Google’s Airpods competitor do real-time language translation

I'm not sure how a wire keeps you from losing them. If an airpod falls out of your ear it is immediately obvious. The only time I've actually had them fall out of my ear is when I'm doing something like hugging my dog or pulling a hoodie off over my head.

Everyone always says this but I feel like it's a non-starter. I haven't ever misplaced my earbuds and I've owned them for several months. House & car keys have a similar form factor and don't have a cable, yet most people don't seem to have problems keeping track of those.

If only Apple invented some sort of device that held the headphones when they weren’t in your ears. I wanna say like a basket but that’s not it, this thing should fit in a pocket.

If they really went nuts I’d say it be cool if the thing also charged the headphones. But I mean, what a crazy world that would be.

Killer feature or not, it's the distinguishing feature that makes AirPods what they are, and it makes little sense to consider any product without it a "competitor". Unless we're going to play with language and stretch the meaning of competitor.

I used the AirPods for a week before returning them. It stayed in one ear, but kept falling out of the other ear. The thought to purchase a cord or ear hooks crossed my mind until I realized it would make charging them in the case painful by having to disconnect the attachment before charging them.

As such, the AirPods form factor is a killer feature if they fit your ear and stay through activity. If they do not stay, there is no point in trying to "extend" them.

Before the AirPods came out I had a pair of Jaybird X2's. For me at least being able to hang them around my neck when not in use did not help keep from losing them, it's the REASON I lost them. I lost my Jaybirds in about a month and a half, after having them fall off my neck without me noticing multiple times. They fell off my neck on my walk to/from work at least 4-5 times before I finally didn't notice in time to get back to them before they'd be grabbed up.

My AirPods however I've had since January/February and I still have both. I have never gotten close to losing them the 4-5 times I did with the Jaybirds, because instead of dangling around my shirt/jacket, they go back in the case and into my pocket the second they come out of my ear. I've had some cases where I misplace them at home of course, but they're not just jumping out of my ears, and if they did I'd surely notice my music/podcast stop playing.

I also have found earbuds that are actually wireless(not wired bluetooth earbuds) has been a huge improvement. For example if I pull one out, I don't have a wire hanging and pulling on the other bud uncomfortably. If my buds are getting low, I can recharge one at a time without having to stop my podcast/music. They're also massively more comfortable, the Jaybird wire was kind of tacky and would catch and move jumpily on my neck, putting on a hoodie/jacket would pull on the cable or knock them out of my ears, and putting it in front of my neck was even more annoying. (Constantly having something moving and bumping against my chin was super annoying). Bluetooth wired earbuds are fine, but after having used what was widely regarded at the time as the best pair available, using wireless earbuds makes them feel like a cheap stopgap.

Agreed. It would make sense to have an offline mode.

Project Fi does not charge extra for international data use, and it works in 135+ countries.

Many people may not have Fi, which I get, but I get the feeling Google's ideal use case is these headphones paired with a Pixel 2 running on Fi.

Sometimes, your home country (or rather, the country where you live) has a different official language(s) than what you are most proficient in. That's the case for me living in Barcelona (catalan and spanish here, where I speak mostly english and swedish).

Also, being able to travel around in europe without any extra roaming charges, means that I can still use this, wherever I go in europe.

I'm very excited to try these as soon as I can get my hands on them.

Your comment is very valid, but in Europe, we can have some data free while travelling in another country. if we had data plan in our home (European) country. E.g. I recently went from Latvia to Finland, and received text from my operator, that my allowance was 3 or 4 gigabytes (vs. unlimited data at home in Latvia). It was plenty for my 4 days stay, for everything - maps, mail, IMs, browsing, and I did all my "voice" calls over Whatsapp. Spent less than 1GB. Translation would fit that package nicely.

I occasionally bike with one earbud in with just normal wired earbuds and tuck the other one into my shirt. What am I missing out on with wireless earbuds?

Still doesn't explain why the implementation is tied to the headphones and not the cloud-proxy-client (the smartphone/tablet/computer)

From the article, Google already confirmed everything happens in the cloud. The only thing these headphones add is first-party integration with the Google Translate app so that you can launch the app directly from the headphones.

I think this possibly understates what people are paying for. They’re paying for fully packaged solutions. You’re paying one price in the hardware that’s accounting for the good software. Apples not selling iPhones as a stalking horse for their ad-funded search & ads business, they’re selling software running on hardware that allows people to pay for content delivery through them. This is total mission / customer alignment, so google pursuing top quality hardware only recognizes a result and not a process.

That's cool. I still think the primary issue is the marketing makes it sound like the ear buds are bringing new tech to make this experience possible, when they're really bringing:

a) UX for "hold while talking"

b) Known quality of the headset

From the outside, it looks a bit shady, and a bit un-Googlelike just to compete with Apple.

I imagine a more Google-like approach would've been to release Translate as a local model (eg like https://developers.google.com/vision/). It's easy to imagine the community would quickly figure out a way to solve a) and make the experience work for most headsets.

Yes, the lack of the cable in my experience means that they are more secure in your ears, not less, as everyone laughed that they would be.

Dozens of the "conjoined" BT headsets on Amazon - tried a couple of cheaper ones and the fit is an issue.

Could never run with those, but I've run/biked with AirPods with no problems (I thought I might lose one but it was really a non issue if they fit properly in the first place).

Why not? I have used earbuds in one year for decades.

The original comment might not be from a native english speaker. Presumably, they mean 'How difficult is it for Apple to clone this feature?'

It is likely incredible hard to do well by themselves from now, but there's a chance they could pay Google for an API.

No.. I meant how quickly this can become available on Apple..