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Comment by jackhalford | Hacker News Reader

I have a pair of Airpods. What bugs me most is that le lithium battery is not replaceable, and will degrade after a couple years. which makes these a high-end throwaway device...

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And what apple is betting on is that people will prefer their totally sealed, light as possible, "throwaway" $200 product over the competitions user service, replaceable battery option.

It is the same bet they have made repeatedly with their phones. Smaller sim card (obsoleting old approaches) - removing headphone jack, switching to lighting, doing totally sealed (but durable) devices etc.

It's generally paid off - oddly people seem to prefer used apple products (ie, beleive in their durability) over used logitech headphones or android phones - so the actual life of apple products ends up being pretty long.

Apple's battery service fee is $49 for airpods and useful life is perhaps around 3 years, if you keep wanting to replace the batteries every three years. My quick sense is that most folks may retire their airpods after the second battery (6 years in) at the longer end.

So far their approach has paid of tremendously for them.

I am curious what other headphone providers are doing here. Ie, how easy is it to get a fresh set of batteries after 3 years that are of high quality and replace them. I've gotten burned replacing batteries in products with amazon replacements and the mfg sometimes doesn't even stock or sell new batteries for their devices so I've gone with Apple for now - if you go into their store for a new battery I've never had a problem with quality.

Calling it battery service is interesting - they are most definitely simply replacing the AirPod. The $49 battery fee is for a single AirPod - replacement for the pair is $99.

The question I have is if they are able to meaningfully recycle the used AirPods or if they just end up in the landfill?

I'd bet the average person contributes 10 times more plastic waste every single day than a single pair of airpods (by weight).

Yes it's still wasteful, but one of the absolute least impactful places to start optimizing your life given how useful the things can be over their 2-3 year lifespan.

I do not think the plastic is what is concerning. It is the energy put into manufacturing and shipping the item. This is a high end electronic device, with a bluetooth modem and a lithium ion battery. Plastic waste is one of the least significant problems here.

> The question I have is if they are able to meaningfully recycle the used AirPods or if they just end up in the landfill?

First they get sold as refurbished products in their primary market, or sold in 3rd world markets at a discount, and then they end up in landfills.

> Smaller sim card (obsoleting old approaches)

I've always just cut the old ones to fit and it's worked fine.

Same. After 2 years I had to buy a second pair.

Apple apparently DOES offer battery service for these, but it's $49 PER AirPod. If it was $49 for both I might be up for it.

Apple's battery service across the board is just too damn expensive. I get that it's the labor costs involved, but I wish they would put more thought into this.

I have three older iPads, a few older iPhones and a MacBook Air that are perfectly usable minus the batteries. but it would costs hundreds of dollars to replace them all so they just end up sitting in a bin because I don't have the heart to toss them.

Do they actually change the batteries in them, or do they just give you new airpods?

I can't imagine the genius bar has tweezers and microscopes for battery replacements in-store...

They send you a completely new one. I know of exactly just one person who did it. He noticed that the mesh on the earbud itself was straight up new (his one was dented a little bit in certain spots due to his attempts to clean out some earwax using a sim-card ejection tool), and the plastic was spotless clean with no scratches.

I'm not sure since I've never done it. My guess would be that they just give you new ones, then send the old ones away somewhere to be refurbished and sold as such. This was my experience with iPhones in the early days, actually. Now they actually try to fix them on site if they can.

There is an interesting comparison to be made between most of the crap we use today that isn't serviceable and is proprietary. My favourite devices growing up were Gameboys, and an iPod nano which wasn't serviceable realistically. I have all of my Gameboys up to SP in a box, I can pop standardized batteries into them and play them with at least as good performance as 20 years ago. The Nano malfunctioned after about 4 or 5 years and despite it being the first thing I spent more than $100 of my own money on, stopped being useful. By contrast, here's the ifixit guide for replacing the lithium ion battery in a DS Lite.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nintendo+DS+Lite+Battery+Replac...

and here's the battery that you can order for $15 on Nintendo's official store. https://store.nintendo.com/battery-pack-nintendo-ds-lite.htm...

My AirPods, specifically the left one, cuts out after 5-10 minutes every time. Having purchased my AirPods mid-2017, I was pretty disappointed when I went to the Apple store and they said there was nothing they could do about it and I would have to buy a new pair.

Needless to say, I said no thanks. I'm about ready to throw these away and I'll probably buy a pair of Sony headphones this time.

That doesn't differ from their other offerings...

Their laptops and phones do not have replaceable batteries, why would their headphones?

The batteries in the other items are replaceable, it’s just not easy. In my understanding, the AirPods batteries simply aren’t replaceable at all.

Then it’s just a matter of what you think is easy enough to be called replaceable. I would wager for most consumers a MacBook battery is not in that category.

That most consumers will come to Apple with their laptop for a service and Genius will replace the battery. Will genius replace the battery for their AirPods?

Yes (though in practice, they're probably just swapping the unit and sending the original back to be refurbished). https://support.apple.com/airpods/repair/service

When they “replaced the battery” on my dads iPad Pro they just sent him a new one. I don’t know if that holds for MacBooks as well, it might depend on the model: the 12” MacBook’s layered battery might be pretty hard to replace.

No, not really.

Practically, an iPhone battery is replaceable in you average mall tech shop in a mid sized town. In the 5/6 era, it was a 30 minute job if you’re being slow and careful. (I’ve got 3 screen replacements and 2 battery swaps under my belt from that era).

My understanding of the AirPods is that the complexity level is more akin to component level fixes for a main phone board. I’d expect that there are people who can do it, but they’re rare, and they’ve got specialized equipment, and it’s probably not worth it for an earphone battery.

There are repair shops for 'most consumers'. They do great work, but even they can't fix an Airpod.

Those batteries are replaceable, just not by you (officially anyway).

The batteries are not replaceable, at all.

> An update to Monday’s report: Apple has confirmed that the new AirPods Pro are no more repairable than previous versions of the wireless earbuds. The pods are made partly with recyclable materials but due to size and build process (i.e glue) it doesn’t repair. Just replace.

https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1189663651214450688

I believe they were referring to the batteries in their other products, not the airpods.

And for $49 each, Apple will replace the batteries in your airpods. (they probably just replace them)

If they aren't replaceable by you, they aren't replaceable.

If that's true, it actually sounds like a good deal.

https://support.apple.com/airpods/repair/service

It is true, and it is indeed a pretty decent deal. $49 over the course of a few years is imo a reasonable price I am willing to pay for this. They also have a similar reasonably-priced battery replacement program for iPhones as well.

You can buy a third-party battery an install it in other products with a bit of work. You cannot do this for AirPods.

That’s false. I’ve had the battery in my Apple laptops and phones replaced many times. They even monitor its health and tell you when to replace it.

> Their laptops and phones do not have replaceable batteries, why would their headphones?

That's like comparing a car to wheels. Laptops/phones have infinitely more use cases to them. Headphones are accessories.

Except their laptops and phones totally do...

What are you talking about?

Every iPhone since the 8 has had a strip of glue holding the battery down. They aren't intended to be serviced, especially not by users.

They're basically 3M Command Strips. They even have a pull tab. Calling it glue is being totally disingenuous.

Or, you can pay to replace the battery. I've done it with an old iPhone6 and got back a pretty usable device.

battery replacements aren't a thing for AirPods. You can send them to Apple to be recycled, though.

https://support.apple.com/airpods/repair/service

To replace the batteries: $50 each airpod, $50 for the charging case

Done this myself. They don't replace the battery but send you a new AirPod or charging case.

My understanding is that opening an AirPod without damaging the plastic casing is close to impossible to do.

My guess would be they replace them then strip the components out of your returned AirPod or charging case and recycle/reuse what they can.

BOM looks like <$10 (there's barely anything inside). Maybe $15 with those small batteries. I doubt it's economical to recycle. What's fascinating is that people are willing to pay so much over the BOM. But I guess that's Apple speciality making people do it.

I think you're significantly underestimating the BOM on those.

> Wedbush analyst Dan Ives estimates that the cost of production of AirPods is $59–$69

https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2019/09/airpods-face-sti...

Hmm, I guess I've seen taerdown of something else than airpods on youtube, maybe a cheap clone and a mislabeled video. Heh.

Now I'm looking at iFixit teardown and it looks very different.

I guess you're right.

I'd bet they just give you a new one.

As opposed to the phone itself?

Once upon a day, phones had replaceable batteries. I'm still holding on to my ancient phone specifically because of that.

Quite a few of the replaceable battery devices I’ve had over the years got old, and then I had to be careful to not flex them badly, or the battery would momentarily disconnect and drop the power. Or you loose the battery cover, or the little plastic tab breaks and now it’s held on with tape or a rubber band.

The phone battery is hard to replace, not impossible.

Most phones are 10 minutes to replace the battery, or 30 mins if you've never done it before.

I think that's about the right tradeoff for something that will be done once every 2 years.

almost everything apple makes has that feature ... degrades in a few years, throw away, buy another.

ipads, iphones, even some modern mac laptops that have the disks soldered and batteries glued, etc.

Apple products have really long life span compared to the alternatives, actually. That's why their products have very good re-sell value. Nothing degrades, you pass your iProduct down the line in the family to the less tech-savvy members. My father is using my iPhone 5 now and works great after the battery replacement. People still user their iPods, iPad 2's and so on.

Airpods are an exception to the rule here.

I wonder where this narrative comes from, can you please explain why do you think that Apple products degrade rapidly and are thrown away?

The modern macbook pros (not the recent 16's) have the worst keyboards ever. That won't last a few years without being returned to apple for the Free Apple Keyboard quality program.

That's an entire generation of Apple laptops of all kinds - Apple MacBook Air 13, Macbook Pro 13, Macbook Pro 15 - all of them having their keyboards eventually malfunctioning, and ultimately needing their keyboards refurbished or replaced outright.

If you think this doesn't indicate Apple has a quality problem I don't know what you're thinking about. (They admitted it themselves and have a repair program that basically has their entire slate of MacBook products on permanent free repair for the foreseeable future)

And by the way, when you take your laptop to Apple, and they offer to replace the "Top Case" for your laptop for free, where do you think it's going? the battery probably goes to refurb, but a large portion of it is just getting junked because it has a genuine design issue to begin with.

Here's some of the Apple gear from my family.

Macbook Pro from 2008: Still boots iPhone 4 (2010): Still functioning (although obviously does not run latest OS) iPhone 5s (2013): Still functioning (running iOS 12 just fine) iPhone 7: (2016): Still flawless

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