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AirPods Launch Rumors Now Include Dates in Late November and December

Mac 128 said:
Lightning EarPods can't be used with anything else, except some iOS devices. So the only option is a customer's old 3.5mm headphones with the added inconvenience of an adapter. And, this has been going on for over 2 and 1/2 months since the iPhone 7 was released. Now it's looking more like mid-December to early January. So that's 3 1/2 to 4 months after the first iPhone that removed the headphone jack was released.
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I totally agree that the product should have been ready and this is not quite Apple like, that being said, I would rather have the product delayed then it having some flaws. And as I said before, I know the adopter may be an inconvenience for many but it gets the job done until you get a better lighting headphones or better wireless. If I was to stick with Apple ecosystem (and indeed I intend to) I would not invest on anything that uses 3.5mm! In my opinion is going to be dead soon.
 
jakefloyd said:
How so?
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Wireless cordless suddenly become wired....
I would only buy these because of they are cordless and look cool.....the moment i attached cords they become just like every other set of headphones. They are no longer unique and should not have a premium price tag.
 
Ghost31 said:
Was thinking hard about getting these mostly for home with my apple tv. Wonder how they compare to my parrot zik 3's
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they're great for watching Apple TV, that's probably 75% of where i use them. obviously they're not as portable as the supposed AirPods (can we just call them vaporware at this point??) but they have an excellent and reliable bluetooth connection (W1 who?) and the noise cancellation is incredible.
 
benz240 said:
they're great for watching Apple TV, that's probably 75% of where i use them. obviously they're not as portable as the supposed AirPods (can we just call them vaporware at this point??) but they have an excellent and reliable bluetooth connection (W1 who?) and the noise cancellation is incredible.
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How do you manage devices with it? It connects to multiple at the same time right? So like the airpods, without even needing the W1 chip, if you go from your phone to your ipad it'll switch over? What if i want it connected to my iphone ipad and apple tv?

I am SO close to getting these. Just need a little push. Flexpay on HSN right now is looking sweet.
 
Korican100 said:
B&H has stated that date ever since putting the Beats X on their website a month ago. No one knows if its true. However, thats literally the week before Fall ends. And if thats the case, that sucks
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Wait... it makes sense now. Apple said Fall, so B&H picked the last week of it. It's a safe bet, it's not the actual date.
 
8CoreWhore said:
Most buyers will have no idea that there are no volume controls... return rate will be through the roof.
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Most bluetooth headphones that have volume control have them in awkward places that are hard to reach or controlled with awkward gestures anyway. My Plantronics backbeat fits I can in theory control the volume with an awkward rocker on my ear, but in practice I just use my phone or Apple Watch to control volume.
 
Ghost31 said:
How do you manage devices with it? It connects to multiple at the same time right? So like the airpods, without even needing the W1 chip, if you go from your phone to your ipad it'll switch over? What if i want it connected to my iphone ipad and apple tv?

I am SO close to getting these. Just need a little push. Flexpay on HSN right now is looking sweet.
Click to expand...

unfortunately thats where it's not as slick as Apple. you can only have two devices connected to the QC35s at a time. but, it's really simple to switch things around - open up the Bose app on your iPhone or iPad and switch things around. it isn't super smooth but it works fine. in my case, i have it always associated with my iPhone, but then i switch between the Apple TV and my MBP manually.

the selling point of these is really the comfort (i can wear them longer than ANY other headphones i've ever tried) and the noise cancellation (it's unreal how well this works, and it allows you to turn the volume down/hear more subtle things in whatever you're watching)
 
benz240 said:
unfortunately thats where it's not as slick as Apple. you can only have two devices connected to the QC35s at a time. but, it's really simple to switch things around - open up the Bose app on your iPhone or iPad and switch things around. it isn't super smooth but it works fine. in my case, i have it always associated with my iPhone, but then i switch between the Apple TV and my MBP manually.

the selling point of these is really the comfort (i can wear them longer than ANY other headphones i've ever tried) and the noise cancellation (it's unreal how well this works, and it allows you to turn the volume down/hear more subtle things in whatever you're watching)
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Wowwww. Nice! Can you turn off the noise cancelling just in case i wanna hear things around me? Sometimes at work i need to hear things around me.
 
ErikGrim said:
Why would it make a difference where the volume control is then, wrist or ear? Just use Siri.
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I don't think Siri is a good solution. Period. What if I want to skip forward twice on a podcast? First off, will Siri do it for me to begin with? And if I want to skip forward again I have to call Siri up again or can I continue asking it to move forward?

Siri isn't foolproof. We all know that. I feel more confident pressing a physical button like an in-line control or making a gesture on the earpiece versus relying on voice assistance.
 
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blairh said:
I don't think Siri is a good solution. Period. What if I want to skip forward twice on a podcast? First off, will Siri do it for me to begin with? And if I want to skip forward again I have to call Siri up again or can I continue asking it to move forward?
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Yes, "skip to next chapter" (if your podcasts have chapter breaks), or "skip 30 seconds" or "skip 2 minutes" depending on your average ad read.

blairh said:
Siri isn't foolproof. We all know that. I feel more confident pressing a physical button like an in-line control or making a gesture on the earpiece versus relying on voice assistance.
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Not sure about your elliptical machine, but all they gyms I've gone to they all have big shelves to put my iPhone on. With my BT headphones I tend to just use the iPhone controls that are right in front of me. I have yet to see any non-awkward on ear controls on any BT headphones.
 
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I start the watch music app, switch it to the watch' playlist and go on my run. The Powerbeats switch off to my watch automatically and back to the iPhone automatically when I return. That's pretty amazing when I compare it to the way it used to work where I would have to literally reset the pairing and repair it each time I went for a run.

redscull said:
I bought some PowerBeats 3s specifically to wear with my AppleWatch 2 while running, and I've been pretty disappointed, specifically because of how poor the pairing "magic" is. Sound quality is fine, comfort is good, battery life is ridiculous, I don't care about brand, and cost is quite frankly not a concern to me. I chose them entirely based on what I thought would be least hassle pairing with the W1 chip.

Where it fails so hard is its inability to recognize that I want to play music from the watch to the headphones. It literally takes minutes, not seconds, but MINUTES, every time, to start up my music prior to starting my run.

First, and this isn't the fault of the PowerBeats, when starting the music app on the watch, you have to force-touch and manually change the source to the watch. Every. Damn. Time. This takes a few seconds. Then you turn on the PowerBeats, specifically while not yet in your ear because it's impossible to distinguish the on-chime from the off-chime so you need to watch for its light to come on. And that seems to take 3-4 seconds for some reason. Not instant. Assuming you still have your playlist already selected, you press play. Now, you have to wait through a full timeout cycle where the watch will inform you it can't find the headphones. I think this takes close to a minute. This also happens every single time you first initiate playback. You then have to cancel out back to the playlist and click play again. A few second later, it'll finally send sound to the headphones and you can start your run. But don't accidentally pass through any wifi locations your watch knows the password to or it'll automatically halt playback. Thankfully in this case you just have to go back into the music app and press play again (it won't hassle you about not finding the headphones), but that's still disruptive when you're in the workout app and trying to run.

That said, they work awesome with the phone. And that's actually the problem. The headphones always want to be paired with and receive music from the phone. All that headache I spelled out above applies only when the phone is in range of the watch, or the watch is otherwise on a wifi network it knows. If you wait to start your music until you and your watch are out of range of the phone and wifi, it actually performs like you'd want. And if the stupid watch app would just remember that you prefer to play music from the watch, not the phone, it would truly be magic. (it still defaults to phone even when it knows for fact it can't find the phone, forcing you to force-touch and switch to watch source).

I also have an iPad Air on the same iCloud account. I've never managed to get the iPad to play to the PowerBeats, but I've never tried with the phone completely out of range. Hand-off type features do work between my iPhone and iPad, iMessages are shared, etc, so they're definitely sync'd up in that regard. The PowerBeats are supposed to work with the iPad in this scenario. But they don't. The iPad can see them; I can switch output to them manually like you can with AirPlay, but it will timeout and say it can't connect to them. Always.

I say all this because the experience has completely changed my mind on buying the AirPods (which I'd have loved to have at my desk for teleconferencing). The W1 chip is not magic, aside from battery life.
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1479429277][/doublepost]I start the watch music app, switch it to the watch' playlist and go on my run. The Powerbeats switch off to my watch automatically and back to the iPhone automatically when I return. That's pretty amazing when I compare it to the way it used to work where I would have to literally reset the pairing and repair it each time I went for a run.

redscull said:
I bought some PowerBeats 3s specifically to wear with my AppleWatch 2 while running, and I've been pretty disappointed, specifically because of how poor the pairing "magic" is. Sound quality is fine, comfort is good, battery life is ridiculous, I don't care about brand, and cost is quite frankly not a concern to me. I chose them entirely based on what I thought would be least hassle pairing with the W1 chip.

Where it fails so hard is its inability to recognize that I want to play music from the watch to the headphones. It literally takes minutes, not seconds, but MINUTES, every time, to start up my music prior to starting my run.

First, and this isn't the fault of the PowerBeats, when starting the music app on the watch, you have to force-touch and manually change the source to the watch. Every. Damn. Time. This takes a few seconds. Then you turn on the PowerBeats, specifically while not yet in your ear because it's impossible to distinguish the on-chime from the off-chime so you need to watch for its light to come on. And that seems to take 3-4 seconds for some reason. Not instant. Assuming you still have your playlist already selected, you press play. Now, you have to wait through a full timeout cycle where the watch will inform you it can't find the headphones. I think this takes close to a minute. This also happens every single time you first initiate playback. You then have to cancel out back to the playlist and click play again. A few second later, it'll finally send sound to the headphones and you can start your run. But don't accidentally pass through any wifi locations your watch knows the password to or it'll automatically halt playback. Thankfully in this case you just have to go back into the music app and press play again (it won't hassle you about not finding the headphones), but that's still disruptive when you're in the workout app and trying to run.

That said, they work awesome with the phone. And that's actually the problem. The headphones always want to be paired with and receive music from the phone. All that headache I spelled out above applies only when the phone is in range of the watch, or the watch is otherwise on a wifi network it knows. If you wait to start your music until you and your watch are out of range of the phone and wifi, it actually performs like you'd want. And if the stupid watch app would just remember that you prefer to play music from the watch, not the phone, it would truly be magic. (it still defaults to phone even when it knows for fact it can't find the phone, forcing you to force-touch and switch to watch source).

I also have an iPad Air on the same iCloud account. I've never managed to get the iPad to play to the PowerBeats, but I've never tried with the phone completely out of range. Hand-off type features do work between my iPhone and iPad, iMessages are shared, etc, so they're definitely sync'd up in that regard. The PowerBeats are supposed to work with the iPad in this scenario. But they don't. The iPad can see them; I can switch output to them manually like you can with AirPlay, but it will timeout and say it can't connect to them. Always.

I say all this because the experience has completely changed my mind on buying the AirPods (which I'd have loved to have at my desk for teleconferencing). The W1 chip is not magic, aside from battery life.
Click to expand...
 
Traverse said:
I just wish I could preorder them so that I don't have to worry about buying them right at release and facing massive back orders.
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First world problems. You've gone your entire life without them, surely you can wait a few extra weeks ;)
 
ErikGrim said:
Yes, "skip to next chapter" (if your podcasts have chapter breaks), or "skip 30 seconds" or "skip 2 minutes" depending on your average ad read.

Not sure about your elliptical machine, but all they gyms I've gone to they all have big shelves to put my iPhone on. With my BT headphones I tend to just use the iPhone controls that are right in front of me. I have yet to see any non-awkward on ear controls on any BT headphones.
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We don't know exactly how the AirPods will handle 3rd party apps for playback controls. Let's just assume I can tell it to skip forward a specific time. I don't always know how long an ad or series of ads will be. So that means I need to keep telling Siri to skip forward over and over again? That sound ridiculous and awful.

I do prop my iPhone in front of me. Having to reach to my iPhone and wake it (hit the power button once) then tap the on-screen controls x amount of times is not as easy or convenient as simply reaching up to the in-line controls (which I never have found hard to find nor awkward to use).

Apple hopefully one day will allow for gestures of some sort on the AirPods themselves for simple tasks like altering volume or the adjustment of tracks. Using Siri for such things is going to be terrible.
 
blairh said:
I do prop my iPhone in front of me. Having to reach to my iPhone and wake it (hit the power button once) then tap the on-screen controls x amount of times is not as easy or convenient as simply reaching up to the in-line controls (which I never have found hard to find nor awkward to use).
Click to expand...
In line or on ear controls? A remote that's at chest height on a cable that you can squeeze is far different to controls you have to poke or swipe at on your head.
 
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ErikGrim said:
In line or on ear controls? A remote that's at chest height on a cable that you can squeeze is far different to controls you have to poke or swipe at on your head.
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In line.

I also think on ear controls would be easy to navigate.
 
ErikGrim said:
No one has come up with a good, reliable system yet. It is not at all like having a remote on the cable of your wired headphones.
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Very well said. Also, I believe Apple is straying away from physical buttons in general. For future water proofing, less hardware malfunctions, and over all More simplicity. I do think Siri needs improvements to make the transition more seamless. Even the iPhone is moving in this direction.
 
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UnionVGF said:
I still can't believe how stupid the design of those things are. It's Apple's word product design ever.
[doublepost=1479404066][/doublepost]
My $19 Bluetooth ear buds skip tracks, or replays tracks, and raises and lowers the volume with no problems.
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But do they have a wire joining the ear pieces together? Can you send me a link to them please?
[doublepost=1479460126][/doublepost]
TallManNY said:
Apple Watch is your solution there.
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The only problem is it is tricky to use the watch or even see it when I am biking to work. The buttons on the current Apple plug in head pods are the best I have yet seen for control of the iPhone when on the bike. I was hoping for a comfortable fit the same as these and decent controls but lose the wire.
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Fall Under Cerulean Kites said:
I’m hoping that is what the holdup resulted from. A re-engineering of the interface.
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This! Only time will tell.
 
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