaints. I won't be buying the AirPods since pairing problems have not been an issue for me.]
But that doesn't automatically transfer to all the other devices you own. After using them with your iPhone they would also work with your Mac, your Watch, and your iPad without having to do separate pairing.
That's what makes the pairing more than just NFC (you're right, that's been around for years).
I'll definitely grant you that. A shared pairing database would be nice.
Hopefully it's implemented well. My Text Message Forwarding still lists:
- iPhone
- iPhone (2)
- iPhone (3)
- iPhone (4)
- iPad
- iPad (2)
etc, et al. Note that I don't own four iPhones, I've just upgraded over time. I have to play a guessing game as to "Which MacBook Pro is the one sitting in front of me?"
I dunno. I bought a Sony Walkman NWZ-A829 (OK, Apple kicks their ass at naming stuff) way back in 2008, which had built-in Bluetooth, and about a year later bought some no-name $25 Bluetooth headphones for use in the gym. Never had any issue with pairing or connection dropping, used that combination for a couple of years before going back to wired.
I recently bought wireless bluetooth headphones from Sennheiser. The pairing process consisted of holding the phone next to the headphones for a second, done (thanks to NFC). Not sure how you can improve much on that.
Well, the 1st and 3rd iPhones were revolutions. The Mac screens are stunning. It wasn't BS when Apple used to use it. Until they kept the same language and dropped innovation.
In the same fashion, I was in a company whose motto was "Be the change you seek", which is really entrepreneur-minded and active. They changed their motto to "Advance humanity". Most employees said "It's ok, it's the kind of marketing bullshit that no-one even listens to". It wasn't about building something awesome together. The motto was here, hanging in the hall, just saying "We're strongly delusional, we all speak bullshit now, and we know you won't even debate about it because no-one believes it anyway! Look at us, we're kings of the universe!"
"Our vision is to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere — every person, every organization, and every community around the globe. This motivates us — inspires us — to do what we do. To make what we make. To invent, and to reinvent. To engineer experiences that amaze. We won’t stop pushing ahead, because you won’t stop pushing ahead. You’re reinventing how you work. How you play. How you live. With our technology, you’ll reinvent your world."
Seventy-seven words…to say what? How does this pablum tell an engineer, a sales person, or an accountant what the company is about, what it does, why and how?
There's enough skepticism in this thread and comments (and I concur a lot with what's been written), so I'll try to take a positive "here's what could be possible" spin with it:
I recently purchased a Bose QuietComfort 35 and I've noticed that the lack of chords + noise cancellation have made it so that I wear the headphones for the entirety of the day. The lack of fatigue while wearing the head phones is a big deal. Additionally, the lack of wires has changed my behavior in ways I did not expect pre-purchase. For example, I no longer need to take off my headphones to go to the bathroom. Or when I leave the desk to grab something, etc.
These AirPods seem like they could make this behavior even more extreme. I can imagine just keeping them on all day without taking them off. That would be enough of a behavioral change personally to warrant the superfluous marketing copy of "Magical" and "Not Possible Before".
Beyond that, if people really start walking around with AirPods in their ear all day, it could more of a fashion symbol success (new age earrings basically) than what Apple envisioned with the Watch.
But, at the price they're going for, I doubt this will happen, but you can see where the marketing enthusiasm is coming from.
>> lack of wires ... I no longer need to take off my headphones ... when I leave the desk to grab something
I usually use earphones, with the wire tucked under my shirt(it's not noise cancelling), and connected to my phone - that way the cable doesn't get stuck with things.
The cable is also long enough use the phone for surfing too.
And they're on me all day long, either in ear or on the shirt. And i prefer that arrangement to my long lasting(13 hours) bluetooth earphones.
There is remedial level Apple marketing babble on that page.
The biggest public facing change at Apple since the death of Steve Jobs is their move to terrible marketing copy and ads.
Under Jobs, that quote would be reduced to just a few words, whereas now it is a slog to get through. I've tried re-reading it a few times and still haven't made it to the end.
I'm pretty sure Apple's success is mainly due to building good products that people want and are willing to pay high prices for. Wacky marketing language may be part of their corporate culture but I don't think it's much responsible for their success.
Pick up bluetooth device. It's dead. Press and hold buttons.
Wave phone around. Turn bluetooth off and on. Press and hold buttons again. Blue lights appear. Stare at empty pairing list. Wonder why it's not working. Curse at it.
If they can make wireless not-be-shitty, that will count for 'magical' and 'not possible before' afaiconcerned.
Except, Apple laptops are plagued with "wifi broken after sleep", so I have no hope that they can.
Not to mention that AirDrop has been a disaster since its inception, and I haven't heard a single good thing about unlocking Macs wirelessly with the Apple Watch.
Nice refinements? Sure. But it also likes to compare itself against a Bluetooth world that frankly, hasn't existed in several years... "poor audio quality that skips and cuts out", and "pairing that is constantly problematic, where users don't know whether they will re-pair the next time" (https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/12/apple-w1-chip-how-it-works/ )
That's great, but also not the same as Bluetooth earbuds. I don't have trouble either with any kind of receiver that doesn't sit within my actual ear - presumably it's something to do with either additional signal attenuation, or lack of space for a sizable antenna, or both, but whatever the reason, getting rock-solid reception in a truly wireless earbud seems to be a very difficult problem to solve.
(If you're not sure what kind of device I'm talking about here, the Rowkin Mini is a good example - note the complete lack of protrusion beyond the pinna. I suppose the AirPods themselves don't really qualify by this standard, since they seem to have their antennae in the microphone boom which protrudes below the ear; on the other hand, I'm willing to tolerate such a protrusion if it's the only reasonable way to get good signal, and improved microphone pickup is a pretty good bonus besides.)
The most profitable company in the world doesn't need us to carry their water for them. Let Gruber take care of that. You're literally trying to defend Apple for using the term "magical" to refer to a pair of pedestrian wireless headhones. Come on.
To someone that uses headphones for many hours on a daily basis, useful innovation in the space definitely feels magical to me considering how long I've been using the same old dumb wired headphones.
The point is, if you want to convince others why it is so, you have to play by their rules. Your opinion is simply your opinion.
I do like _some_ of Apple's products, but I would never spend 150 dollars on these headphones. I'm hoping that Apple cheerleaders will drive down the cost so I can get the version 2/3 for cheap when all the bugs have been ironed out.
Is colorful language in marketing new or unique to Apple? Are there people that actually mistake the term 'magical' in this context to mean, 'these headphones actually have supernatural forces working inside them!'
I agree with what you said, but like I said, the act of persuasion isn't merely stating facts.
Surely you can see that comments could have different moods. Some might simply be sarcastic, others cynical, or maybe people just venting at Apple for a bad experience they had with some other Apple product, etc, etc.
This one is literally true though. They had a semi-custom chip designed to implement features/performance that don't exist with Bluetooth 4 yet.
I think Bluetooth 5 will catch up. In fact, I'm betting that what they have is basically a radio chip designed for Bluetooth 5 (it's basically just Bluetooth LE with higher bandwidth and range) with some extra features for their pairing tech, but since the spec wasn't finalized, and they couldn't wait, they just rolled it out as proprietary tech.
It's almost as if it's marketing material and not an objective third party review. Sickening they'd put something like that on their own website. No other tech company would ever say good things about their own products.
I'm genuinely curious to see how often Siri is used, and in what contexts.
Not to be cynical, but to re-calibrate my barometer. The only person I know who uses it is my partner's nine year old daughter, and even then not often.
Sometimes I accidentally use it to search for directions, then switch to Google's voice interface when it (inevitably) fails and I realize what I've done.
I don't like the errors voice messaging causes (you can tell when someone's sending texts with it), so I never use that.
It's OK for setting alarms or timers but I've only done that a couple times because I always forget about it and do it manually instead, or (for timers) my phone's farther away than a microwave or something.
Tried using it to record notes by voice once. It was entirely terrible at that task.
My phone would be at most 1% worse if Siri were simply gone.
All the ones I've had have a timer mode that doesn't run the microwave itself. Handy when you need to time something in the oven and something on the stovetop.
I have an Apple Watch and I use Siri multiple times daily. Most frequently to set timers, but sending iMessages to friends and family is a close second. I also frequently use Siri to control music while I'm washing dishes or my hands are otherwise busy. If there's a faster way to skip a track when my hands are soapy, I don't know of it.
Also, FWIW, I've gotten pretty good at discreetly talking to my wrist in public. In any moderately loud area I don't think anyone even notices me doing it.
That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to AirPods. I can use Siri with the earbuds I have, but their microphones are crummy enough to require I do so somewhat loudly. While I don't always mind seeming like I'm talking to myself in public, and indeed there's the odd occasion when seeming unpredictable and potentially dangerous can be positively beneficial, having the option of greater discretion would be nice as well.
I frequently use Siri to create reminders during my commute, because it's more convenient than pulling my phone out (especially in winter!) and I almost always have an earbud in anyway. If a quicker, lower-friction method exists of capturing stray thoughts before they get away, I haven't found it yet.
I also occasionally use it when I wake up in the middle of the night and don't want to abuse myself with a bright phone display in order to find out what time it is - I don't keep a clock on my bed table, but my phone always charges there. "Hey Siri, what time is it?" is handy in that circumstance, unless the "Hey Siri" part decides not to trigger, which happens often enough that I don't really find it reliable. (I think that must be because a half-asleep voice sounds different; this isn't a problem I generally have at other times, even when using a $15 Bluetooth earbud which can't possibly have a very high-quality microphone.)
I plan to use them as a remote interface to my iPhone, especially when at home (iPhone lives in a drawer while charging). Things like setting timers, creating reminders or let Siri read out received messages - basically what Echo does, but not bound to one room. "Hey Siri" does not really work for me, I stopped using it almost completely.
I and my parents use it all the time. setting timers, directions (Apple Maps is inferior to Google maps but is often good enough e.g. "take me home"), call folks, basic operations is often easier with Siri than unlocking the phone - esp. if you have a BT headset and the iPhone is in the bag or on your table.
"AirPods introduce an effortless wireless listening experience packed with high-quality audio and long battery life. These magical wireless headphones use advanced technology to reinvent how we listen to music, make phone calls, enjoy TV shows and movies, play games and interact with Siri, providing a wireless audio experience not possible before."
Magical. Reinvent. Not possible before.
None of these words applies.