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Comment by tjl | Hacker News Reader

The AirPods headphones are actually Bluetooth. It's just that they have their own chip to manage the headphones. That said, I'm not sure if there's any way to pair the AirPods with anything other than an Apple device. It may be possible, but the pairing is done using the AirPod case. While there are many cheaper Bluetooth headphones, the popular earbuds with a comparable battery life (6 hours) is the Jaybird X2 which is $149. That's the same price. So, it really comes down to features.

The existing Apple dock has had a headphone jack (and has for several years), so anyone who has an Apple dock doesn't have to worry about the charge and listening problem (at least at their desk). There's also a Belkin cable that's a Y cable for charging and audio (but that's an additional cost).

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The AirPods can be paired with non-Apple hardware through conventional pairing processes. They've specifically made it easy to pair with their own hardware because, well, they control the stack on both sides so it was feasible to do so.

I hadn't heard about the pairing process for non-Apple hardware. To be honest, I wasn't interested because the EarPods don't fit in my ear well, but I've heard that the AirPods fit better. There was an article on Macworld's site (I think it was there) by someone who had issues with the EarPod fit, but couldn't dislodge the AirPods even when headbanging.

AirPods have not been released yet, how can you and your Macworld source have reached these conclusions?

I am asking this because I am seeing this pattern after every single Apple product presentation.

Immediately after every Apple product presentation the people attending the presentation can try out the product in an adjacent "demo area". Which means there are at least a thousand people who could have tried on the headphones already, including reporters for most major media.

I have become increasingly more suspicious to these things since the iwatch launch.

but fair enough, the macword guy probably attended the event and had a few minutes to test the buds.

If you're just looking at fit, a few minutes is enough to test them. They were tested in the demo area after the event. Sound quality given the noise in the demo area is one thing you wouldn't really be able to know, however.

I'm unlikely to get a new phone any time soon as my iPhone 5 is fine (aside from battery life), but I am interested in the AirPods, if I could actually know how well they fit.

Now you have 3 things that you need to charge.

The iPhone, the AirPods, and what? A laptop, an iPad? The AirPods charge in the battery case (which is good for 24 hours of playback). The AirPods charge quite quickly in the battery case. I've heard that it's several hours for just 3 minutes of charge.

iphone, airpods, iwatch. get with the program man...

Ah. But, you could easy say it's 5 then. iPhone, AirPods, Apple Watch, iPad, and MacBook. But, it's no different than if the AirPods were another pair of Bluetooth headphones, except Apple has a nice charging solution (and carrying case) for them.

off topic, but the wireless charging case is actually a Samsung idea Apple copied:

https://www.samsung.com/us/audio/headphones/in-ear/gear-icon...

Those have a pretty short battery life. They're 1.6 hours for "audio streaming" which I take to mean Bluetooth as the longer life is only for when you download songs to the earbuds. Then, the case recharges up to 2 times, so 4.8 hours total. Even if you assume Apple's 24 hours is a total charge split across both buds, you get 17 hours for Apple's (assuming the case is charged up while you're using the AirPods, possibly only 12 otherwise).

Aren't the airpods independent of each other? Sooner or later one will end up with only one working. Apple just created a mess for no gain for the users.

The AirPods are independent of one another, but they fit into one case to charge. So, the case charges both the AirPods at the same time. If you want to charge the case, you use Lightning to charge it. But, the case is good for 24 hours of charge on the AirPods. Whether that is 24 hours total (so 12 hours each), or 24 hours for both I don't know.

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