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Comment by mbesto | Hacker News Reader

> I've been shocked by the adoption of the AirPods pro.

Gen1 airpods basically suck after 1.5 years in because they only hold 30 min of call battery life. I'd be willing to bet thats 50% of the adoption.

> For about a decade everyone was pretty happy with the white iPod headphones that came in the box.

Which have been made obsolete by smartphone manufacturers (namely Apple) by eliminating the headphone jack.

> AirPods came in and added a whole convenience layer on top which seems to be driving people to buy in droves

1) They're wireless (and dont have the unfashionable "wire around the neck thing") and 2) see point about headphone jack above.

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> Which have been made obsolete by smartphone manufacturers (namely Apple) by eliminating the headphone jack.

People love to claim this, but I'm sorry. I have lightening wired ear buds that came with my iPhone 11. I would never use them. The wires absolutely destroy the usability of ear buds. They constantly snag on things, they're always in a knot, etc. Dealing with the wire-management is a cognitive load that's just super irritating. Not to mention when I used to try to fall asleep listening to a podcast using wired ear buds. Waking up with the cord wound around your neck is, again, super annoying.

In contrast, the wireless AirPods just make using them pleasant. It's a joy to not have to think about the wires, especially after years have being scarred by them.

As a random aside, has anyone else noticed that headphone wires don't get tangled the way the used to? It used to be next to impossible to untangle headphones you put in your pocket. But I don't have anything Apple, so I haven't gotten into the AirPods at all, and my phones have kept the headphone jacks, so I still use headphones with wires.

I have noticed that the wires just don't get tangled like they used to. It takes a few shakes and maybe a pull to get them undone, where it used to take several minutes to get your headphones in a working state. Did "tangle-free" technology become ubiquitous or am I just imagining things?

At some point the popular wire insulation changed from a kind of super-flexible silicone-like plastic to a resin-based PVC-free version. Partly for environmental reasons, but it had the side-effect of making wires a little stiffer and slicker. It's also why a couple generations of Lightning cables were known for splitting at the bend point.

I'm not sure if this 100% explains what you're seeing, but it's probably a factor.

Thanks for the insight here, very interesting. I have been wondering what the shift could be, and this makes a lot of sense at least in part.

My experience has been the opposite. I have IEMs with a fairly nice 4-core braided copper cable and it takes a minute to untangle them if they're in my pocket. My other headphones don't fit in my pocket so no problems there.

I will yield braided cables still tangle like a mfer. My Massdrop X Senn gaming headphones have a braided cable that is constantly tangled up. I got a pair of braided headphones with my S10+ and they are stiff as hell yet they still tangle.

Most of my headphones don't have a braided cable though, and all of those are so easy to untangle.

I noticed that wires that are not perfectly round (they’re kinda rectangular with one very thin and one wider side) don’t tangle as much as the round ones and I’ve seen a lot of those in recent years. So form might be a factor as well.

So, because you personally are scarred by the use of wired headphones (which is hilarious that something like that would "scar you", sensationalist much?) everyone else has that same experience? scratches head...

> The wires absolutely destroy the usability of ear buds.

And when your batteries are dead, the headphones literally do not work. How is that for usability?

Gen1 airpods basically suck after 1.5 years in because they only hold 30 min of call battery life.

Don't tell that to my Gen1 AirPods which I use daily and get me from 8:00am to 11:45am (3.75 hours) before they need to be recharged. I got them for Valentine's Day in 2017, so they're 2 years and almost 11 months old.

The parent poster did specify “call battery life”. I can listen to music for hours, but a call with two-way communication drains my AirPods battery very quickly.

This exactly. I use them for both calls and listening to music. They've been rendered almost useless for calls (which used to be 1-1.5hrs, perfect timing for a full conf call).

It's a bit sad when one of the best reasons to buy a product is that the previous version sucks after 1.5 years. We are not making great incentives for manufacturers to make lasting products.

That said it is a new product category, hopefully it will get better over time. And I do own the new airpods pro.

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