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Like Samsung execs put on the pressure to release the note 7 before the iPhone 7 :rolleyes:

One question, everytime apple misses a dead line or makes a mistake, does bringing up Samsung note 7 make people feel better ? I'd prefer to just to get the airpods instead of pointing fingers at a product I never bought or wanted to buy , really does not help the situation and just deflects in my opinion.
 
You're fooling yourself if you think after all this "delayed testing" that the Airpods will be flawless. The simple fact that they ARE delayed suggests that once they are released, they will be fraught with intermittant fault errors.

The AirPods are stupid anyways........
 
No. But you should put it into perspective. Removing the floppy drive was a much greater inconvenience. We didn't have fast broadband for distributing software. CD-ROMs were slow. Zip drives were expensive and unreliable. Hard drives were expensive. Overall it was a much greater inconvenience than plugging your existing wired headphones into a tiny little ten dollar adapter.

I disagree. And here's the visual reason.
Windows 95:
sSlAjY4.jpg


Office 95:

s-l1000.jpg


Our iCloud back then:

3.5-Floppy.jpg



So while certainly the impact was felt thorugout the industry, a solution had to be found and as soon as possible. With all the imperfections of the case, the CD-Rom allowed for the three images above to go to this:

sony-48x-cdr.jpg


Which is a stark difference in storage, reliability, speed and sharing. Of course, the CD-Rom was more expensive at the beginning, but the ups were so many compared to the downs (actually there was only one: cost) that it wasn't even a question. Obviously the optical drive technology evolved, but the switch from Floppy to CD was as needed as bad as oxygen. We went from a painful installation of Windows 95 to a much faster installation (ok Win is still painful, but that's another thing).
Digital imaging was also taking more and more space. Now we could barely fit an image on 10 floppy's.

As for headphones? What's the plus in BT headphones? Certainly the removal of wires is welcome (I welcome this) but not at this price point, and not with all the risks involved, and not - especially - at the price of something that is working perfectly now as wired headphones. What Apple did is simply taking an internal floppy drive making it an external floppy drive for 15X the price, also delivering it late. (and some say that even the audio quality is worse, but I leave this to the experts)
 
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But neither you nor he knows what exactly the issue is. The chip (yields)? Drivers? So suck it up and wait until they are released or go buy something else. Its not a rock in a box, there's complicated manufacturing and assembly happening here.

You don't seem to understand the point that many are attempting to make.

The issue is NOT that there is a (significant) delay in availability over what was announced. The issue is that any problem of the apparent magnitude of the AirPod delay should have been dealt with, or at least the possibility recognized, prior to a big PR splash raising expectations of a potential huge customer base.

And BTW, before you blast me for not knowing what I'm talking about, I spent my entire adult life (I'm 70 now) in the software development field, so I am intimately aware of last minute bugs and glitches.
 
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One could argue that the iphone & iOS devices are the backbone of Apple's business now. Not saying that Apple isn't neglecting their macs tho. I agree that they are. I'd love to buy a new IMac, but am waiting for the next update so as not to buy the older tech. It is amazing to me that Apple hasn't updated the Mac pro in over 3 years. I remember the time when the art community(photogs, graphic designers, filmmakers) were Apple's main customers and Macs were their bread & butter. Theyd constantly be upgrading them. Not anymore. It's all about the iPhone & ipads now. Apples main customers are the mass public not the artist community. Not saying you can't be creative on iOS devices. I'm an artist and use my iPhone & my iPad all the time for creating Art. Love them. It's just interesting how Apple has changed in who they prioritize now.

iOS brings in the money. No doubt about it. But all of that technology comes from the Mac. I see the Mac as the rock that anchors Apple. If it goes away, I think Apple's brand loyalty will suffer. Personally I'm considering a Surface Studio for my next desktop. A longtime Apple fanboy friend recently switched to a Pixel and loves it. I wonder if my next phone will be an iPhone. I've been exploring options outside the apple ecosystem. Apple really isn't offering anything unique or particularly special these days. I still think they offer the most elegant solution overall. That said, the competition is getting closer and closer to matching them. My loyalty to Apple centers on the Mac. It is the reason I'm an Apple customer and have been for 3+ decades, not the iPhone. Can they build that kind of brand loyalty in a new generation with the iPhone? It's far too early to say.
 
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I miss Zip drives

I disagree. And here's the visual reason.
Windows 95:
sSlAjY4.jpg


Office 95:

s-l1000.jpg


Our iCloud back then:

3.5-Floppy.jpg



So while certainly the impact was felt thorugout the industry, a solution had to be fond and as soon as possible. With all the imperfections of the case, the CD-Rom allowed for the three images above to go to this:

sony-48x-cdr.jpg


Which is a stark difference in storage, reliability, speed and sharing. Of course, the CD-Rom was more expensive at the beginning, but the ups were so many compared to the downs (actually there was only one: cost) that it wasn't even a question. Obviously the optical drive technology evolved, but the switch from Floppy to CD was as needed as bad as oxygen. We went from a painful installation of Windows 95 to a much faster installation (ok Win is still painful, but that's another thing).
Digital imaging was also taking more and more space. Now we could barely fit an image on 10 floppy's.

As for headphones? What's the plus in BT headphones? Certainly the removal of wires is welcome (I welcome this) but not at this price point, and not with all the risks involved, and not - especially - at the price of something that is working perfectly now as wired headphones. What Apple did is simply taking an internal floppy drive making it an external floppy drive for 15X the price.
 
I don't believe this report one bit. Both the Airpods and the Beats X have been strangely delayed, and both use the new W1 chip. It seems obvious the W1 is the reason for these delays. Maybe they're having technical issues producing them, or something, but that chip is the one commonality amongst various headphones being delayed.
 
For ~$150, i'd rather pick up a Grado SR125e instead.

No battery, no software issues, and great sound.
 
I see all the folks who were saying "I can't wait for the crusty old floppy disc type tech of the 3.5mm jack to be removed and make way for the technologically superior and marvellous Bluetooth headphones" are keeping a low profile in this thread.

There is just simply no way of anyone excusing this delay, it's not like they're a two person dev team in a small company supplying local goods.
 
Maybe they should have had these completely ready to go before removing the headphone jack on their phone?

Probably so, but that still wouldn't justify removing the jack. If anything, this issue shows why wireless is never the best choice for true high-fidelity listening.
 
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Technology is going sooo fast...
During the launch meeting Tim's left AirPod was saying "Not ready yet"
while the right one echoed "They're ready now" - just a second later
 
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I don't believe this report one bit. Both the Airpods and the Beats X have been strangely delayed, and both use the new W1 chip. It seems obvious the W1 is the reason for these delays. Maybe they're having technical issues producing them, or something, but that chip is the one commonality amongst various headphones being delayed.

I agree. Getting the audio in sync is not a terribly difficult technical problem given that that we are talking about audio frequencies here.
 
I don't believe this report one bit. Both the Airpods and the Beats X have been strangely delayed, and both use the new W1 chip. It seems obvious the W1 is the reason for these delays. Maybe they're having technical issues producing them, or something, but that chip is the one commonality amongst various headphones being delayed.
Your theory doesn't hold water. Sols3 and Powerbeats3 have the W1 chip.
 
I've shot off an email to Cook (I'm sure his staff gets it) asking him to address the delay. If they are not viable, tell us. Stop all this ignorance.

Interesting to know if he or Apple replies. Either way, they likely won't be ready until after the Holidays. But I appreciate you taking the initiative to find answers.
 
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Here come the people complaining about Apple taking too long to test something before release...
I agree. The thing is, it could be a 1 in 500 thing and they can't test on a mass scale. If someone has it happen, they had to find a way to reproduce it and make sure it's not the phone, then is it hardware or software? They did the right thing as they could've just released them and let people complain. People would complain then, but the stance would be "they shouldn't have released them yet". Now people are complaining that they didn't test them soon enough?
 
@tjleonard
An unindentified number of AirPods appear to produce an unnatural Oral-B like buzzing sound
 
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I disagree. And here's the visual reason.
Windows 95:
sSlAjY4.jpg


Office 95:

s-l1000.jpg


Our iCloud back then:

3.5-Floppy.jpg



So while certainly the impact was felt thorugout the industry, a solution had to be found and as soon as possible. With all the imperfections of the case, the CD-Rom allowed for the three images above to go to this:

sony-48x-cdr.jpg


Which is a stark difference in storage, reliability, speed and sharing. Of course, the CD-Rom was more expensive at the beginning, but the ups were so many compared to the downs (actually there was only one: cost) that it wasn't even a question. Obviously the optical drive technology evolved, but the switch from Floppy to CD was as needed as bad as oxygen. We went from a painful installation of Windows 95 to a much faster installation (ok Win is still painful, but that's another thing).
Digital imaging was also taking more and more space. Now we could barely fit an image on 10 floppy's.

As for headphones? What's the plus in BT headphones? Certainly the removal of wires is welcome (I welcome this) but not at this price point, and not with all the risks involved, and not - especially - at the price of something that is working perfectly now as wired headphones. What Apple did is simply taking an internal floppy drive making it an external floppy drive for 15X the price, also delivering it late. (and some say that even the audio quality is worse, but I leave this to the experts)

People's memories seem to skew over time. It's not like Apple got rid of floppy drives when there was no other alternative at the time, or when floppy drives were at peak use. They got rid of floppy drives when nobody was really using them anymore anyway. The only reason PCs continued to ship with floppy drives was because the drives were so cheap it was a negligible cost to include them.

Apple first released a computer without a floppy drive in 1998. By then, CD-ROM had taken off fully, almost no software came on floppy drives anymore, and even USB thumb drives were starting to hit the market.

In 1998, floppy drives had only a few uses: (1) they contained drivers when you bought some hardware, though that was being replaced by CD in many things; (2) boot disks for PC, though irrelevant to Macs and not even needed as CD-ROM booting was already around then; and (3) sharing small files, though floppies were pretty bad at this as files sizes grew so much that 1.44MB was not enough to share many files.
 
I disagree. And here's the visual reason.
Windows 95:
sSlAjY4.jpg


Office 95:

s-l1000.jpg


Our iCloud back then:

3.5-Floppy.jpg



So while certainly the impact was felt thorugout the industry, a solution had to be found and as soon as possible. With all the imperfections of the case, the CD-Rom allowed for the three images above to go to this:

sony-48x-cdr.jpg


Which is a stark difference in storage, reliability, speed and sharing. Of course, the CD-Rom was more expensive at the beginning, but the ups were so many compared to the downs (actually there was only one: cost) that it wasn't even a question. Obviously the optical drive technology evolved, but the switch from Floppy to CD was as needed as bad as oxygen. We went from a painful installation of Windows 95 to a much faster installation (ok Win is still painful, but that's another thing).
Digital imaging was also taking more and more space. Now we could barely fit an image on 10 floppy's.

As for headphones? What's the plus in BT headphones? Certainly the removal of wires is welcome (I welcome this) but not at this price point, and not with all the risks involved, and not - especially - at the price of something that is working perfectly now as wired headphones. What Apple did is simply taking an internal floppy drive making it an external floppy drive for 15X the price, also delivering it late. (and some say that even the audio quality is worse, but I leave this to the experts)

We're talking about overall impact. Yes, Windows and Office and other software behemoths were much easier to install. But what about the person with years of records saved on floppy disks? When that person bought a new computer without a floppy drive, did Apple give them an external drive (like they give a Lightning to headphone adapter)? No. That person had to buy one. And they had to invest in a CD burner or external hard drive and migrate their files. And what about the person who was more than happy to use their older computer that only had a floppy and now couldn't get new software because it required a CD-ROM drive? That person had to go shell out a few hundred dollars. All of this was a much more expensive and inconvenient than removing the headphone jack and providing a free adapter.

When it comes to BT headphones, other than no wires to snag on machines at the gym, I don't see any pluses. They are expensive and need to be charged. I can, however, see the advantage to removing legacy hardware and making compromises like Lightning headphones. How often do you see a brand of headphone other than Apple used with an iPhone out in the wild? I rarely do, other than the gym, and those headphones all tend to be Bluetooth. In terms of overall inconvenience and cost to the consumer, removing the headphone jack pales in comparison to removing the floppy.
 
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