Brush yourself off, man. Apple used to make $20 wired Earpods that had a better mic and driver than the $180 disposable Airpods. They are, in fact, trash. Expensive garbage, intended to occupy your landfill and drive an upgrade cycle.
It very well could be part of it. Part of it could also be the exclusive API access Apple has as a first-party manufacturer.
It's kinda like saying "The App Store is a great product, this is very likely why it is so popular". They're not really correlated; the App Store is the only product of it's class on iOS. Apple makes sure of that using their monopoly (eg. "vertical") integration. If you wanted to create wireless earbuds the same way Apple does, Apple would not give you the software access you need. Quality aside, Airpods are part of an artificially-enforced market segment.
They could be (and have been) the worst wireless headphones on the market - people buy them anyways. It's why designating Apple as a Gatekeeper is so important for a competitive market.
I don't think AirPods are bad, but Apple's mindshare and consumers' lack of awareness towards other options certainly contributes a lot to their popularity.
A few years back when I was looking at it, compared to the Base AirPods (2 maybe?), the Huawei FreeBuds 4i had about twice the in ear battery life, ANC / transparency, perfectly okay sound quality and comparable / better splash resistance. And all that for like half the price or less. I don't know what the options look like today. Airpods do have the auto switching thingy, but most people only have iPhones here, so that shouldn't matter.
Yeah that are OK but really not worth the asking price. The reality is that it doesn't matter to most peoples who buy them.
I learned this when I was younger quite a while ago (about 20 years). I had the 1.5 gen iPod and a friend's big brother had the 2nd or 3rd gen and he complained that he had lost the earbuds. I told him that I could find him some pretty good earbuds for a decent price but then he asked me if they would have the same look. Of course I told him that they would look pretty different but it didn't matter because they would have better audio quality anyway. But he really didn't see it that way, he would rather pay the same amount of money and get the looks.
This day I learned how vain people can be (this guy is rather smart, nowadays he has a PhD...). I barely used the earbuds sold with the iPod ; I thought they were included just to have something usable but not to expensive and it wasn't in Apple's core competence to provide something better.
In the end it seems that most people would chose the worse experience just to signal they have an expensive product and I believe this is what happens with the AirPods as well.
I had some, used them for a year, found they had many annoyances and too short battery life after just one year of middling use. I bought a replacement for half price that are better in most ways and sold the airpods to a friend for 30 bucks.
He knew all the criticism I had for them as well as the short battery life ; I even told him that for 20 bucks more he would find something that could be more satisfying. He didn't care and as soon as he had them he started wearing them in public everywhere even though he had never been using earbuds previously.
The funny thing is that considering how cheap you can buy them second hand and how everybody and their mothers has them it cannot be seriously taken as a sign of wealth nor appartenance to a special community in the know.
I tried them a few times but plugs are just not my thing;
the quality is horrendous; they are overpriced; connect badly or not at all to non apple device; and break easily.
If using airpods is selfgrowth im very happy to stay small
I meant reflecting on why other people like them, understanding the needs and likes of other people. Understanding where the value of a product comes from.
Mentoring usually entails teaching something, not writing the apologia for $180 disposable headphones. Do you have any particular reason why the Airpods aren't a garbage, forced iteration on the Earpods?
I didn’t say I was mentoring anyone, merely pointing out that if you think a hugely successful product is garbage, and that you state you can’t understand why it’s successful you might want to reflect on that a bit, especially in a forum such as this where many people are trying to build successful products.
Yeah, why don't you reflect on why Lightning was such a "successful" connector and get back to me on that one. I'm sure there's a lot of interesting reasons besides the profitability of a license for a serial connector.
Lightning was a small reversible connector that apple said would last 10 years, and it did. This was at the time when others were coming out with things like the usb 3.0 micro b plug.
Living through this and subsequent events has been quite amusing. Irrational apple haters at the time branded lightning a “money grab” by apple to make people buy new accessories, all while other manufacturers moved from mini to micro to usb-c in short order.
It’s been a wild ride watching this over the years. As far as I can tell, these same people also believe that apple slowed phones down to sell more. They will even post articles to “prove” this that quite clearly reference batterygate and talk about batteries. Their irrational hate cannot be reasoned with, and they will spread these falsehoods at any opportunity. In the next breath they will complain about imaginary insufferable apple fans that apparently claim that apple invented everything.
It’s been 15 years of phones but apparently all these repeat satisfied apple customers are still idiots.
I wish I was making up a strawman here, but every time you poke it blood comes out.
Well, my N+1 anecdata is that Lightning is a poor choice for most devices. For example: I own a Magic Trackpad, a Mac peripheral I use with my Linux desktop. As Mac hardware, it should connect to the Mac connector, USB-C. Curiously though, you need a Lightning-to-USB cable in order to facilitate that. Their desktop peripheral uses a mobile connector... it's almost baffling. If I didn't know any better, I'd accuse them of using their vertical control to force licensed IP down their user's throats like they do with the App Store.
Apple might as well have announced Lightning would last 20 years, for how little it evolved in the past 10 years. For the first half of it's life it was a welcome replacement to the godawful 30-pin connector, and for the last half of it's life it was a sluggish ecosystem liability. Everyone I've known who is a casual Apple customer shares the same sentiment, the only people I've known who defend Lightning are fully "bought in" anyways. Again though, just my own anecdote; reflect on that however you please =)
My anecdata is that my mother tried to charge my son’s Nintendo Switch (usb-c) by jamming in a lightning connector. She made it fit! Between that and the alt-mode compatibility and cable differences I think I’m in for a painful transition.
Don't get me wrong - I love my MacBook; but I don't buy it because Apple - I just happen to love MacOS and the hardware.
But I hate their phones and headphones.
In my co-working center, probably 75% of people with over-ear headphones have AirPod Max. I did my own research and decided no way in hell I wanted those, nor would suggest for my partner (Who loves Apple). Both of us happy with Sony MX headsets. I laugh internally whenever I see the other people because I'm sure they bought it just on brand recognition alone.
I had a pair of Sony WH-1000XM3. The earpads collapsed quite badly after about a year of constant use at work, and the inside of the (very shallow!) ear cups starting pressing on my ears, which ended up being painful to wear for more than a few hours.
I contacted Sony, expecting to be able to buy replacement earpads like basically every major headphone manufacturer on earth supplies (yes, even Apple and Bose), and they informed me that earpads are not user serviceable and that I would have to send the headphones into their service centre for a paid for repair. The repair would have ended up costing more than a new pair of the same headphones from Amazon. I'm not replacing my headphones annually, it's ridiculous (both from a cost and a waste PoV).
I looked online and found replacement pads available from third parties, and tried a set of Dekoni pads, which noticeably changed the sound signature of the headphones and caused ANC problems.
So I started looking for a replacement, discounted Sony's line completely, and ended up buying AirPods Max from Amazon when they were decently discounted in a Prime sale, and... they're fine. ANC is competent, sound quality is reasonable, unlike the WH-1000XM3 when I want to move them between Apple devices I don't have to do the re-pairing mess or stop bluetooth from autoconnecting on my other devices, earcups are lovely and deep, and the pads are user replaceable.
They're honestly not a bad product, they're just a bit too expensive without a discount.
My 1000-mx3 headphones have garbage cancellation compared to my AirPods. I live next to a busy street and can hear everything with the Sonys on. With AirPods, I thought we were having an earthquake recently but it was just a car with very loud music. I had to remove my AirPods to realize that.
