AirPods Now Closing in on a Decade

[mihighil]

Most people toss their headphones without bothering to service the batteries either way. I am willing to bet that the majority of electronic devices end up as landfill regardless of how repairable or serviceable they are.

Wired headphones can last you a lifetime if you take care of them, this is not a “people don’t care issue” this is pure greed. Apple removed the DAC from iphones and put it in a dongle with the excuse of “courage” and “saving space for other components”. That is pure bs and we all know it. Airpods made them a lot of money, and at the end of the day that is what the whole thing was all about.

 

[seek3r]

Wired headphones can last you a lifetime if you take care of them, this is not a “people don’t care issue” this is pure greed. Apple removed the DAC from iphones and put it in a dongle with the excuse of “courage” and “saving space for other components”. That is pure bs and we all know it. Airpods made them a lot of money, and at the end of the day that is what the whole thing was all about.

While I mostly agree I’ll point out that Apple’s $7 USBC DAC is probably the best DAC out there under $100, and it’s small and so cheap that you can just leave them attached to each pair of headphones (I have 3 sets of wired headphones I cycle through at home, though I do use airpod pros on the go, and each of thosr pairs has an Apple DAC permanently attached)

 

[mihighil]

While I mostly agree I’ll point out that Apple’s $7 USBC DAC is probably the best DAC out there under $100, and it’s small and so cheap that you can just leave them attached to each pair of headphones (I have 3 sets of wired headphones I cycle through at home, though I do use airpod pros on the go, and each of thosr pairs has an Apple DAC permanently attached)

Yeah their DAC is pretty good, but that wasn’t my point. 🙂

 

[AppleEnthusiast1995]

Still enjoying my 2nd gen’s, use them daily paired with an Apple TV at night to avoid disturbing the household. Works for me.

 

[Velli]

Wow, still holding onto that mindset. Headphone jacks are an annoyance. Wasted countless headsets because the connectors wore out after a few months.

Most good headphones have detachable cables. USB-C to minijack adapters are cheap. It must be a matter of time (if it doesn’t exist already) before someone makes dedicated USB-C cables for specific headphones. At that point, minijack out of the phone will be truly legacy.

 

[Velli]

Wired headphones can last you a lifetime if you take care of them, this is not a “people don’t care issue” this is pure greed. Apple removed the DAC from iphones and put it in a dongle with the excuse of “courage” and “saving space for other components”. That is pure bs and we all know it. Airpods made them a lot of money, and at the end of the day that is what the whole thing was all about.

Full sized headphones, maybe. I never owned a cabled in-ear pair that lasted me more than two years. Granted, I didn’t treat them like glass, but I’m as careless with my AirPods Pro - except they automatically go in a case…

 

[darngooddesign]

Shame that Apple killed the headphone jack for this. Also weird how while Apple Music offers lossless quality music, AirPods still don’t support lossless transmission…meaning you have to use a headphone jack dongle to listen to lossless quality music on iPhone anyway. Not very well thought out.

Two things.
1. Bluetooth doesnt have enough bandwidth for lossless.
2. You would never hear lossless quality with in ear headphones, and even with high end headphones blind tests show that most people cant tell the difference between AAC and lossless.

However, wired into a home theatre Apple Music lossless is nice.

 

[Aprifox]

Two things.
1. Bluetooth doesnt have enough bandwidth for lossless.
2. You would never hear lossless quality with in ear headphones, and even with high end headphones blind tests show that most people cant tell the difference between AAC and lossless.

However, wired into a home theatre Apple Music lossless is nice.

Disagree on that second point. With a pair of nice IEMs – like Sony IER-Z1R, Sennheiser IE200, or even some Chinese hi-fi brands – it's entirely possible to tell apart AIFF or Apple Lossless from AAC 256. I could tell the difference in nearly all of 100 trials I did in the ABX blind test (https://abx.digitalfeed.net/).

 

[canyonblue737]

This was one off, if not the most actually magical products made by Apple, and the fact that they just worked and weren’t insanely priced was just like a dream come true moment.

Apple created a whole new category (or at least popularized it) but let's admit the truth here... up until this point earbuds were sub $50, usually a lot sub-$50, and the AirPods only created near wired quality in a seamless wireless package at 3 to 4 times the price. The concept of spending that kind of money on earbuds was for most a really new idea. Now many buy AirPods Pro at $250 every couple of years and don't blink at that. It's the same way now people have no issue with the idea of a smartphone costing $1000 when the most popular phones used to be $100-200 before the iPhone. It's not that these products aren't worth it, people just found the new technology and the value add worth it... but they sure increased the prices of what was normal to people.