CT scans of AirPods evolution | Hacker News Reader

CT scans of AirPods evolution

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1,094 pointsvitruvius334 comments

This is still the strongest apple advantage: design, engineering and build quality.

Recently I wanted to buy a second notebook so I could leave my MBPro at home in trips where I didn't want to work, but still had a machine that run linux and windows for some quick idea or even some light gaming.

Decided for a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro. Expensive machine, but slightly cheaper than a MacBook Air. good i7 11gen processor, excellent battery life, very light but with surprisingly good thermals, 1tb SSD, but unfortunately no option to have it with more than 16GB RAM.

Anyway, was very satisfied with it, and it was so light that I was even booting it with linux and doing some programming on it.

But, one day I just opened the lid by the sides, heard a crack, and the gorgeous OLED screen had cracked.

Of course I didnt abuse it, I just opened it, without excessive force or speed. But the screen is very fragile, the lid is paper thin, but not rigid enough, it seems, to avoid this problem.

And of course, Samsung says it was my fault, and I will have to pay the fix.

And yes, I know people have plenty of complaints about apple, but I never had encountered such an obvious problem with an Apple product. Have they not stress-tested this stuff?

I guess you didn't purchase the iPhone 6, or perhaps you had very large pockets. A phone that bends semi-/permanently when placed in pockets was a ridiculous oversight.

Apple replaced the bent iPhones on the spot for free. That said, the iPhone 6 represented peak Jony Ive. I'm glad he's gone. Apple has walked back their obsession with thinness in favor of maximizing utility, all to the benefit of the user.

No, they eventually admitted it was their fault, they didn’t admit fault when the iPad came bent recently, or the MacBook Pro had failures. But with Steve Jobs alive it wasn’t hard to get your handhelds like the iPhone or iPod replaced, now they blame you or make you wait forever.

I agree about Jony, the iPhone 5 was peak Apple design, and it comes back with no headphone jack in the 12.

The generosity of Apple's support during Steve's era was unparalleled. It created a great deal of goodwill for the company within the iPhone/Mac community. Like you said, supports now is delayed, difficult, rigid, and merciless.

Somewhere along the line, Apple forgot that its retail stores and support were products in and of themselves.

Yeah it was so easy to walk in with a problem knowing Apple was gonna take care of it (except the MacBook problem but I didn’t use a MacBook). You knew you didn’t need an appointment, 20 mins in to get a nice person who looked at it, saw your problem and said ok well take care of it, here’s another one.

Incredible service at that time, something that Samsung and others didn’t have. Now I get some asshole that says it’s not an issue or it’ll take 2hr to fix the screen, then they break it anyway and give me another phone that isn’t unlocked and I have to go again or call the carrier because Apple fucked up.

I had very very negative experience with Apple hardware issues and I agree so much about how bad is the service now.

First time on a very brand new MacBook Pro (1 day old). The laptop screen was glitching for no reason. The service center took it for repair, and when they gave it back, they visibly damaged the computer in the process (with a screwdriver they damaged part of the case), and then denied causing the damages.

At the end, they didn't even fix the issue (they changed motherboard, when it was obviously a screen or screen cable issue, not a motherboard one because the issue didn't appear on screenshots nor on external monitors).

I had to take the losses, I hate this company so much for this, by principle.

Second time, the MagSafe-style charger of my other MacBook computer took fire, Apple never acknowledged the issue, and neither offered replacement and pointed only to legal and stopped responding.

This company really has shitty processes handling defects in their own products.

I keep buying because the alternatives are very weak in comparison and outdated, but really, if you get a bad product from Apple you are fucked.

You should have complained more, I never would get that service, and my friend has had his screen replaced and never had problems as long as he had applecare or was under warranty.

>I keep buying because the alternatives are very weak in comparison and outdated, but really, if you get a bad product from Apple you are fucked.

I think the M1 is great but I wouldn't use a normal x86 from them.

Telling someone in effect "they're holding it wrong" after being severely scalded by a company and then recommending their products probably isn't going to get them to switch back.

> I keep buying because the alternatives are very weak in comparison and outdated, but really, if you get a bad product from Apple you are fucked.

I didn’t try/need convince them to continue buying Apple, I wouldn’t buy an x86 from them.

They also grew exponentially and started serving everyone, not just technophiles. Support at such a large scale is an interesting problem. The apple store in my city always has lines out the door and the store is huge. They probably have to handle everything from broken devices to general troubleshooting, and for everyone from tech empathetic individuals to ludites, old people to young, and reasonable to agressive and entitled. All face to face in their stores.

They had those before too. They could have just sent them away with a refurb like they used to, in and out quickly instead of corralling them waiting for screen repairs.

For 25+ years I'm not sure I've ever thought of the Mac market as primarily technophiles, so much as a crowd interested in the "pursuit aesthetic" and notably not interested in looking behind the technical curtain.

The user group that was technical was a relatively late demographic. But Macs were always (well, since my memories in 90's) targeted towards this odd trifecta of the media production crowd (high-dollar professionals and aspiring high-dollar creators), academics, and grandparents (people with money who just wanted things to 'work'). Still seems that way to me, I guess. The closed nature of the hardware and the traditional lack of servicing to people who wanted to "break" things even on the software front was always a bit off-putting to technophiles until relatively recently (2013-2020ish?), but I might say there was a bit of a blind eye towards the faults in light of the awesome advantages. The fading appeal is likely just a more honest assessment of the platform/ecosystem in light of improving options (linux from the factory with working drivers, WSL). I mean, thank God for Apple driving quality in hardware and software. Maybe that's what you meant by technophiles - those with a love of what technology can be in its most refined and integrated sense, rather than the nerds who love to tear shit apart and improve it.

Phones, on the other hand, are an everybody thing, but that broad appeal goes back even to the first iPhone at the turn of the century to my memory. Ever since Apple has had stores, I think the phone/ipad/accessory/gadget crowd has been an ever-present customer.

Just my opinions, worth what you paid for 'em.

We may indeed have a slightly different definition of technophile, to me it's early adopters and "gadget" people. One of the first recipiets of a Mac was Stephen Fry for example, but I imagine he has less interest in code or hardware, just enthusiastic about what the device can do for the user.

The early adopters of smartphones were people excited by what it could offer, I remember being distinctly dissapointed at what seemed like a closing ecosystem, opaque hardware and an end of an era in general computing. Things have progressed since then and so has my outlook mind you.

Even as a software developer I would not consider myself a technophile and certainly not an early adopter. More a begrudingly up to date luddite.

> Just my opinions, worth what you paid for 'em.

Considering the cost of my internet in Australia that may actually be non-zero! But they were worthwile opinions, so I'll accept that cost.

> One of the first recipiets of a Mac was Stephen Fry for example, but I imagine he has less interest in code or hardware, just enthusiastic about what the device can do for the user.

Douglas Adams was a fan as well [1]. He wrote sometimes in a Mac magazine whose name escapes me at the moment. He was an über-technophile.

https://lowendmac.com/2016/douglas-adams-author-and-mac-user...

They got into shrinking hardware and made great consumer gadgets that were not expandable with hardware but much better. The first iPhone had a headphone jack, it didn’t need a weird one like the Sony Erickson, I don’t think the palm had one. I had used a Mac in grade school with a mean teacher that died of cancer (they said thats why she was so mean, I don’t buy it), it played crappy math games, and Oregon trail, it looked weird since I was used to windows and my friend got a Mac laptop for school that was nice I think it was a G3 or something. No more locked down than any laptop of that era.

The iPod didn’t have expandable storage, but nobody did and AA or AAA batteries sucked. The iPhone didn’t have battery or storage upgrades but it was a full Unix computer in your pocket.

Remember the ipod not only didn't have expandable storage, they were still using a mechanical disk until at least second gen, I think.

Just a shout out to the Frontier Labs NexIIe. Awesome little MP3 player that took compact flash storage and ran on a AA batteries back in the day.

It was like 2001 or something. I had iPods as well, but loved that NexIIe.

- used the same media I had in some of my earliest digital cameras.

- could double as an external hard drive.

- ran on batteries you could buy anywhere, including lithiums.

- had an equalizer.

- displayed ID3 tags.

- had a blue on black backlit character LCD that wouldn't kill your night vision.

- Smaller form factor than the ipod and lighter (it was mostly air and cheap plastics).

It stood up to cold temps and wipeouts when out snowboarding. No special connectors - 3.5mm audio jack and usb.

Here's a period review. The fact that it's described as being smaller than a "pack of smokes" really dates it I guess. <:D https://bjorn3d.com/2002/10/frontier-labs-nex-iie-mp3-player...

Steve Jones mentioned why he chose mechanical, it stored more songs, in 2002 you didn’t have many gigabytes. The iPod was the size of a deck of cards, it wasn’t much larger. You listed an MP3 player you needed to add storage to, when SD cards were 8mb or 16mb for the period.

You could get 2GB flash on the iPod nano. I wouldn’t have liked the nex one, the battery life was probably worst, the iPods had good monochrome at the beginning, and the good ones they were fighting were the rio karma which also used HDD, battery, and the Archos were good too, and no different aside from the iPod needing iTunes.

Hey, don't forget about these bundles of engineering awesomeness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive

Apple brought it on themselves with their anti-repair stance. Third party repair companies are literally begging them for parts so they can service Apple products. In other industries, there are a large number of quality technicians who can service consumer products without a problem.

I had a 2008 iMac HDD fail when it was barely out of warranty in either late 2009 or very early 2010 and was charged full price for the repair, then a "we'll recycle it for free" when my barely 1 year old iPod Touch decided to stop connecting via USB after updating it to iOS4.

In 2013 the same Apple store replaced a 3rd party stick of RAM in my iMac for an Apple one for free when I sent it to fix the bad hinge on that year's model.

That sucks, I had never gone in after warranty though, maybe once it was under a month and they gave me another one. Usually if you get a nice genius they’ll help you out, I didn’t try after the warranty and just repaired it myself. Knowing how bad they are now, I will never set foot in one again and I’d rather repair it myself after a year.

Yes, that's why I say that I understand that people have their complaints.

I had an iphone 6, never had a problem with it, but, I never seated with it with my back pockets, as this would be exceedingly uncomfortable for me; also never knew anyone with a bend iphone 6 too, but I understand that this was not the experience for a lot of people.

But as I told, I am talking about my experience with apple products. Maybe I am lucky with apple stuff.

I buy Windows laptops for the purpose of running Linux. Little things do happen like bezels coming loose, coil whine and fan noise.

I have been happy with Apple for over a decade. My MBP 2018 was an exception. The rubber seal around the screen deteriorated. The touch bar has a dead area ($750 to fix, not fixing). Bulging batteries had to get replaced. That generation of MBP was GARBAGE based on my research trying to fix mine. Waiting to see if new M-based MBP have the quality pre previous generations of MBP had.

My friend uses an M1 as a power user for about a year. Great battery life, almost never uses the fan, super fast, no battery issues, no Linux support with graphics acceleration yet and he cracked his screen and Apple care fixed it. I don’t think the butterfly keyboard is around anymore.

It’s fabulous but so is my much worst Lenovo x250 with 16GB I got, and a new 1080p screen on recently, still very happy with it.

Same here! Running an X250 with 8GB of memory and an i3 for engineering in university. Of ciurse I'm not doing any simulations or computations with it but for everything else it's an absolute dream. One of the last ThinkPads to have the hot swappable battery system and it's highly repairable. 12" screen size is perfect for an on-the-go laptop in my opinion. I'm running Fedora with i3 on it to maximize the screen real estate I can get out of it and it's lovely. Even compiling programs and similar sctivities aren't a bother to be honest. Very happy, let's hope it stays with me for a few more years!

I regret getting the 12.5in screen, it’s terrible for posture. The t460s is about the same weight with a 14in screen. I am sure it will perform fine, but the screen is really small and bad for posture I hope you’re using the dock and not using it too often as a laptop. I love it as the epitome of the best half netbook/ultrabook with excellent performance with a few tradeoffs like 1 ram slot.

Yet I know lots of people with defects in Apple products. I replaced multiple laptops. Is there real evidence of fewer defects?

I have a Consumer Reports account and doing a quick search the only laptops with a 5/5 "Predicted Reliability" rating are from Apple, everything else is a 4/5 or less

It looks like LG would be the likely 2nd place as well, since they're the only brand besides Apple consistently getting a 5/5 on "Owner Satisfaction"

The Gram series has been phenomenal in my experience, especially considering the price.

I had a LG Gram. Awesome. So light, had latest gen CPU when Apple didnt. All the ports that Apple didn’t have. Linux worked too. The only reason i went back to Apple is the trackpad. If Linux sorts that out, back to LG Gram.

No, they are the same as everything else, people constantly say they are superb on here, but looking up reliability surveys says otherwise:

https://www.geckoandfly.com/6311/the-most-reliable-laptop-su...

This link states in 2018 Apple (1st place on reliability with 665 pts) was 2-3x more reliable than Samsung (2nd place 270 pts). Then in 2019 Apple suddenly became half as reliable (now 130pts) as Samsung? Seems suspect at best.

They seem to rank based on all service calls to their third party IT firm. Apple's top service calls were printer and email help (40% between them) and hardware was 0.53%.[1]

[1] https://www.rescuecom.com/news-press-releases/apple-mac-2021...

That reliability matches my anecdotal experience. I've had multiple failures of the 2019-2020 MacBook Pro 15" & 16" models. Gone through 4 machines, and these mostly sat on desks during the pandemic. One machine due to keyboard stickiness to the point of unusability (this of course is the most known issue). Two slow logic board failures (increasingly frequent kernel panics until the machine no longer worked); the second one I didn't wait until it fully failed. One display failure.

I just switched to the new M1 Pro 16" which I'm hopeful has resilience that matches my earlier Macs that would last 4+ years -- it seems like Apple has reverted 5 years of design choices with this model (ports, MagSafe, weight, thickness, edges, keyboard -- of course with better battery/performance/screen).

Yes, it is unavoidable. But have you tried dealing with apple support versus samsung support?

I’ve destroyed two MacBook Air screens, also because the lid isn’t particularly rigid. The MacBook Pro is definitely more durable, no issues after 12 years of owning them. I’m now much more careful with my MBA.

The virgin Macbook screen vs the chad grain of brown rice https://twitter.com/kaxamdays/status/1438403620391763971

Aren't their recent laptops an overheating mess, not to mention needing dongles to plug anything in?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29197975

That seems to be a reference to the previous iteration right?

Their recent laptops use Apple silicon and are anything but an overheating mess. There are plenty of things to complain about but heat has been solved.

Their latest laptops barely if ever turn on their fans. Your link references the prior Intel generation.

I’ve run my M1 Max all night blasting every core doing heavily vectorized math computations and when I come back in the morning the small room it was in isn’t even noticeably warmer than ambient temperature and the fans aren’t even on.

Isn't the M1 Max pulling like 30-40W tops? I don't understand why that would ever be expected to create a noticeable temperature change. I doubt any laptop CPU would create a noticeable difference.

Yeah, low power draw is kind of the M1 Max’s thing. My desktop PC crushes the M1 Max when doing workstation type tasks. But for content consumption and even light workloads it’s very efficient.

That's kind of my point.

Meanwhile I can use my desktop as a personal heater if I max it out (Threadripper Pro 64 cores).

Jony Ive’s reign of terror is over. Butterfly keyboard is gone too.

Charging DisplayPort Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gb/s) USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s) USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s) Headphone

The keyboard replacement was the biggest improvement to me in the latest MacBooks.

I'm not an Apple person but I do like to keep tabs. Tried the butterfly keyboard and hated it so, so much - and that's not even touching on the function key row.

(As a Streamdeck user it would have been awesome if they had kept the touch screen strip _and_ restored the missing row of keys. Missed opportunity there.)

The touch strip turns off if you don't use the keys for a few seconds. So if you are programming and thinking during debugging, you might want to press a function key to step into/over/continue. But the touchbar has turned off, so you need to press another key on the keyboard to wake it up (fn perhaps) and then look down at the touchbar to find the F key because it is impossible to locate as there's no tactile sensation of which key you're pressing.

And then repeat the process a thousand times per day. It's very wearying. And the keyboard is deafeningly loud. A typewriter would probably be quieter.

I say this using a 2016 Macbook for work. Apple replaced the touchbar a few weeks outside the return window that was the result of the class-action lawsuit on the keyboard, which I am very grateful for. The keyboard had numerous keys not working properly (left shift most noticeably) and the touchbar had developed a fault where it would flash a white block next to the power button, constantly.

Apple had to replace the keyboard, the battery, the touchbar and entire top level of the Macbook as part of the repair on the keyboard.

I have a 2012 Macbook as my main machine and that is infinitely better - battery was less dead even though it had more recharges than the 2016; it has ports I can actually use; it has a SD card slot so I can get photos off my camera; the keyboard backlight is actually visible; the keyboard is actually nice to use etc. etc. The only drawback is the speakers on the 2012 aren't great compared to the bass-heavy 2016.

But anyway all is solved on the new Macbooks but I need to sell a kidney to afford one...

A few grand is nothing to scoff at, but if you use it for half as long as your older one then a reasonably kitted-out 14" would work out to ~$80/month.

I didn't know that about the touchbar, that's pretty awful. It's also a shame they couldn't manage to integrate their fancy taptic engine stuff.

Ports are back on the new machines tho--removing them seemed so braindead, but then again I'm not an industrial design machina so what do I know.

Yes the lifetime out of my old one has been great, so I am pretty confident I'll get the same lifespan out of my other 2016 one no problem.

I'll ponder what device to get next since I might just get a Mac Mini at home. I already have a gaming/development PC and a Linux Pi so I can keep up to date on each OS/system and just use a very cheap "stealable" laptop for out-and-about but can connect home.

Just use an external keyboard

Thanks for those insights! Having the display time out just adds insult to injury. I saw someone made a script to send commands to it every 60 seconds, essentially keeping it on, but that also would then disable normal power saving functions.

I've got my Streamdeck hard mounted in an enclosure on my rig underneath my monitors, and the commands are always accessible. Absolutely love it; I'm guessing the touch bar wouldn't come close in functionality for my purposes. They are also physical buttons.

>Jony Ive’s reign of terror is over.

You do know he is consulting for Apple.

Yeah and you notice the iPhone 12 and return of more ports?

Those are 3 advantages

Funnily enough the exact same thing happened to my work Macbook. Display just stopped working one day. Work sent it back to Apple to repair which took them a few weeks.

I once owned a iBook (back in the PowerPC days) that had to go back to Apple on no less than four different occasions to fix faults. All repaired under AppleCare as I fortunately had the foresight to pay for it at the time of purchase.

I've also owned other brands of laptops and I've not had any with the amount nor the severity of faults I've observed on Apple laptops.

I write this on my own ex-lease Lenovo X1 Carbon which has survived a 1m drop with a corner hitting a hard surface. Thankfully the only issue is the occasional black/darkening of an area of pixels on the lower-right corner of the LCD. I can 100% guarantee if it was a Macbook it would have been the end of it, no question whatsoever (given I've seen Macbook die from much less impact).

The engineering of the X1 Carbon is amazing. Durability is a design goal, it even has channels for directing liquid ingress away from the most vulnerable parts. Whilst not a guarantee against failures, it certainly doesn't hurt!

My own OG X1 Carbon (i7/8/256) still works today, and, amazingly, receives firmware updates. It is 9 years old.

Hah just cracked an X1 extreme gen1. And because it's "custom" (64gb ram), Lenovo is struggling to fix the screen. Guess there's an anecdote for anything :)

P.S. MacBook pro still works ;)

Lenovo have massive presence in the corporate market. My experience of their ThinkPad range is that they are built to withstand the type of abuse that comes from being used by people who have no emotional attachment to them whatsoever.

My shop has started refurbing and recycling machines between staff, as a cost cutting measure. My last device came complete with someone else's Coca-Cola residue all over the internal case and fan vents. Clearly a Friday afternoon job at the refurb outfit. Liberally doused with IPA, dried off and reassembled by my own hands, and it’s still running fine. Good design channeled the liquid away from anything valuable.

I'd be trying to keep my IPA out of the keyboard, La Fin du Monde is sometimes pretty fizzy.

Ohhhh, you mean that IPA. Way less tasty, probably more useful in this context.

Ha! I wouldn't waste a good Jaipur or Neck Oil on a work computer.

Thanks! That's an interesting perspective, and helps explain how it's lasted as long as it has when bought with own money and cared for as a personal laptop.

Great to hear you managed to salvage yours from liquid sugar! Most laptops would struggle with just water alone.

I still make good use of my 15" 2012 macbook pro retina. Bummed that macos 10.15 is the end of the road for OS upgrades, bc the hardware has held up amazingly well for almost a decade. Including weeks at a time at sea, countless motorcycle trips and flights...

You should take a look into OpenCore Legacy Patcher

I have a 2012 going strong too. Battery has been charged and recharged less than my work 2016 but is in much better health. Upgraded it to 16GB RAM and put a 1TB SSD in it. It has worked flawlessly (it's the i7).

Do you know if there are any issues reported running a 2012 with OpenCore Legacy Patcher? Looks an interesting project I may make use of.

Are there any actual reasons the 2012 hardware cannot run Big Sur?

I have one of these I may want to bring back into service and have the same question.

thanks for the tip!

during a delivery once, i caught a curb, flipped upside down on a bicycle, landed laptop down, bent the frame of my 2014 macbook pro, and the screen survived undamaged. still using the same laptop today, no issue. anecdotal evidence… is anecdotal.

I’ve caught a tram track (Melbourne) which caused me to go sideways. Only later did I notice that the corner of my MacBook Air … probably c. 2010? … was noticeably bent. Didn’t affect anything at all.

I did the exact same thing with the same MacBook Air in Adelaide trying to catch the last train home after work.

That was about a decade ago thought.

More recently I saw this:

The law firm Bursor and Fisher filed a class action lawsuit against Apple this week over unusually common screen cracks on M1 MacBooks, reports 9to5Mac. The firm is accusing Apple of knowingly selling laptops with fragile displays that tend to crack under normal use in some cases and then refusing to repair them without charge. Bursor and Fisher is now seeking compensation for all expenses associated with repairs.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-m1-macbook-cracked-s...

Hah, I did also the same thing, except I was cycling home in the rain. Just got to my house and clipped the curb. Landed on my back, and all I had in my flimsy backpack was my 2015 MBP. The base had a large dent in it - but when I opened the lid, it just prompted me for my password. Had that machine for years afterwards.

Actually for further anecdata I’ve dropped several of my MacBook Pros (unibody) from a meter or more, one open from a ladder bumping pretty hard to a few of the bottom steps. And I’ve never gotten more then scratches and bumps in the casing. Additionally I’ve never had Apple Care and the times I’ve had problems Apple have always repaired it free of charge under warranty, including a full battery replacement on my Retina MacBook Pro when it was 3 years old and got the battery service warning.

I’ve had the hinge of my old ThinkPad crack after about a year of normal use and been told it’s my fault. I’ve also had multiple screens go bad on my old HP Entreprise laptop/mobile workstation. Both of these laptops were more expensive then all the MacBooks I owned prior to them.

More anecdotes. My previous Macbook (2014 model? maybe 2016?) had a screen delamination issue; didn't get to the visible area of the screen, but I stopped using it because I got a new one from work at that point.

Current one had an issue with one speaker not working properly, that (and the whole top <_<) was replaced under extended warranty. More recently, the screen has borked, faulty ribbon connector I think, but that's another very expensive and fiddly fix, I probably won't bother since I work on an external screen all the time anyway.

While my entire friends circle are apple fanboys I stayed away from it because of the cost. Once I had the resources tried MacBook air and now all the devices in my home are replaced by apple one by one. Except for Alexa, never got used to Siri.

Out of interest, what would you say is better about a Mac specifically (both the hardware and software) compared to a standard windows or linux pc/laptop, aside from build quality (my thinkpads have never let me down)? I've been tempted by a mac for a few years but never close enough to pull the trigger

Frankly, it's not just one thing. It's the seamless experience. Your experience might be different but coming from bulky Lenovo laptop with windows on it to the sleek machine which you are able to just open the lid and get to work is mind blowing for me.

On Mac, I don't remember the last time I shut down my machine or close the applications. All with out sacrificing the battery time. It's just there for me when ever I want to get back to work.

If you are on the fence, give it a try.

Battery life and hibernate behaviour is unmatched on a Mac. Nothing else comes close. I’ve never rebooted less.

The trackpads are absolutely the best by a long way in my experience too, every other laptop's trackpad feels like cheap crap once you've tried a MacBook's one in my opinion. I even replaced my mouse with an external trackpad, I've not used a traditional mouse in a year.

How did that worked out ergonomically ? Does it work with other devices (still need to login into a windows machine to connect to linux work machine) ?

I'm 100% on macOS now after a job change, but yeah it does work with other devices. I know someone using one on a Linux desktop without issues although it did need a little tweaking apparently, can't speak for Windows but I've heard they work too!

As for ergonomics it fits my workflow of having lots of virtual desktops and full screen apps open, panning between them with the trackpad. Especially when on a laptop the gesture-based approach feels a lot quicker than picking up a mouse. I'm becoming more and more of a terminal monkey these days so it's less relevant but I'd still recommend them to anyone.

Absolutely, you are always in the flow. With the new machines with the finger print sensors the experience is even smoother no need for typing the password as well.

I think the main thing keeping me on the fence is probably games. I wouldn't call myself a massive gamer or anything, but I do like to play occasionally. Obviously with macsthats both a hardware and software issue.

Other than that, last I checked everything else I use daily is compatible with the new M1 chips (though I need to double check Godot Mono) so it really is just that holding me back. Not sure if I'd go with a macbook or mac mini since it'll be in the same place 90% of the time, but I think they're probably comparable either way.

For me, as a mainly Linux user :

  - build quality ;
 
  - general characteristics (screen quality, weight, size factor, build materials);
 
  - power/battery life balance (the M1s are amazing);
 
  - can be mostly handled like a Linux-ishy thing not too far away from my desktop computer thanks to Nix;

  - the gorgeous trackpad.

> This is still the strongest apple advantage: design, engineering and build quality.

The thing is, Appple's hype wave is huge. I NEVER see this kind of blog post about Samsung or Huawei or Sony devices. Yet many of their devices are marvels of engineering, too.

Look at the tone of this article:

> The construction would make an origamist blush.

Make we can get an experienced electronics comment on this kind of congratulatory comment: are Apple devices that special? (I doubt it) Or do they just have an awesome grassroots marketing environment or are great at astroturfing?

I get the impression that part of this is also caused by Apple being American. The US is great at marketing and there is a degree of nationalism involved since there aren't that many American consumer electronics companies left. I remember going to some attractions in the US and thinking: this is hot garbage but for sure they're awesome at promoting it in movies and TV series and whatever.

Yes, it seems bizarre that the dismissal of various other devices as Chinese (Huawei laptops?) doesn't impact Macbooks, which are also all made in China.

The Huawei laptops look excellent Apple copies from what I can see.

No. In practice the samsung cutting edge stuff that looked like a marvel of engineering was just fluff with small irritating stuff that compounds over time. Samsung is obsessed with features, not with perfecting them.

I agree, the iPhone was a handheld Unix computer, the Samsung Galaxy looked like it could do the same things but it was just worst.

I'm strictly talking about tech and assembly here.

We have a custom website fawning over Apple internal electronics being folded a certain way.

I doubt Samsung's internal engineering is worse. Especially since they make components for everyone else. For example they have the best screens in the smartphone world.

Trust me, the Flexgate was just as bad and Apple tried to cheat their customers, including me.

My MB Pro had both design flaws with its screen connection (750 € for a faulty 5 € display cable, look it up) and key switches. And don't even get me started on my iPad Pro, that thing had to be replaced two times because the area around the home button isn't stabile enough. Now on the third one I am having pretty bad screen bleeding.

On the contrary my workstation PC has not failed me once in two years. Never again I will buy an Apple product.

I chose the iPhone because of the “just works” nature but now they’ve made it impossible to get photos off using Windows (disconnects in copy, iTunes or DCIM, tried workarounds, due to heavily walled garden no other app can be used to get 500 photos off). Lots of people online with same issue.

If I can take photos and copy them off I might as well go back to androids.

>If I can take photos and copy them off I might as well go back to androids.

You're not supposed to connect your iPhone to a PC via cable like a caveman. You're supposed to buy a Mac and pay for an an iCloud subscription and then everything just works automagically via the cloud. /s

I feel your pain. Two different possible solutions:

1. Turn off automatic image conversion, and then retry copying over USB: it takes a while to convert HEIC to JPEG, and an eternity to convert HEIC to MP4. It's something like Settings > Photos > Transfer to Mac or PC > keep original format

2. Install a file transfer app on your phone and computer, like Resilio Sync or Photo Sync.

My family's phones use Resilio Sync that sync with a NAS on the bookshelf and PhotoStructure (I'm the author).

That sounds annoying, but honestly pretty much any cloud backup service will sort this for you iCloud's not great, but Google One, Dropbox etc all work fine on iPhone.

I’m using MS and while it has copied a lot I’m not convinced it copied everything. Renaming and reformatting means I’ll spend some time making sure

I remember my Macbook screen getting damaged from the keyboard. Was a 2013 model.

Their charging block also give up after a few years. The harness of the cable have failed on most of my magsafes.

I also remember my phonecalls kept disconnecting because I held my iPhone the wrong way so it blocked the reception.

Saying Apple doesn't have design flaws is quite ignorant.

I mean, there were some mishaps in apple line too. First macbook airs had faulty hinges. Mine broke, and I was using my mbair as a "mobile desktop", rarely opening it between home and office, because I was afraid it will broke off completely. I had to wait for replacement lid (which was free) for half a year.

I don't remember which iPhone it was, but didn't one launch with the problem that the entire phone could be "bent" by having it in the back pocket and sitting down? (or similarly putting some force)

And their reactions to it was "its your own damn fault"?

iPhone 6 (Plus).

> And yes, I know people have plenty of complaints about apple, but I never had encountered such an obvious problem with an Apple product. Have they not stress-tested this stuff?

I'm not going to argue that many of Apples products aren't well built but MBPs have had their share of problems too. Such as

- The butterfly keys being extremely easy to break? (I have a few keys on mine that don't work properly any more)

- Or USB-C right side of the MBP causing the thermals to increase so much that the CPU throttles? (this also affects me)

- Or the ribbon cable that connects the screen getting worn down with repeated opening/closing that it breaks? (happened to a friend)

In fact, I've had more issues with my current MBP than I have with any of my previous laptops and thus cannot wait to decommission in January.

I do also have an iPhone and Apple Watch. My iPhones have always been flawless but my Apple Watch is around 18 months old and the speaker is already failing.

The watch and iPhone experience has been fantastic (even with the failing speaker) but I really can't see me getting another MBP. Not just because of the hardware problems I've had but also because I just don't think macOS is particularly good these days either. The OS panics far too often (MBPs really don't like to be docked and on docked regularly), it handles ageing batteries the worst (to the extent that a failing battery will brick the device where as at least with Linux you can still run the machine off the mains), it takes forever to verify applications on launch (sure I can turn that off) and it's nowhere near as performant as it once was. Frankly it's left me craving a Linux workhorse again.

I feel Apples love for IT professionals has diminished over the last decade and all the emphasis in build quality has gone towards their range of gadgets.

> I'm not going to argue that many of Apples products aren't well built but MBPs have had their share of problems too

Yep Apples stuff definitely has a lot of build problems as well. You can also watch one of Louis Rossman's rants for perpetual internal design issues that cause machines to be more fragile than they need to be.

Although the one thing speaking in favor of buying Apple despite this is that they sell so many of the same machines that when one of these major design issues pop up, it's likely to build up enough steam and bad publicity that they fix it/implement an extended warranty repair program, whereas there's never a critical mass of people buying and complaining about the "Samsung Galaxy Book Pro" for Samsung to respond.

Maybe not with Samsung but I've found other manufacturers to be better. Asus, for example, were very quick to resolve a battery issue I had for a laptop that was out of warranty. They even offered me a gift for my inconvenience. Apple, on the other hand, are only willing to fix issues if you pay them a substantial amount. Often a figure that approaches the cost of a new device.

I've heard plenty of anecdotes of people getting Apple to fix their Mac hardware even outside of warranty. Mostly in the US where they seem to care more about customer support. It's all anecdotes though so I have no idea how common it is.

I'd wager they get their stuff fixed out of warranty due to a class action lawsuit, rather than good will. Apple never wanted to fix any of my broken iStuff, even if I wanted to pay for it.

They (Apple support representatives) will lie to your face, telling you that to replace a headphone jack or a charge port, one has to replace the whole motherboard, totalling the device.

They can do even worse. I tried to get my battery replaced on an iPhone 5s and sent it via UPS. They returned it with a broken power button and refused the battery change for that reason. Apple support did not help and the “geniuses” of the local Apple Store were condescendingly pushing the fault on me. That was just before leaving for 1 month of vacation overseas.

> Although the one thing speaking in favor of buying Apple despite this is that they sell so many of the same machines that when one of these major design issues pop up, it's likely to build up enough steam and bad publicity that they fix it/implement an extended warranty repair program

Apple has never admitted fault for their shoddy MagSafe charger cable insulation, which always end up disintegrating and spewing blue stuff all over my furniture.

I've had multiple cables flake over the years, and every time I bring the the charger to a Genius bar (so far: Australia, Japan, and Singapore), they've always fallen back to "policy" and blamed it on me for not taking care of it properly.

I hate to say this but I've been an Apple user my entire life and have always had a work and a home Macbook (amongst other machines) and also manage an entire team of Macbook users and we've never had the problem you're describing even once so it seems like either you have really bad luck and have gotten these repeated failures by luck or Apple was right and you're not taking care of these properly.

I'm talking over 200 Macbooks over the course of the last 14 years and not a single one has done what you're saying Magsafe, USB-C, or otherwise.

> we've never had the problem you're describing even once so it seems like either you have really bad luck and have gotten these repeated failures by luck or Apple was right and you're not taking care of these properly.

Well, I'm not the only one around me who's faced such problems, and they aren't caused by stress because the cables disintegrate at various points, not just near the MagSafe connector.

My guess is that it's humidity at work, since Singapore, unlike Cupertino, is ridiculously humid all year round — whoever sourced the white insulation for MagSafe cables probably didn't test them in high humidity environments.

Try cleaning the speaker with distilled water and the speaker cleaning feature that pumps the water out of the watch.

Thanks, I will try that

is that this water lock thing for when you swim with it?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210931

May be brash of me, I would assume all water resistant watches have water lock, but the speaker thing sounds so apple-y.

I can't comment on the wider smart watch market but I do know my wife's Samsung smart watch has a similar feature to vibrate water out of the speaker.

Indeed there are plenty of examples of suboptimal Apple designs.

2015 Retina MBP, the trackpad cable runs over the battery, and the heat from the battery means I have to replace the trackpad cable every 6-12 months.

Earlier Intel aluminum iMacs would literally toast the LCD if you ran Windows on them, because the fans wouldn't ramp up enough, even if you had all the Bootcamp drivers properly installed. Sometimes this would happen in MacOS also. Needed to run 3rd party fan control programs, or you'd end up seeing brown areas on the screen around where the CPU and GPU heatsinks were.

As far as enclosures go, yes Apple stuff is physically pretty sturdy.

You’ve replaced your trackpad cable 6-12 times? That’s is incredibly uncommon. I never had any problem with mine.

The last time I cracked an Apple display doing something like that was fifteen-ish years ago, when the plastic hinges were seizing and crimping the lower display panel. It’s not the sort of thing that they have problems with anymore.

They do, of course, have new problems, but it supports your point that they have been here and done that over a decade ago.

Samsung has never had great build quality in my experience - they seem to focus on looks above all else, with throwaway hardware that never gets software updates. I wonder why you went for a galaxy book pro? Why not buy a Thinkpad or Dell? They can have their own issues but the build quality should be much better.

I wanted a second machine, and the main criterias where 1) Run linux fine. 2) Intel Evo 3) As light and thin as possible.

Yeah, I was stupid :-(

I agree with what you have said, I have my fair share of Apple products, and they didn't disappoint me.

A lot of the M1 macbooks had similar issues where displays would crack seemingly without any abuse. All in the name of thinness. I wouldn't suppose that it's the users or horrible design at fault, but rather an issue where some tolerances were not met, so some of the parts in production are less durable than what is needed to execute the design.

I recently pulled out my 2018 13" Macbook pro after quitting my job and not having touched this laptop in a while. The keyboard had a couple of issues with repeating keys...and I was out of the warranty period.

Thankfully, Apple has a keyboard service program, and they fixed it for free — in late 2021. No questions asked. With a one year warranty on their fix.

This was just before thanksgiving and it took them just about 3 days to fix from when I dropped it off to when I picked it up, even though it was shipped to a repair center.

That being said, I might not buy a new one for a while because I like having bootcamp to play games and the M1 makes that impossible.

Does anyone have a canonical URL to the previous month's scan of the LEGO mini-figure? I didn't see any navigation on the site unless there's a magic spot I missed or am inadvertently adblocking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29253441

This month's entry comes off way too much like advertising for my taste, with the flowery language like "magic features" instead of just "features", or the seemingly-unnecessary sales statistics in lieu of a technical description of the Airpods Pro: "In 2020, Apple sold 110,000,000 AirPod products. Talk about mass manufacturing."

Maybe it's just an unconscious tic when talking about Apple products. Even I have a hard time not saying "Boom" when showing off something cool :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw

They don't seem to keep the old pages around. Here is the Lego one from the web archive https://web.archive.org/web/20211122210134/https://www.scano...

This is oddly infuriating. Such cool content, using the web medium in a novel way, yet they purposefully make it transient?

Only way it makes sense is they plan to offer a paid service where you can view a catalog of work. But the site is low on meta information, so that's just a wild guess.

I like it, personally.

That was my first thought when I saw the CT scans of the AirPods: where is the canonical URL for this, and where is the archive of previous analyses?

I doubt that they are being paid by Apple. Would we mind expressions of enthusiasm for, say, works of art? If not, what's wrong with such statements for products as long as they are genuine?

The sales figures speak to a specific aspect the writer(s) want to highlight: that it's a difference to produce something like this a dozen times or a few million times.

I think the AirPods Pro were a regression from the OG AirPods for four reasons:

- Idle life took a huge dive from the originals. My OGs haven't been charged in something like six months, and the case is still at something like 20%. Meanwhile, the case holding the APPs would die in less than a week and the buds inside of them a week after that.

My wife's APPs have been lost for a while because of this.

- Noise cancellation performs worse than the original firmware. They have actually been outclassed by other offerings, such as the Sony WF1000XM4.

- The buds themselves have a design flaw wherein earwax will accumulate in its inner grille severely enough to significantly compromise bass response. There's a thread in MacRumors that's something like 36 pages long acknowledging this. Apple quietly fixed this in version 2 of the APPs (with the MagSafe case).

- The mic isn't as good. The original APs performed extremely well in wind and loud surroundings. I think the downward beam-forming mics were a big part of this. The mic on the APPs perform worse in these scenarios IMO.

I'm glad that Apple went back to beam-forming mics.

Regardless, I'm thankful for Apple for lighting up the true wireless headphone industry. The APs were a dream come true when they came out; nothing before it compared (and I had $600 custom IEMs that were waterproof and had a control scheme controlled by head nods). The APPs accelerated the creation of noise cancelling true wireless. I'm excited for the next iteration of these products.

> The buds themselves have a design flaw wherein earwax will accumulate in its inner grille severely enough to significantly compromise bass response

Not to be glib, but maybe clean your ears more often? You can also take the tips off (invert, then pull) and blow them out from the back with canned air to clear the outer grilles which are integral with the eartip. As fine as those outer grilles are, you'd really have to have wax packed in there for it to extrude through to the inner grille.

I do this with mine, but only very occasionally, because my ear hygiene is such that wax very rarely even appears on the outer part of the tip, and almost never in the sound channel. I listen to a lot of podcasts and often run down one or the other bud by 60-80% in a single go, so it seems very reasonable to suggest that if serious wax problems were really that hard to avoid, I would run into them too.

(Of course, if you're using third-party tips without integral grilles - well, I suppose now we know why the original engineers saw fit to include them, you know?)

I did some searching and also asked a doctor (though not an ENT) about it and the overall response was that you should not be be overzealous about cleaning out ear wax unless it’s a medical condition.

There's nothing wrong with a little Debrox once a month or so. The point is just to keep the wax from building up enough to get impacted, or close enough to affect balance and hearing.

I had impacted earwax once, years and years ago. They fix that with Debrox followed by irrigation, which was while not painful still perhaps the most weirdly unpleasant sensation I've ever experienced, and also made my head spin a little. Since then I've taken some care to avoid a repeat, and I suppose a nice side effect is that earbuds hold up a lot better.

> The point is just to keep the wax from building up enough to get impacted, or close enough to affect balance and hearing.

What if he isn't impacted in any way? What point is there in zealously cleaning something that's meant to be there?

Just washing your ears in a regular fashion during a shower/bath, with your fingers (but not with long nails!) and warm water and soap is enough for most people.

> but not with long nails!

Why would you clip your nails, they're meant to be there /s

There are many things that the body does that aren't useful in any ways, if you have so much earwax that it gunks your audio equipment it probably is time to think about removing a bit more of it

> Why would you clip your nails, they're meant to be there /s

Nope, they're not.

If we'd still be living a hunter gatherer lifestyle our nails would naturally be filed down to a manageable length without much extra fuss.

In that case we also wouldn't be posting on HN.

More broadly it seems not terribly useful to concern ourselves with how we would best live in some idealized alternate universe, instead of how we do best live in this one, where among other things we stuff singing wads of plastic in our ears all day.

"Impacted" here means your ear canals are partially or completely blocked by accumulated wax, which can cause infection and also impairs balance and hearing. It's really quite unpleasant, and requires minor medical intervention to safely resolve.

Earwax is meant to be present, sure. It is also meant to drain on its own over time through the ear canal, in order to balance production and avoid buildup. Having something stuck in your ear canal a lot of the time complicates this, because now there's nowhere for the wax to go. If the thing that's stuck in your ear is an AirPod, the wax will accumulate there too, but eventually it will be full. Now you're at risk of impaction, and also your AirPod also doesn't work well or maybe at all any more, because its sound channel is blocked too.

Sure, earwax is "meant" to be present, and isn't a problem absent excess. But humans also aren't "meant" to be deliberately occluding our ear canals for hours every day. There's "meant" to be a balance between production and natural removal via the ear canal, and occluding the ear canal throws that off. If we're going to be doing that, we're wise also to think about how to deal with the problem of earwax buildup that that can cause.

But you don't have to take my word for it! Cedars-Sinai [0]:

> Objects placed in your ear can also lead to impacted earwax, especially if done repeatedly...Hearing aids, swimming plugs, and swim molds can have [this] effect with repeated use.

> You may also increase your risk if you keep putting objects in your ear, such as a hearing aid.

> [You] might be able to prevent repeated episodes. Using a topical agent once a week may help.

You're right that, for most people, regular hygiene should be enough. If your AirPods are getting so full of earwax that they don't work properly any more, I think it's fair to wonder whether the "most people" standard any longer applies.

[0] https://www.cedars-sinai.org/health-library/diseases-and-con...

AFAIK canonical ear advice today is to just not fuck with your ears. Just leaving them be will usually ensure not having to deal with impacted ear wax.

It’s not unhygienic to just let it be.

Yeah, I remember something like: "don't stick anything smaller than an elbow in your years".

An AirPod is smaller than even a newborn's elbow. By the standard you cite, we should never use those! But if we're going to anyway, it behooves us to consider what problems that may cause, and figure out how to deal with them before they ramify.

It depends on how far you're pushing it. An AirPod probably doesn't go anywhere near the actual eardrum.

Certainly not; the AirPod is designed to be impossible to push that far. But it does, like anything that occludes the meatus, go far enough to stop wax draining.

In general, all our holes are there for a reason, and blocking them up for long periods is rarely if ever well advised. But in this age we also suffer the siren song of podcasts, and it is therefore incumbent upon us to either deal with the problems we thus make ourselves, or go to urgent care and get our ears hosed out with warm saline.

I think some ORL specialists can "vacuum" your ears. From what I hear it's far less intrusive than other options.

I'd be nervous about negative pressure and its effect on the eardrum, but I suppose a professional knows how to avoid any problem that could cause.

That said, far preferable to avoid the need for professional intervention in the first place, I'd argue. (And have!)

From personal experience with multiple cases of impacted earwax, dripping a bit of olive oil to soften the earwax is probably the least intrusive.

One can follow up with a bit of 3% hydrogen peroxide one day after. The bubbling causes the impacted earwax to break up mechanically.

Try the galaxy buds plus they’re much better at everything for me. This firmware update probably kneecapped the pros too, either a patent issue or worries about people walking into traffic. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/17/21069953/apple-airpods-pr...

+1 here. The base Galaxy Buds destroy the Airpods in sound quality any day of the week, and they're mega-comfortable too. I don't use mine anymore, but I loved it when I did.

How slick is the GB integratation with iOS devices in comparison to the AirPods. Been considering getting some AP3s because I keep forgetting my ATH-M50Xs as they are large.

Never had AirPods but comparing the Powerbeats I had, not much of a noticeable difference. Touch controls work, I hold to change volume, they fit and don’t fall out, it’s got 11hr batteries on a single charge. It turns off when you take them off, pipewire connects to them automatically on Linux.

Just a personal note on the galaxy buds plus, I have a pair and while the sounds quality is good when it works, I've had a lot of problems with desyncing between the two earbuds, audio breakup, and the touch sensors are sensitive to a fault where they're not really usable. The case is also pretty flimsy feeling. Overall, I'm not incredibly impressed by them but YMMV

I did. I got the Galaxy Buds Pro. They are excellent. They don't have an app for iOS, but I used an Android phone to configure them.

Something changed in their firmware earlier this year that made noise cancelling imbalanced (for me). After replacing them for a new set, I landed up getting Sony WF1000XM4s, which have also been excellent and even better at NC than the Pros were.

> Idle life took a huge dive from the originals. My OGs haven't been charged in something like six months, and the case is still at something like 20%. Meanwhile, the case holding the APPs would die in less than a week and the buds inside of them a week after that.

That shouldn't happen. Try to unpair, restart and pair again your headphones

This was SUPER interesting to see! I actually (for once) signed up for their next newsletter/scan. It asked me what they should scan next and I suggested cochlear implant processors. It'd be pretty cool to see!

The tech on those processors are pretty insane - and remember, Apple did partner up with Cochlear for the Nucleus 7 I believe for wireless streaming from the processor to an iPhone.

Amazing scans, the packaging of components internally is amazing.

Interesting how they switched from prox-based in-ear detection to capacitive skin contact sensor in the latest airpods.

I find it super interesting how they have gone back and forth on different approaches. I wonder how much user data they collect from the wild (not even sure how one would go about it).

Telemetry logs can be sniffed, with a good firewall and as long as you're on your wifi with a wifi only device you can learn a lot. I jailbreak to use this: http://cydia.saurik.com/package/ca.btraas.appfirewall/

Amazing how much analytics I block from every app.

If you drill down far enough in the settings, most Apple products are happy to show you the telemetry that's sent back to Cupertino. I've seen the HomePod data while poking around in the Home app.

They don’t tell you their own telemetry as far as I know.

No. They do. I can see crash logs for assetsd, awdd, com.apple.mobilemail, DifferentialPrivacy, and much more. Just open up Settings and search “analytics”

I get those crash logs but I don’t benefit from it as much as seeing a realtime task like telemetry attempts but this is also pretty useful. Thanks. It looks like this that data is piped into this jailbreak app. https://repo.packix.com/package/com.muirey03.cr4shed/

On iOS you can see Apple’s telemetry in Settings -> Privacy -> Analytics -> Analytics Data. Or export with XCode.

No idea if it’s exhaustive. But I can see things like general day by day analytics and recent crash reports.

It’s a bit opaque and difficult to make sense of, but it’s still impressive they make this telemetry available to you at all.

That’s very cool, thanks!

I have most of it disabled this is what the firewall options are for OfferUp for example. https://ibb.co/SVbyybC Aside from analytics I can also block the ads from Bing in the app.

Awesome to see a jail breaker here on HN. It has been my experience that when you mention the benefits of jailbreaking the HN crowd really looks poorly at it and shuts it down.

Whats the current status of jailbreaking on iPhone 12s and iOS 15? I've been out of the game for a very long time, I assume even if I wanted to have a look at it I'm out of luck.

What are the major benefits you yourself get from it? My major reasoning used to be emulators, but I have a hacked New 3DS which runs everything I want it to these days with better controls.

Firewalls like the grandparent comment seems quite useful

I set my battery to never charge more than 80%, I have a 50 entry clipboard, and I can downgrade App Store apps at will, I use Halide instead of Halide II since it’s free and they don’t normally let you download old apps unless you saved them to iTunes. You can get emulators without jailbreak on it by using delta here, and a clipboard is available here too. https://altstore.io/

The jailbreak subreddit has a solid sidebar with info on devices / iOS versions supported, and by what jailbreak method. Any current gen device is off the table at the moment, as is iOS 15.

Also- recently ordered a Japanese New 3DS and am glad to hear you are enjoying it, looking forward to having a great emulation machine- maybe one day I’ll get around to installing a modchip in my switch lite too

The New 3DS has blown me away by how powerful it is. Been playing full-speed PS1 games via RetroArch on it has been super neat. N64 is sadly hit-and-miss, but that's honestly fine as most of the games I want to play have NDS or 3DS ports already. Played through Metal Gear Solid and Parasite Eve entirely on my 3DS!

The injectors for the Virtual Console are super great too; GB, GBA and Sega have worked flawlessly (including saving, for the GB/GBA). It can be a little finicky to get the right settings for injection (around the battery/nand emulation), but once you get the process down pat it's straightforward.

The coolest part was that the second hand one I bought still had the previous users Nintendo Account setup on it, but the homebrew/custom firmware system let me erase it without wiping the system.

They're brilliant little systems, I'm very impressed.

I've got the first-generation bootloader exploitable Switch that I've considered hacking, but I think I'll wait til it's a bit older or I've replaced it with the next generation Switch.

I love using iOS as a mobile Unix device and android as mobile Linux, I feel like it can do everything once you unlock the limited software and have more access to lower levels. They probably think it’s all piracy or it’s their telemetry I’m blocking, but you don’t need to jailbreak to pirate, or to run a VPN and it’s nice to have stuff like https://www.idownloadblog.com/2020/10/15/battsafe/ to never have my battery trickle charge.

Sometimes there’s flaws/glitches in iOS or OS X and they kill battery life or rewrite databases, I was able to diagnose it, I installed top (yes CLI top) and figured it out. I have a full terminal just like my computer, it’s awesome so much Linux CLI has been ported.

Former jailbreaker here, but still holding strong on a jailbreakable iOS version (14.3).

I stopped using a jailbroken phone mainly because it was getting more and more difficult to circumvent banking app security, and it seemed like every payment-related app wants to include some form of jailbreak detection these days.

Use the mobile site, the watch if you can, or hide the jailbreak from the app with something like A-bypass.

This was my experience as well- holding out on old versions of iOS + inevitably breaking normal workflows like banking ended up becoming too much of a pain, went back to a stock setup.

That and the random resprings which were likely the fault of jailbroken content I installed, but often it is too time consuming to debug exactly which tweak was causing the instability

Some small but important details about the product architecture that's changed over time somewhat:

- The antenna is sticking out of the ear, while the densest components are deeper in the ear, making them more stable. Now the battery is in the ear and PCB is out of the ear.

- They've added large external mesh over the world-facing mic to reduce windnoise during phone calls. This creates a sort of turbulence that prevents acoustic howling. The air is channeled into a secondary chamber before reaching the mic.

- The airpods had two Infrared Detectors to prevent being spoofed when resting on the table.

- the cases moved from a resistive magnetic hinge to an over-center spring hinge, that's why the newer cases feel less satisfying and fidgety.

As much as I like the fun factor of my magnetic 2nd gen case, it is inherently flawed. The magnets attract magnetic particles, and as the lid is repeatedly closed they're slowly beaten into the plastic and I've never been able to get those marks out. I imagine with a manget-free hinge this would be severely minimised, as everywhere outside of the magnets there is basically no staining.

well the magnet you're referring to are closure magnets, not the hinge magnet. You can see them on iFixit's teardown as black rectangles. Those magnets attract gnarly metallic bits which, yes, permanently make marks on the surfaces of the interior. Airpods OG vs. Pro for comparison. Both have closure magnets, I think the primary reason to move away from them was space, based on the internals.

https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/f3k1ysoFjvJ5xoF5.lar... https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/DSCA4bK5SAlTVGtn.lar...

> The airpods had two Infrared Detectors to prevent being spoofed when resting on the table.

Can you elaborate on this?

They use two so that if you rest the airpods on table in various positions, at least one IR sensor is pointing away from a surface. They turn on and off the device (pause, play) once both IR windows are covered by human skin (or detect a surface) which is the scenario in which they are fully in your ear. If they used only a single IR, the function wouldn't work if taken out of the ear and say laid face down on a book or table.

From a Google search[0], it looks like they've put two LEGO sets under the scanner before, but I can't find them. It would have been cool to see an archive...

[0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ascanofthemonth.com

https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com

You can read the text, and see some images, but the capture wasn't perfect. Such a shame, it looks very interesting. They should have an archive.

I cannot fathom why they would they remove previous scans/links. Maybe to enable a paywall archive?

It's super slick how they showcase the object as you scroll down, but flattening it into a single URL and only making one scan available per month restricts your audience appeal.

I only first heard of this site when they did the lego minifigs last month. Did they publish any other scans prior to that?

So you have actually a reason put your email in their newsletter input box because you wouldn't want to 'miss' anything you can't go back to.

Except the only thing it did was cause me to wonder if they were a new site. And then when I saw this my opinion of them dropped dramatically. It's a dark pattern and I don't want to support that.

I mean, you're right - but honestly it's really fucking cool. I never sign up to newsletters but this made me do it because it's really fucking cool.

Though - I'd be keen to pay $5/m for premium access to what they do, their previous scans. Charge people $10/m so they have voting rights on what to do next. Possibilities are endless!

I have a couple of Patreons for people writing federated apps/code, and it's always nice to support them. Would do the same here because I get enormous value from it and it's really fucking cool

I'm curious how the newest airpods compare to the pros when it comes to bass. I had first gen airpods, then I bought a set of pros, but the bass was so weak I thought they had to be broken. Turns out it's just an artifact of how they were designed. Some people are okay, but a lot of people feel the same way I do. I ended up returning them and now I'd like to know if the g3 airpods are comparable to the pros, or comparable to the g1/g2 airpods.

You need a seal to get significant bass from earbuds. the non pro airpods do not make a seal (by design).

If they experienced better bass on the G1/G2 Airbuds, it's not a seal issue.

The G1/G2 emphasize the high-bass to make up for the complete lack of sub-bass. Maybe that's the tuning they are looking for?

I primarily listen to rock. Airpods are great for that. I don't listen to much music that has significant sub bass.

Interestingly, some people had the opposite complaint about HomePods — that they had too much bass. Apple now has an option in the Home app to reduce bass on HomePods.

Not everyone had the complaint, and I think I know the reason for that: The configuration of the room. At my last place, my HomePods were way too bassy for my ears. At my new place, they're fine. Same gear. Different room geometry.

Are the speakers farther from the corner of the room in your new place? Proximity to the corners is an old trick for increasing bass output.

One is on a new table. The other is on the same table in the same position. Neither have ever been in a corner. (No outlets there.)

Interesting about the corners, though.

If you like bass, the new Beats Fit Pros are fantastic. They’re basically AirPod Pros with a different physical design and bass-heavy EQ. I find they keep a seal much better than the AirPod Pros as well.

I’ve tried all of them so far. The standard gen 2 AirPods are the best by far. The new 3rd gen ones won’t stay in my ears. Pros are uncomfortable and lack bass. 2nd gen are perfect.

I listen to everything from classical to metal to hard dance.

They’re pretty variable depending on your ear shape. For me the pros are the only option since the others fall out immediately (same for mkbhd).

My wired Apple headphones were useless until I found "ear hooks." They work with AirPods too.

Ironically the Pros do not fit my ears even slightly, but the regular ones are mostly OK.

Maybe I should splash out on some of those custom ones that are fit to your particular ears.

For me it's the other way around, the original AirPods stay in my ear at all times. With the pros, I constantly need to adjust it, and they've fallen out of my ears multiple times whilst in the gym.

I'm a bit reluctant to by the 3rd gen Airpods, since my two other pairs are still in perfect working condition.

I recently picked up a pair of 3rd gen airpods after my first gen died. I also have air pod pros. I didn't even leave the parking lot before I returned the 3rd gen and replaced them with new 2nd gen airpods. The fit was horrible and unlike the APP that have the flexible and size-adjustable ear tip the 3rd gen offered nothing to change fitment. I don't even find that the APP fit as well as the 2nd gen airpods.

If I were you and you find the originals to stay in your ear and the APP to not be great you definitely do not want 3rd gen airpods. I wish they would not have changed the form and fit of the airpods to be more like a "cheap" version of the pros.

Oh, I thought the 3rd gen had the same kind of fit as the 2nd gen? I do like the pros for when I'm working, the noise cancelling is really great. But I can't use them for exercise, since they just fall out so easily.

This is surprising to me given the rubber tips - have you tried the other sizes?

I have, and the medium ones give me the best fit, but it's still not enough. The shape of the 2nd gen was just a better first for my ears.

I've used all gens and recently tried G3 for the first time. I instantly noticed that the bass was significantly better than the Pros. It's been a while since I've listened to G1/G2 but from memory I would easily place G3 above all of them in terms of bass. It wasn't enough to persuade me to get some because I love the noise cancellation on the Pros and would rather wait for their update. But I was tempted, in part due to the bass.

I bought the gen3 and returned them for gen2. Two reasons, but the main one was comfort. I forget the gen2's are in my ears. The gen3's were painful.

Second reason: gen3's require Monterey for macOS integration. A painful week-long exchange with Apple support brought this out.

They can kneecap them with forced firmware updates. I’m happy with the galaxy buds on iOS. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/17/21069953/apple-airpods-pr...

Fellow Galaxy Buds (plus) user here, also with Apple devices. I generally like them. Battery life is stellar (compared to the others, it's just about satisfying for me). Pass-through mode is noisy and tinny (irritating). Connection reliability leaves a bunch to be desired (randomly disconnects every once in a while).

Galaxy buds plus too! Love the 11hrs on single charge they’re really good. I think random disconnects stopped when I disabled the touch controls and you can downgrade the firmware, I think the last 2 updates sucked, did they make it worst? https://github.com/ThePBone/GalaxyBudsClient The pass through mode might be bad because you have a blocked mic, mine is great.

You'll also probably have a better listening experience with Galaxy Buds on iOS than Android on some Android devices. Apple's AAC encoder, used with AAC headphones like the Galaxy Buds (well, that's the best codec iOS supports for those headphones), have consistently proven themselves to outperform the competition. Linux's PipeWire, which uses the Fraunhofer AAC encoder is pretty good as well, but Apple's AAC is the best, and you can hear it.

Some Android devices use the Fraunhofer AAC encoder, but some don't. If they don't, you can definitely hear the difference—it sounds like a compressed mess.

Wow, it’s the first time I’ve seen this site and format but what a great way to explain electronics and design.

>it's the first time I've seen this site

I think this might only be its second month so don't be hard on yourself for first seeing it now. https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com

I'm really surprised about the (thus-far) universal acclaim of the design. There's usually a lot of knee-jerk reaction against fancy browser effects like parallax and scroll-jacking in this crowd.

I think this implementation is mostly excellent, but as a web craftsmen, it would have been a fun/entertaining challenge to make a good non-javascript implementation underneath.

most of the reaction against scrolljacking is because when the content of the site is text, we have expectations about how it should behave and we know how we want to interact with it, so we get angry when we can't.

when the content is 3D renders, most people have no strong expectations about how the controls should work and aren't going to have a negative reaction as long as the implementation works well.

I imagine it may be hard and they don't have incentives to "fix it", but I think the single most important disadvantage of airpods is the battery life... no matter how long it lasts, there's no way to replace it, so they became essentially discardable items. [1]?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

This has nothing to do with some evil planned obsolescence, it’s just that you can’t make a device that small while retaining (easy) battery replacement capability.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/your-wireless-earbud...

Well they had a choice to make it less small and repairable. But ultimately, they chose small and disposable.

It may not be planned obsolescence, but it's still a choice made with a certain level of disregard for consumers.

> [...] but it's still a choice made with a certain level of disregard for consumers.

Yes, OR, they did regard their customers' preference for smaller headphones.

Turns out you can: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Tea...

Those are huge, though. There's a trade-off.

They have a 10-steps guide of "moderate" difficulty to replace the battery, and it may damage the water resistance of the buds. That’s definitely not what I’d call "easy" battery replacement.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Live+Batter...

I'd argue there's a difference between planned obsolescence and products that are of such a nature that it's just about impossible to pull them apart. (Now, whether that means the latter category of products is defensible is a different question)

Everyone in here is showing admiration for apple engineering ability so as i said, probably a difficult problem, but not impossible.

I found this product [1] that's probably not as high quality as airpods but looks like a nice proof of concept actually :-)

1: https://pqearbuds.com/

Super cool scans and captions! I wonder if there were any substantial internal changes between the first and second generation AirPods (besides changing the chip). The article unfortunately does not include a scan of the 2nd generation.

Not an audio expert, but I really wonder why they need a microphone for their adaptive EQ. I understand home speakers/theatre systems need to compensate for a room's shape and contents, but do human ear canals vary that much to need a mic?

I think it's pretty neat how sophisticated this adaptive EQ system is, but tbh, I haven't noticed much difference between this mic system and the "dumb" adaptive EQ that companies like bose/ikea etc do (Basically turn up base at low volumes, down at high volume to not clip).

Very cool stuff!

Low frequencies are heavily affected by both how well the canal is sealed, and the volume of air that is in the (partially) sealed area. The adaptive EQ does seem slightly over-engineered; given that people tend to be forgiving of a fairly large amount of bass emphasis, you can just tune for the worst-case. However people don't generally buy Apple products to get something under engineered...

Might be more important for noise cancellation.

Ears do vary quite a bit. If you try in ears molded to your ears they can be mind blowing.

In some cases a microphone will also help adapt to background noise.

> do human ear canals vary that much to need a mic?

Not an expert in human ear canals, but over the years I've learned that if I am looking into a field that I am not familiar with, it's always more complicated than I expected/imagined.

> "dumb" adaptive EQ that companies like bose/ikea etc do (Basically turn up base at low volumes, down at high volume to not clip)

Sounds like a compander for the lower frequencies. That's technically "adaptive" to the input audio, but not adaptive to the acoustics of the output environment. I expect that to for the second type of adaption, you'd need to measure it, which would necessitate some sort of input, such s a mic.

Bose definitely also uses a mic for their adaptive EQ. I wouldn't be surprised if Ikea did as well. IIRC they use Sonos tech.

Maybe slight variations of position in the ear can be compensated?

do human ear canals vary that much to need a mic?

Based on the number of online complaints that AirPods slip out of people's ears, and the equal number of people saying they're rock solid, even while working out, I think the answer is "yes."

I've tried all three gens of AirPods and none will stay in my right ear. Same is true of the old wired earbuds. Everybody's a little bit different—sometimes on the same human!

With hearing aids part of the (very expensive) all-inclusive packet is - besides the hearing aids themselves and the endless sessions to fine-tune them - an actual mold of your ears.

At least last time i saw the procedure the "take the mold" part could well be a DIY job, you have two small bags of (silicon/resin/whatever) A+B, you mix them together in your fingers into a small putty-like ball and then insert/press the ball in your ear, that's it.

This latter procedure only takes a few minutes (time for the silicon or resin or whatever it is to harden) then a counter-mold is made and finally a final piece is produced out of the counter-mold, then it is like 10 minutes of testing and removing (if needed) the excess with a small Dremel like mini-tool.

I am pretty sure that the cost of the whole operation, including materials and workmanship is below 40-50 dollars/euros and probably a lot of people would be willing to pay double that to have their earpieces (be them airpods or conventional wired ones) confortable to wear and "safe" (in the sense of not falling down at every movement) to wear when jogging or exercising.

Taking the mold as DIY, then send it to a laboratory and getting back your custom made earpiece adapter could be doable, but also a complete DIY kit could be used by many, it is not anything too difficult.

Strange that when making 110 million units per year they don’t bother to cover tens of millions ears more with slightly different design.

Same with incredibly small mouse and bunch of other sku’s that could def be differentiated.

Apple does ship Pros with three different sizes of silicone tips in the box. Changing the standard (medium) to a large one made all the difference for me to finally be able to wear AirPods while running and working out. While discussing this feature with others, I was surprised to discover that many people who complain about the bad fit have no idea about it, or never bothered choosing the size that fits their ear canal the best. And that's not even getting into the third party tip replacements of various shapes and sizes.

Why make more SKUs to support? They don’t want the business or the headaches. They squishy things mold to people’s ears anyway. Imagine asking others to put on several types of headphones or needing a scanner and it getting it wrong. It’s a stupid business decision for mass produced Bluetooth headphones.

AirPods make more money than Tesla yet Tesla makes various sized cars.

If it makes them 10B more per year sounds like a good business IMO.

Pro’s are exception, classic ones are the ones people complain about.

They make different AirPods too. If it makes them more money, it could be worth it, but that’s an assumption, if they gave the classic features as good as the pros would that make them more money? It could, but they might not want to cannibalize them.

I worked on a product that used an in ear microphone to adjust the model used in noise cancellation on the fly. In a control theory sense, the system varies a lot so your poles can move around and need a different controller, even on the same head depending on fit. The product produced white noise to tune the model which greatly improved the noise cancellation accuracy.

It’s also not just the ear canals but the rest of your skull that effects how you hear. There are apps that use machine learning to fit a model/eq to the shape of your head from a photo. I would think that actually measuring in the ear would give a more accurate representation of this.

> do human ear canals vary that much to need a mic?

Surprisingly, they do! It doesn't need a lot of change to have a different ear canal resonance, changing the frequency curve somewhere between 5000-7000Hz. Oluv is currently tuning Earfun IEMs to different earl canal lengths which you can then try out, and he has written some articles [0] on exactly this topic, but unfortunately its paywalled: https://www.patreon.com/oluvsgadgets/

[0] https://www.patreon.com/posts/trust-your-ear-58601998

Found something non-paywalled, its in German though, might need to Google translate it: http://blog.prof-x.de/2018/08/26/gehoerresonanzen/

Everyone's ear canals are shaped differently, so yes, lots of variation.

I don't really care about AirPods, but that webpage fucking rocked. Rotating the scans as I scroll? Nice. I'd look at scans of anything on that website.

Agreed. I only wish that they had two images rotating side by side - one the transparent scan and one the opaque image so I had both the transparent and opaque views simultaneously for all rotation angles.

Does anyone know who is behind this site? I couldn't find anything poking around, and for such a cool website to (in my mind) blow up so suddenly is very surprising, with very cool content as well. I'd be interested in following anyone who is doing this.

My self, my best friend, and an apple employee I know, all bought the new Airpods 3rd gen and all returned them. Of course that's just my small circle but 3 for 3. I guess any friend that bought them and was happy with them probably didn't say anything. The 3 of us that did have issues went back to 2nd gen.

For me, I hate pinch to control, I love tap to control. Tapping takes 1 free finger. Pinching takes 2. Another friend said they wouldn't stay in her ears, kept falling out. The 3rd friend just said they didn't fit as well. Didn't go into details. Just returned them.

but we wonder if voice pickup would have been better with the microphones pointed out of the bottom of the stems.

Wonder no more, it would not. This arrangement (aka beamforming array) is common for improved noise reduction.

The downward-facing microphone has made its return [...] could the downward-facing mic deliver better audio quality?

The 3rd gen AirPods have no active noise canceling, hence one mic arrangement. So, nope.

wow, this is amazing. I assume these are their first set of scans? I was trying to find scans of other products and the home page only has airpods

Last month they did LEGO. Interestingly, they seem to remove the scan but you can still see parts of it at https://web.archive.org/web/*/scanofthemonth.com

I wonder if this explains / clarifies some of the difficulty in getting repair tech for the earbuds. They seem to change in major ways each time.

even if you could get repair parts they're assembled with strong glue (search youtube for airpod teardown), making it pretty much impossible to disassemble without destroying it.

Much of the repair problems has to do with how small they are and the components are tiny and must be assembled so carefully that humans with fingers are just not at the right scale.

But we've made tools to overcome human limitations, so that is not really the issue. Apple just doesn't want their products repaired - or at the very least it is not a priority for them. Its just not a good look when they pretend to be "green" while not contributing towards the elephant in the garbage bin - e-waste.

Absolutely love the AirPods family of devices I have own every single one of them but sadly the AirPods Pro are not compatible with me because of the tips which hurt my ears.

Currently using the new Gen 3 and they are amazing! I do have a full life inside Apple ecosystem besides my Gaming Rig and Gaming Laptop.

I didn't know CT scans could be that accurate. Impressive really when you see the size of the (moving) machine !

There are also (desktoptop) microCT machines, which can work with much smaller samples and produce images with much higher resolution. I have the pleasure to work with three such machines, and we routinely scan samples with a size smaller than a centimeter and with a voxel size well below 10 µm.

Here's a small (500 kb) movie of a staircase snail which I recently scanned: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/73241/download/suppl/31/ This specimen is only 2.6 mm small.

So do airpods actually sound better than the standard wired headphones? If they don't, this is a lot of fancy engineering for some pretty bad headphones. Maybe they just didn't fit my ears or something, but I've always hated them.

It does. But it's not about that. It's about being able to get rid of wires and associated mess.

Are wires a mess? Looking at the Zoom calls I've been on, I've never heard "oh sorry I'm all tangled up in my wires", but have seen "my batteries are dead" or "my headphones won't pair with my computer", etc. (I say "seen" because you don't hear much from people debugging their "magic" wireless headphones.) This has added up to many person-hours of delays, while the wires just keep working.

If you go outside and try to do anything with wired headphones, the wires are a constant struggle. When my left AirPods Pro had to be replaced, I had to use some wired EarPods on my commute. The cable was always catching on something. I was so relieved to get the replacement and be able to get rid of the wires again.

I like being able to walk around, even exercise, during meetings.

And the AirPods Pro provide better outbound audio when I’m speaking than my Sony Bluetooth headset.

> "my headphones won't pair with my computer"

That's the other things Airpods solves (assuming you're on a Mac)

The pairing process is so simple and seamless, it's the only bluetooth headphones I've ever used that isn't a huge pain to pair every time I want to use them (and especially the first setup). When I first got them, I popped open the lid of the case next to my phone, it popped up, I clicked the button to pair, and it's paired. And any device logged into your Apple ID is automatically paired to them too, so I just went over to my laptop and it was already connected.

There’s a huge value in not having to untangle wires every time you use headphones even if there is a hit to sound quality.

Also having the ability to use one earbud without having the weight of the cable tugging at your ear is underrated.

Yes! Never thought about that, but it is. Especially for calls!

They sound better to me than the standard issue Apple wired earphones, but not remarkably better. The Pros sound much better, but don't stay in my ears so I've repurchased the original design (v2).

The game changer for me is how convenient the UX is. Whichever Apple device that you're near can connect, or automatically connects to the right device most of the time and it's pretty seamless. Any other wireless headphones I've used (including the recent Beats Studio buds) are frustrating in comparison.

I definitely won't go into longer calls without them.

I'm no audiophile (but I do have standards) but the real appeal is they mostly "just work".

I like them for cases where wired headphones wouldn't work, like when I'm doing the dishes, listening to a podcast, but don't want it to be on speakers because it'll wake up the baby.

In fact, on reflection, I almost only listen to podcasts on mine, so I don't really care about sound quality.

I can only comment on the pros. There's not a ton you can do to compete with something with much larger drivers and a good crossover circuit. They certainly sound acceptable, but the real upside is that they don't have wires and they have shockingly good sound cancellation. You can even use them as lightweight hearing protection - I'd estimate they give a good 15-20dB of noise reduction against small explosions, so they're sufficient for things like nail guns or .22 fire.

The sound quality is really good, but now worth the high price. It's all about the convince of not having wires.

I have had Pro's for a year and I'm still not convinced that they are worth of the money. Cleaning ears & pods every day makes them usable but they still drop from the ears sometimes.

I think the Pros sound amazing. I used to have the Sony WH-XM1000 v3 and v4 noise-canceling headphones, but sold both after using the Airpod Pros for a few days and never went back.

The Airpod Pro sound quality is maybe 90% as good as the Sonys, but the form factor is INCREDIBLY convenient. No more sweating and constantly adjusting the earcups and headbands... just plop them in and they fit my ears perfectly and never fall out. The noise canceling works VERY well, as good as any other I've tried, whether at home, at work, or on a plane.

I also love that they work so seamlessly with some Apple devices, like being able to wirelessly watch the same movie from my iPad to two sets of Airpods. Apple has their own proprietary wireless chipset and protocol, so the interconnect between Apple stuff and Airpods works a LOT better than using them with Android or Windows hardware (sadly). Bluetooth works but is far less reliable.

That was the first Apple product I've ever purchased, and it has since become my favorite-ever piece of technology. I honestly adore them so much it makes me gush (and blush) when I talk about them... egads. The Sonys were always a love-hate relationship, with great sound quality but terrible comfort. The Airpods have both in equal measure.

> Sony WH-XM1000 v3

They aren’t even comparable. Sony’s being over ear design cancels noise way better, but Pro’s are much more practical for sleep and calls.

Just compared my Pros and XM4 back-to-back and the Pros seem to have better noise canceling but YMWV with getting a good enough seal.

Transparency mode is where the AirPods take it without question.

I did in fact compare them and the difference was negligible to me. I am extremely happy with the Airpod Pros despite having had the Sonys for years before that. The Sonys had OK noise canceling but it was hard to get a consistent seal, especially as my ears got sweaty after short sessions. Never had an issue with the Airpods.

I'm no audiophile, granted. Just a satisfied average Joe. The Airpods are way more convenient.

You experience matches mine almost 100%. I have a WH-XM1000 v3 and AirPods Pro and I reach for my AirPods Pro more often than the Sony's. The noise cancellation imo is negligible if you're using it under normal circumstances. The only scenario where the Sony's outdid the AirPods Pro was on a flight.

All said and done, I consider AirPods pro one of my best investments in life. Not only is the connectivity / switching between devices amazing, the sound quality is fantastic for earphones that size.

The sound is fine, the active noise cancellation is phenomenal. Transparency mode is also nice at times when you need to be aware of your surroundings.

So much packaged sophistication yet can't match high fidelity audio.

I picked up a KZ-ZSN with a pair of dynamic and balanced armature drivers and haven't looked back in terms of sound quality. Imagine my surprise when I purchased another pair with 4BA + 1DD..

Both were under $30.

To each their own I guess.

No, they sound pretty crap to be honest if you're used to high quality over the ear headphones. But that's not really their purpose. They are ideal as portable earpieces - walking around town, on the train, folding your laundry, or any other use case where you can't sit down and plug in your headphones. The lack of a wire is very convenient.

Although these days I just use wired earpods. Can't be arsed to replace my last airpods whose battery inevitably died.

Is there any information about the type of CT scanning equipment and methods they use?

That's the missing piece for that Designed By Apple 300 dollar book.

Sounds like a weird PR stunt. I'm really curious who is behind those CT scans, is it a CT manufacturer, a metrology lab or a 3d viz software company?

My former coworker worked on airpods. Most of RnD for them was made in Apple's Shenzhen RnD centre which existence Apple for long time tried to hide.

the first airpods were released in Dec 2016, roughly the same time apple opened the Shenzhen r&d center, so I don't see how r&d for this product was done there.

Apple had it running since much earlier than 2016.

The earliest I heard of Apple running something like a permanent engineering centre in the city was in 2013.

I was saying them trying to hide its existence because for long Apple demanded its employees in China to even refrain from publishing the fact of their employment with them like on LinkedIn

But the industry is too small, everybody knew about it for years. So 2016, was more like an official inauguration, when Apple admitted its existence, moved all their offices in the city to Kerry plaza, and put a nameplate on it.

> Most of RnD for them was made in Apple's Shenzhen RnD centre which existence Apple for long time tried to hide.

I keep hearing online about this famous R&D center, where apparently they work on absolutely cutting edge stuff. Except Apple employees I know never mentioned it.

Wonder why people would push that narrative that engineering is switching to China.

Nobody needs to push it, for a reason that's been the case for the last 20 years.

I simply cannot find a single place in US doing many engineering services I can get in China.

Amazon, Google, Square, Facebook, Microsoft, Roblox, Snapchat all other silicon valley cool kids have since setup themselves suspiciously close to Apple's offices in Kerry plaza. And most of them did so long after China-US relations went really sour After Trump. All equally so tried to keep their presence there very low key.

> Except Apple employees I know never mentioned it.

Maybe they don't work on the hardware side? US side of the company simply barely sees much of the "fieldwork" part.

Anybody knows how they create such a website? I have seen such websites built for showcases of several tech products.

I don’t know if this website used it but scrollama.js can do it. https://pudding.cool/process/introducing-scrollama/

id like to see a ct scan of the brain using these devices

I wish they also did the second generation AirPods (also from 2019). Would love to see how they compare to the gen 1 and gen 3.

I think this might be the first and only instance I've ever seen of a non-traditional scrolling experience actually being a benefit to a website

I agree. I was able to scroll back up easily to see specific parts without some acceleration taking over.

And the implementation of it was brilliant. Didn't mess with the scrolling feel very much at all.

Completely agree. First and only, in my experience. Genuinely impressive on mobile.

Apple's own website has used same design pattern on many pages. Similarly, Xiaomi also

The bleeding edge $whatever functions required to create it meant that even a browser from a couple years ago only displays a white blankness. It is not a good design for a website.

This is such cool content but the way it's presented is so fucking frustrating to me. I wish the narrative wasn't so intrinsically tied to the actual data. I hate that I can't blow up and rotate the models side by side, the whole thing feels so shallow. Now to be clear in an absolute sense this is a good article, this is cool content and the scrolling as something other than scrolling works better than in most instances.

My criticism is that the format does a disservice to the data, it's not the best way to present something this cool.

I think what's missing is a 3D viewer at the bottom where you could play around with the models yourself.

Terrible scrolljacking interface.

This is easily the best use of "scrolljacking" I've ever seen. How, exactly, would you like to interact with the 3d CT scans? A video? An embedded 3d viewer to let you control the orientation?

An embedded 3d viewer to let you control the orientation

> Apple was not the first company to develop wireless earbuds, but they’ve defined the category since introducing AirPods in 2016.

Sigh.

It's true. If unconnected wireless earbuds existed before AirPods, I certainly never saw any.

There were many. They just weren't particularly good UX wise. Some of them were great / good / fine soundwise, but the UX typically sucked.

Most definitely they existed (even the quote admits to that), but unlike other areas, I do not see other manufacturers following Apple in either functionality or aesthetics (compare what happened with slate smartphones); and I most definitely do not even see Apple leading in any metric, specially not in 2016.

According to this the first kickstarter for a pair of wireless earbuds with a charging case was in 2014 https://www.androidcentral.com/history-true-wireless-earbuds

Sigh all you want. Truth doesn't change.

I think Apple brought wireless earbuds to masses.

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