Apple's 'AirPods' to Use Custom Bluetooth Chip, Target Higher End Than Beats Brand

[Night Spring]

This is such a horrible idea....people will surely lose these earbuds at the airport or in some other public place while wondering around.......at least a attached wire is a preventive measure against losing your earbuds.....

Those thing for inside your ear canal, not rest on the outer part of ears like wired ear buds. They don't fall out so easily. Now, I can imagine people dropping them while taking them in and out and losing them that way, but they aren't going to fall out while you are walking around the streets.

 

[GaryLasereyes]

This is such a horrible idea....people will surely lose these earbuds at the airport or in some other public place while wondering around.......at least a attached wire is a preventive measure against losing your earbuds.....

You can't create products with the same consideration that you'd give to children's mittens. You have to assume that consumers are going to take care of their expensive devices. I don't want a tech company protecting me against carelessness at the expense of the product. That duty of care is on me.

 

[2457248]

With bluetooth audio, you're basically listening to a copy of a copy. If people are ok with that, then god bless.

can you provide some data on the actual amount of lossy compression due to BT?
now on i won't accept vague metaphores as valid argumentations against BT. either someone shows me scientific tests of what goes in and what comes out, or i will consider everything as mere conjectures.
(i've got nothing against you personally, i'm just tired of reading pages on pages over non-facts)

ps. do you call bands to play at your house every time you want to listen to music? because you know, vinyls, cd, flac, are just copies of the master tape which is a copy of the original performance, if you are ok with that... /s

 

[Mactendo]

But can we all agree that the jack takes up a lot of space in a device that's awfully crammed as it is?

Nope, we can't. Dual camera is being included in the awfully crammed device. Plus audio jack isn't that huge. Plus you can always redesign internals to fit something in, it's what designers and engineers should do after all.

I'm certainly not going to spend too much time mourning the removal of ancient technology from a modern device though.

Ancient - belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence.

3.5 audio jack being one of the most used ports on the planet is not ancient in any way.

Overall your arguments are very far-fetched. Consumers gain absolutely nothing from the removal of the audio jack.

 

[Mac 128]

And what's the point of the removal then? You can buy 3rd party bluetooth headphones right now and use it with current iPhones.

Who knows. Maybe they needed the space for this custom BT chip. Or maybe they're getting us ready for dropping all port in one of the next two generations per the rumor about sourcing a wireless power chip. You might not agree, but that's well worth the price for me. Remove ports one at a time to work out any potential problems that might turn up before you remove the Lightning port altogether ...

most headphones already have detacheable cable at the earcup(s). change that cable to a lightning one and you're all done.

seriously, at first i was skeptical and against the jack removal, but the more i think about it, the more i believe is not that big of a deal.

the only two open points are:
- how do i charge and have earphones connected at the same time? (answer: chinese y-split for 2$, not so elegant)
- how will i use lightning earphones with the mac? (answer: i probably won't)

anyway, it's just a transition period, in 3 years everyone will have wireless everything.

1) charge and listen with a pass through Lightning cable. Or, use a Lightning passthrough port in your Lightning headphones, or plug them both into an updated charging block with an added Ligthning port.

2) I will be stunned if Apple doesn't add a Lightning port to the Mac, simply from the standpoint that I can't imagine a customer buying a new iPhone with a new set of Lightning headphones, and a new Mac, but told they will have to use an adapter just to unplug the headphones from their new phone and use them on their new Mac.

 

[GaryLasereyes]

Nope, we can't. Dual camera is being included in the awfully crammed device. Plus audio jack isn't that huge. Plus you can always redesign internals to fit something in, it's what designers and engineers should do after all.



Ancient - belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence.

3.5 audio jack being one of the most used ports on the planet is not ancient in any way.

Overall your arguments are very far-fetched. Consumers gain absolutely nothing from the removal of the audio jack.

Yes, I understand that a 3.5 audio jack isn't literally "ancient", thanks for pointing that out. It doesn't change the fact that my father's Sony Walkman used the same thing. It's a waste of space whether you think it's huge or not, and you can't say it does nothing for consumers when you can't definitively say what that space will be used for.

 

[jamesrick80]

You can't create products with the same consideration that you'd give to children's mittens. You have to assume that consumers are going to take care of their expensive devices. I don't want a tech company protecting me against carelessness at the expense of the product. That duty of care is on me.

If we are spending 300 plus dollars on earbuds, I would still want the best protection...sometimes you can't avoid losing such tiny earbuds......sure applecare will have a field day offering protection plans on earbuds...such a mess

 

[2457248]

...

1) ok
2) but lightning on a laptop is the dumbest thing ever.
i think we'll just have to adapt and be patient for some years until wireless audio becomes more popular.

 

[Jax44]

And how many will lose these the first week using them.

2

 

[Johnny907]

You're jumping the gun a little here aren't you? 802.11ac already supports up to 3.39 Gb/s with MIMO. In 2017 they're planning to release 802.11 ay which will support up to 20-40 Gb/s. So who knows how Apple plans to mitigate this issue by the time they actually go port-less?

Having just transferred a 5GB video file from my Macbook to my iMac last night while they were sitting next to each other connected to the same AC router, the 12 minutes required was glacially slow. Specs are one thing, reality is another.
As it is, backing up and restoring a 128GB iPhone 6S via the USB 2.0 Lightning connection is ridiculously slow. If Apple can bring the USB 3.0 functionality they introduced in the 12.9" iPad Pro, my issue with their proprietary ports and cables will lessen significantly, but what are the chances of that happening?

 

[AppleScruff1]

If they think they can do better, they should.

Sony did with Betamax.

 

[Michael Goff]

Sony did with Betamax.

Except Apple is just making a custom BT chip. It doesn't sound like they're doing anything more than making their headphones work better over BT.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Backwards capable most likely if true. Do you really think they would kill everyone's hands-free systems in their cars?

Yes, just in time for the Apple car!

 

[Johnny907]

I haven't used a cable to transfer data in years. I don't know a single person that still transfers data to a computer manually.

But hey, to each his own.

You don't know anyone that has a large collection of photos and/or music?
1) That's a narrow group of people you know
2) Well now I know how Apple got away with a 16GB base model for so long
3) My 128GB 6S has 8 GB free right now. Wired transfer speeds matter.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Except Apple is just making a custom BT chip. It doesn't sound like they're doing anything more than making their headphones work better over BT.

If that's the case, there shouldn't be any reason for concern.

 

[Michael Goff]

If that's the case, there shouldn't be any reason for concern.

Agreed. But MR loves to panic.

 

[Schwyz]

Tim Cook presentation script:

We can't wait to capitalize on the inconvenience we have caused you for you to try out these revolutionary EarPods. You're going to love them.

 

[ActionableMango]

Nothing is better then universal, how's that lightning connector working out? Yeah didn't think so. Should have USB or USB-C

This isn't what I'd call universal:

I have USB devices that use all of these (except for type C, so far), so I have a massive USB cable mess everywhere to support everything.

The Lightning connector is working out to be great. It's reversible and easy to plug in, unlike every USB cable I have.

USB-C looks to be great. Unfortunately the USB folk seem unable to convince everyone to get on board. The latest USB device I bought (a battery charger) uses Mini-B despite the fact that it was released in Dec 2015. So USB-C isn't replacing the existing USB mess, it's adding a new type to the existing mess. So I will have to keep yet another kind of USB cable type throughout the house and to bring on trips.

 

[Mac 128]

1) ok
2) but lightning on a laptop is the dumbest thing ever.
i think we'll just have to adapt and be patient for some years until wireless audio becomes more popular.

And just why is Lightning on the Mac the dumbest thing ever?
[doublepost=1473197358][/doublepost]

This isn't what I'd call universal:
View attachment 648702

I have USB devices that use all of these (except for type C, so far), so I have a massive USB cable mess everywhere to support everything.

The Lightning connector is working out to be great. It's reversible and easy to plug in, unlike every USB cable I have.

USB-C looks to be great. Unfortunately the USB folk seem unable to convince everyone to get on board. The latest USB device I bought (a battery charger) uses Mini-B despite the fact that it was released in Dec 2015. So USB-C isn't replacing the existing USB mess, it's adding a new type to the existing mess. So I will have to keep yet another kind of USB cable type throughout the house and to bring on trips.

Yup. Just try to pick up a USB-C cable at 3 AM at a 7-11.

 

[tkukoc]

This isn't what I'd call universal:
View attachment 648702

I have USB devices that use all of these (except for type C, so far), so I have a massive USB cable mess everywhere to support everything.

The Lightning connector is working out to be great. It's reversible and easy to plug in, unlike every USB cable I have.

USB-C looks to be great. Unfortunately the USB folk seem unable to convince everyone to get on board. The latest USB device I bought (a battery charger) uses Mini-B despite the fact that it was released in Dec 2015. So USB-C isn't replacing the existing USB mess, it's adding a new type to the existing mess. So I will have to keep yet another kind of USB cable type throughout the house and to bring on trips.

Not what I meant.. people are taking what I said way out of context. Nice photo though.. most of those are for non-smart devices unfortunately.

 

[ActionableMango]

Not what I meant.. people are taking what I said way out of context.

Fair enough, I didn't read the whole thread.

 

[mk_in_mke]

Great, another splintering.. can't use the regular bluetooth chip that everyone else uses to make it universal.. No no.. we have to have our own nonsense again. This is getting old quickly.

Sure: just like the Floppy Disck, the USB, ITunes, USB-C... What is getting old is you not embracing change and criticizing before experiencing the change first hand.

 

[Tinmania]

That's a good idea. The only issue I see is playing DRMed content, like Apple Music or Spotify. Either the phone would have to decrypt and send the audio without any protection to the headphones, or somehow the headphones would have to be able to be authenticated and have the key.

Right now the source audio is decoded, assuming it is encoded, compressed again and then sent to the headset, where it is decoded again. Newer codecs work a lot better than old but you still have two iterations of lossy compression. That said queuing up many songs in some sort of buffer doesn't sound workable. For one thing, many people stream from Pandora, et al. Then there is pausing, audio coming from the phone, and things like that (I am sure you wouldn't want your turn-by-turn navigation directions delayed for even a few seconds).

Back to the double compression thing; I would imagine Apple's solution here eliminates that extra round of compression which is probably going to be in the next version of Bluetooth anyway. Technically it has already been there for some now as you can have a bluetooth device do the decoding of MP3 and other formats, as long as both devices support it. In that scenario only the raw MP3 date would need to be sent, eliminating the double compression. But hardly anyone does that, and of course it would not work with DRM.



Mike

 

[Night Spring]

Consumers gain absolutely nothing from the removal of the audio jack.

Removing ports could make the iPhone easier to waterproof.

 

[2IS]

I thought the Beats headphones were pretty expensive - but I am not much of an audiophile. Can someone who knows please comment - what does a really nice pair of wired headphones cost - what is high end?

They are pretty expensive, except that almost none of them are worth the asking price. You're paying more for the brand then you are audio quality.