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Comment by kevinstubbs | Hacker News Reader

Peoples' ears are all different. Apple's earbuds aren't comfortable for me, but they're the first choice for many people that I know. I can easily believe that the AirPods will be so comfortable that some subset of the population will forget they're in.

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There's no such thing as comfortable earbuds.

You wear them, they ache until your ears adjust, then it's second nature.

Assuming you wear them more than 10 minutes at a time.

I can't be the only one who used those garbage earbuds included with the game boy for years afterwards.

Until looking just now, I thought headphones were either "earbuds" or the full headphones. Earbuds are the kind Apple sells, while "in-ear" headphones are the ones I find comfortable for hours at a time. The cheap kind I like now are Skullcandy's Ink'd 2 which have a silicone ear-tip. I think I just lucked out in getting an ear-tip that's finally the right size. If you haven't tried in-ear headphones yet, I definitely recommend trying some out - maybe you'll find a pair that works for you.

I'm not clear what you are saying. It seems you are defining "in-ear" headphones as ones that are comfortable for your particular ears, and "eaebuds" as those that are not comfortable for you.

I think the distinction is the ones with the squishy tip that mould to your ear cavity (so there are no gaps), versus the ones that are mostly hard and sit relatively loosely

They don't work for either of us and yet Apple wants to force us into using them

I'm sorry, what? They want to... force you to spend $160? Huh?

They'd love to! They just can't, yet

How are they forcing you to do anything?

They've also removed the headphone jack from the newest model iPhone. You can get an adapter that adds it back, but obviously this is fairly inconvenient. Apple's counting on this to get people to toss their old earbuds/headphones. Maybe force is too strong, but it certainly seems physically connected audio devices are now deprecated

Luckily Apple don't have a monopoly on wireless headphones?

You can use some plain old bluetooth headsets like most people have been for years.

If you really dislike wireless for some reason, you can also get lighting earbuds (I think the iPhone 7 actually includes some).

Finally, if you like all these ideas so much, you can avoid purchasing the product you dislike. It's not like they're forcing this onto existing clients by disabling the existing 3.5mm jack.

Or use the included lightning -> 3.5 mm adapter.

>Maybe force is too strong, but it certainly seems physically connected audio devices are now deprecated

Well yeah, they sort of are. The future is wireless, there's really no denying that at this point.

Apple sells wired headphones for the lightning port. I'm personally not interested in upgrading because I don't want to use their headphones or get a lightning port adapter just for the phone. You're not forced to use the AirPods, but you are forced to use the lightning port (bleh) or bluetooth (meh).

The lightning port adapter comes with the phone.

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