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Comment by mattcantstop | Hacker News Reader

I had a similar issue with Apple a few days ago. I was running and an AirPod fell out of my ear and I just happened to be by a drainage drain. It fell through the grate. I immediately rode my bike to the Apple Store (still with a working case and left AirPod) and purchased a replacement right AirPod. The Apple person who helped disconnected the left one and told me to have it plugged in for 30 minutes so the case and AirPods could reconnect and connect to my phone.

Except they didn't. I brought it back to Apple after lots of phone calls and troubleshooting and Apple has now told me that something must have gotten messed up with the software. I am able to buy a new pair of AirPods if I would like to, or I can spend $250 for them to diagnose the issue (the price of a new set of AirPods).

I can't imagine having a problem like this that seems so obvious to be a software bug and passing that cost down to the consumer instead of making it right. I left the Apple Store in a worse situation than when I arrived. I had a working case and one working AirPod. I left with having spent $90 on my replacement AirPod, with none of them working.

I worked at Apple years ago in Apple Retail. I am shocked the people there thought this was the right approach to take. I love Apple products, but this is making me rethink the Apple ecosystem. I am certainly not buying another pair of AirPods. The environmental impacts of this also irk me. Instead of trying to solve the problem they want me to just throw away my AirPods and buy new ones.

If a company has a software issue and pushes the cost of that bug onto the consumer the company is incredibly unlikely to ever solve it. Apple pushed the pain point of their software issue onto the consumer. That's a painful experience as a customer.

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This is why I love wired headphones. Even if I lose them, I can replace them quickly for a lot less than $250 and I never have to worry about syncing or batteries or disconnecting or any of the other problems that routinely plague bluetooth devices.

are you under the mistaken impression that the cheapest pair of wireless earbuds is $250?

Well, I did honestly think that was what a pair of airpods cost. Apple isn't known for being cheap. Apple's website says they want $170 for "AirPods (3rd generation) with Lightning Charging Case" though so I don't know what you have to buy to pay $250 for pair when you already have a charger!

I also assumed that non-airpods were not an option because most people who have airpods only have them "because apple".

I mean, airpods aren't known for being the best when it comes to sound quality compared to other bluetooth options. Even Macworld thinks beats sound better (https://www.macworld.com/article/550796/beats-fit-pro-review...). Beats as in "Beats by Dr. Dre" which are also well known for being expensive and stylish while under-delivering in terms of quality. I'm not even an audiophile, but I've seen it said over and over again that you can get more for your money if you're willing to avoid overpriced status symbol brands.

That's a small irony given that Apple owns Beats as well.

You can currently purchase 3rd gen apple AirPods for less than $100 on Amazon

Sounds entirely legitimate.

Actually I looked closer, and I cannot see any such thing.

In fact, even refurbished 2nd generation AirPods are $93: https://www.amazon.com/Apple-AirPods-Charging-Case-Renewed/d...

Sorry just checked, you’re right I mixed them up w 2nd gen.

https://a.co/d/g8IRO8W

There are pros and cons, sure. But AirPods are actually very nice.

"I dropped my wired headphones into a sewer" is likely not a very common occurrence. In fact they have a built-in anti-sewer lanyard... Unlike AirPods which fall out of your ears continually.

Wired headphones used to drop much more frequently for me - cables get snagged and headphones yeeted. Cables used to last much less than wireless.

I snagged my wired headphones and ripped my phone out of my hand, which then detached and hit the concrete.

That said, I use wireless over-ears which are also very unlikely to fall in a sewer unless you live somewhere with open sewers

And replacing wired headphones will run you ... what fraction of Airpods' cost?

If you're not especially partial to quality, $5 to $25 will get a replacement set. Roughly 10% of the cost of Apple's kit.

You can easily buy lanyards for your airpods pro.

I'm glad there exists an accessory for purchase that turns your $250 wireless earbuds into $19 wired ones.

My comment was meant sarcastically even though such accessories exist.

There is a lot more to the AirPods than the fact they are wireless. They sound great, good noise cancellation, and very comfortable to wear for long periods. I am amazed how short-sighted many of the comments here are. You cannot find a cheap wired headphones with anything close to the overall comfort and quality of Air Pods.

Well, when one product costs 10x as much as the other does, I would expect it to be a nicer product. But for me, it is not even possible for a product to be so much better as to justify that price increase. Headphones have exactly one use case for me: listening to music (or playing a game on a handheld device) when in public, so as not to disturb others. So we're talking 1h max of quick and dirty use. All the features you mentioned don't actually add any utility for my usage.

The KZ ZSNs are on par for audio quality

Sorry, but cheap chi-fi IEMs easily beat them. Other response says KZ ZSN, but that's not really that. I've recently got Moondrop Chu 2 (a ~ $25 budget IEMs) and they're amazing. The case is aluminum, they're quite small and comfortable to wear (should be fine for smaller ears) while fitting snugly into the ear giving good, passive noise isolation, the wire is very soft and fits neatly around your ear preventing them from being pulled out. If you break the wire, you can buy a replacement one following the 2 pin standard. If you wish so, you can get a cable with a microphone - even worst buds have better mics than any true wireless buds can currently deliver.

Seriously, air pods advantage is just being wireless and having some software features like ANC (they're good overall, but that's nothing special). If that is not a killer feature for somebody, they're just really overpriced ok set of earphones.

Automatic handoff, conversation awareness, transparency mode, and how they work on calls are the killer features for me. I also have IEMs and appreciate good quality audio when that's what I'm looking for, but I see my AirPods as serving more of a utilitarian purpose. They're not for active listening, they're for exercise, working from the cafe, taking a long call while cooking a meal, etc.

If your earphone price range is $19 then those things will indeed not be the right choice for you, that's true. But there are wired earphones which cost 10x as much as Airpods, so your statement only shows your bias.

I've had my AirPods Pro for 3 years and they have never once fallen out of my ears, but I don't wear them while biking or running or anything like that.

But like I said, they are very nice. I've had probably 100 headphones over the years and these are the ones I enjoy the most. They are indeed a nice product.

> Unlike AirPods which fall out of your ears continually.

If you genuinely have that problem you're doing something very wrong with your Airpods when many of its users are able to do long walks and runs without them ever budging.

I wear mine to the gym, on hikes, long runs etc - I can confidently say I have never, ever had them fall out in 3 years of ownership.

That is a bit too harsh, his ears may not be the right size or shape. I have had a lot of problems with AirPod like headphones and had to try several models before I found ones that don't fall off.

Maybe you are talking about different things? The normal AirPod has a fixed shape - it either fits your ear canal or it doesn’t. You definitely should try it out before buying it.

The AirPods Pro has changeable sizes, so it really shouldn’t fall off anyone’s ear.

But it does.

So maybe it isn't a perfect product.

I haven't tried the AirPods yet and the shops around here (remote Atlantic islands) don't have an unboxed pair for me to try. From my experience the Pro models would work fine but the other models will probably fall when I am doing work in the woodshop or doing yard work. I have maybe three or four in ear headphones lying around that didn't fit the bill. For some people, that type of headphones don't fit.

Couldn't get my AirPod Pros to stay in with any of the tips I could find. Tried silicone, foam, all shapes and sizes, different amounts of pressure and depth in ear, but nothing worked. They'd just slowly creep out and eventually drop out, especially if I spoke.

Regular 2nd gen AirPods are like glued in though, I could headbang or do handstands and they wouldn't go anywhere. Go figure...

In my experience the fit can be very dependent on the precise orientation in the ear. When I get it right they almost never fall out, when the angle is off a bit they hold for a few minutes at most.

> That is a bit too harsh, his ears may not be the right size or shape.

Correction: his ears have perfectly right size and shape. The thing which might not have the right size and shape is the Airpod. We do not fit ourselves to human made objects, but the other way around.

Read as: "My ears happen to be of the right size that AirPods fit inside them without falling out, and if your ears don't conform in that way, you must be a broken human."

> you're doing something very wrong with your Airpods when many of its users are able to do long walks and runs without them ever budging

It's a product relying on friction fit with a body part that's shaped differently on every person, what makes you even consider the individual user is at fault?

Also in my experience Airpods require a very precise orientation in the ear to really hold well. If the angle is a bit off they can fall out within 30 seconds, if it's exactly right I can listen to music for an hour without any issue. But I can't eat or drink in that time as that almost guarantees they'll slip out, and lying on my back is also not a good idea apparently.

Those things are otherwise really cool devices but this is definitely a problem. I've seen a YouTube review where the guy said he's on his third pair by now.

Airpods and similar shaped earbuds just never fit well in my ears. I couldn't tell you why. But unless they're like IEMs with molded fit pieces or those rubbery cones that dig in deep like hearing protection, they're going to fall right out of my ears.

I don't like earbuds, I avoid them. They're great for other people, and that's awesome, but they're not for me.

Now, where have I heard that before? ...

<https://uxdesign.cc/youre-holding-it-wrong-how-to-blame-the-...>

<http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/06/25/iphone.problems.re...>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8972707>

Not everybody stands in-ear headphones for long periods of time (the other ones are much easier to handle for me). Maybe this was an issue only with Airpods 1 but still, earbud types or over-ear are more comfortable

They do indeed have a lot of nice features:

- Intuitive pairing interface

- Built in lanyards

- Excellent bass response

- Standard connection protocol

- Infinite battery life

- Unbreakable encryption

Wires can be great. Unfortunately it seems like high quality wired ear buds are getting harder to find: a lot of distributors seem to have swapped them out for the wireless version of the same product.

> Unbreakable encryption

All wired earphones I have ever used had a line connect which is analog and completely unencrypted. What wired earphones have you had that where encrypted?

The advantage here is that you need a physical connection to decrypt the content.

Not if you have a good microphone and the sound is loud

That's not a failure of the protocol but of the user. It's like saying PGP for email can be broken if you have a telescope to look at the user's screen.

I wonder if there are attacks based on RF emissions along a cable to get the sound

Yes, there are. You can even get video signals from a video cable.

Eh... If your adversary can break modern bluetooth encryption, I probably... would not bet on this? I would think that with appropriate radio equipment you can probably pick up audio from many wired headphones.

bluetooth encryption has been broken before. "KNOB" (https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec19-antonioli.pdf) was less than 5 years ago. The kind of equipment that could pick up the audio over a wired headset from across the room could probably pick up something from the speakers of wireless earbuds too.

I think the GP meant that in theory someone could break into a Bluetooth connection and snoop on your phone calls. But with a wired headset, there's nothing to break into. "Unbreakable encryption" is a bit tongue-in-cheek, there.

> there's nothing to break into

Wired headphones are giving off EMI of the signal they're playing, one could sense that signal with the right equipment and know what you're listening to remotely.

The worst thing about bluetooth headphones is that people who use them subject everyone else to their awful microphone quality while either oblivious or in denial about the fact.

I've reviewed old meeting recordings, when my notes were not clear/complete, and after getting over what I sound like generally (an issue on any recording device!) I sound clearer than some people who are using wired headsets. I'm actually using a bone-conduction headpiece (Shokz OpenRun, a friend has some from a different manufacturer and he sounds fine too when using them for a phone call) so it might be even more surprising that I sound reasonable.

If someone does have a problem with how I sound then they can buy me a decent wired headset, or just stop inviting me to remote meetings that I don't want to be in anyway :)

Shokz products work surprisingly well and the sound has also gotten a lot better. I commend them for keeping to the same formula and iterating on it. The microphone was better than the Sony headphones last time I tried them.

My comment was unnecessarily inflammatory, apologies for that. I do concur about unnecessary meetings!

I would add what is probably the #1 benefit, IMO: zero lag.

Hi-end wired in-ears / headphone won't go away anytime soon thank god. Having firefly dac and sennheiser ie-900 in addition to AirPods would give you access to Apple Music hi-res lossless on the go. The only problem is - after having used AirPodsPro 2 my tolerance for street noise is extremely low and noise cancellation kind of competes with reference sound reproduction features in a lot of products I think.

> harder to find

Get into IEMs (in ear monitors), there's plenty to choose, with different sound signatures and excellent sound quality. Most IEMs also have detachable cables!

> - Intuitive pairing interface

Yes. They always connect to the exact device I wish them to connect to and not some other device, thus forcing me to play the bluetooth shuffle game.

I mean sure, those upsides are nice, but don’t you hate it when your wires get a knot in them? Ruins your whole day.

Totally worth having to deal with charging, fiddly volume controls, losing them, and the complexity and power usage needed to transmit audio to them wirelessly, to eliminate that possibility from ever happening again.

I bought wireless headphones (for $20!) because I got tired of getting tangled up in the cable and yanking the headphones (or my phone) away when cycling, and never looked back.

Definitely the killer feature of wireless headphones I'd say. Although I bet if you used some kind of easy break magnetic connection like Apple used to have on macbooks you could get a lot of the same utility back with wired.

Not really, because I'd still have to have a wire flopping around and when it does get snagged I lose my audio. Its still not as good as just not having a wire at all.

I can pair my headphones to my laptop, start playing something, and then walk all around my house without any interruptions. I can't do that with wired headphones, I'd have to carry something around with me everywhere I go. I can walk around the room without issue. I can quickly get up and go make some food in the kitchen without interruption. I can answer the door and sign for a package. All kinds of things that don't require me to then change to a different device, restart some stream there, etc. Its just freedom to get up and move.

Best of both worlds: I got a Fiio BTR 5 [0] and now headphones become "wireless" when I want. Plus, use them as HQ DAC on your laptop or phone in non-wireless mode.

[0]: https://www.fiio.com/btr5

i have one of these and the smaller btr3 as well. i really love that you can use them while theyre recharging as well

Not sure why the price is relevant here, I use wired headphones and they’re (moondrop variations) about 500 USD.

They’re also less convenient since I “need” an external dongle to drive them and a lightning to usb adapter.

Basically there are trade offs both ways

My rule is use wireless headphones for phones and wired headphones everywhere else. For a phone, the phone is in your pocket a lot, and having a wire from your pocket to your head is a pain, and you have to untangle it and whatnot.

For a laptop or desktop, the computer is open in front of you. The pairing and unpairing process to turn wireless headphones on and off is 5000x less convenient than just plugging headphones in. You don't need batteries for wired headphones and they never accidentally are connected or disconnected at the wrong time.

The physical difference of the two scenarios makes a big difference. Also maybe someday they will make a Bluetooth software stack that doesn't suck, but it hasn't happened yet.

> This is why I love wired headphones. Even if I lose them, I can replace them quickly for a lot less than $250 and I never have to worry about syncing or batteries or disconnecting or any of the other problems that routinely plague bluetooth devices.

I switched to bluetooth because I always broke my wires. however, I still manage to break wires in the bluetooth headphones (and I don't like the earpod type)

This plus a Qudelix5K is my headphones endgame at this point. I can’t stand TWS earbuds for many reasons, but having the ability to apply DSP tuning to whatever headphones I plug in, and still have “wireless” freedom has been great.

I had this “should be 30 minutes” but is really “never”… after getting an AirPod replacement in August this year.

In my case it was actually a pretty easy to fix once I knew what it was. You have to do a little fiddling to check this since it involves a couple reset/pairing cycles with just a single AirPod in the case … but if you check I bet the replacement has an older firmware since it’s been sitting in the stores spare parts room.

So you trigger the firmware update with just one AirPod in the case (which was pretty easy and I could just follow the Apple information) and then once the firmware is the same then yeah they will both do the automatic pairing like the Genius Bar tech expected them to… the issue might be related to a recent firmware changing something and the stores not having updated process to ensure the firmware is correct because apple are probably going to prefer this having a software fix not a fix that takes up more human store employees time.

That sounds terrible.

In Australia at least I’d feel confident that getting in contact with the ACCC (govt consumer protection agency) would at least get that (eventually) resolved (new AirPods).

A software bug that bricks a new device is definitely a defect of workmanship and warranted for the expected life of the device.

Even threatening Apple with the ACCC is almost always enough to get a full repair or replace. ACCC policy is very clear and strict. If you have to go speak to the ACCC, Apple have likely already broken the law.

https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/problem-with-a-product-or-...

My anecdotal evidence is below .

I went to the Apple Store to get replacement AirPod Pros and while I had to do it a few times it was still under warranty and they gave me a set of replacement Airpors pro.

I received a broken Pro Display XDR (red line on it) and they gave me a replacement but I had to pick it up and also give them the old one.

I was having screen problems with my first MacBook Pro I bought with my Pell grant (zebra pattern with the backlight) they gave me the newer model of my MacBook Pro. This is where they earned my loyalty.

The worst experience I had with Apple is that they lost my Touchpad Macbook but they eventually returned it.

> I was having screen problems with my first MacBook Pro I bought with my Pell grant (zebra pattern with the backlight) they gave me the newer model of my MacBook Pro. This is where they earned my loyalty.

I had a MacBook with screen and display issues. Multiple times they denied any issue. Even when I showed them that if we did a fresh install of macOS I could reliably and repeatedly cause a kernel panic in (IIRC) Safari, when doing something with the GPU.

While there was an active recall for the same issue.

Similarly, they insisted nothing was wrong with the logic board on another Mac. There was.

And then when the charging circuit died on my step-daughter's MBA (healthy battery, laptop worked fine on AC, just couldn't charge), I thought $2-300. Nope "The repair estimate is $890. Maybe you should look at a new Mac instead?"

Can you not return at least the replacement AirPod you bought at least for a refund? Not sure where you are, but there are usually consumer protection laws that require that to be possible.

I've had the exact same issue and this was the resolution - they swapped the replacement AirPod again and the new replacement worked as expected.

They should be able to. It would be classified as a repeat repair or DOA. To get a replacement airpod they have to create a repair. Almost all of the "repairs" are covered by a 90 day warranty.

I have an iPad I left on a shelf for a while that is now a paperweight because during that time, in what I assume was a transition from iTunes to Apple accounts, the account it was logged into ceased to exist.

I was actually able to reregister an account using the same email address as the one I previously had, thinking maybe that would work, but still couldn't log back in.

In other words: you don't own the device you paid for.

Sure they do. You’ve never accidentally broken something you owned?

Broken, as in physically broken? Sure, but that can be fixed/repaired if it's not beyond any hope of that.

Broken, as in "the software is broken"? Well, at least all my devices are repairable, if that happens. Even if it might require the nuclear option of reinstalling/reflashing. But at least there are no shenanigangs such as these and the ones OP described happening.

But now we’re just going down a path where it’s not a binary broken/not broken but “how broken is it?”

If I change the oil in my car but forget to put the plug back in and then start it and drive off and seize my engine, it’s basically broken. With enough effort, it could be rebuilt. Is it the responsibility of the manufacturer to expend the necessary effort to do so, though?

I'm sorry but that's false equivalence. If you do something to your device and it stops working as a result, sure, that's on you. But if your device is untouched, but stops working because the manufacturer rejiggered some virtual ones and zeroes on a server possibly halfway around the world, that's a completely different situation.

No need to apologize. I didn’t say they are equivalent, I’m trying to draw analogies. If you leave your car sitting for 5 years, you will probably have a bit of a hard time starting it too. If you leave a garden or house untouched for 5 years, it’s not going to be pretty.

They didn’t give us much to go on about their situation. I’ve not heard of an iPad not being able to be turned on and unlocked with its passcode because of an iTunes account or server issue. If that is indeed what happened, I agree that is not cool. But I doubt that is what is going on. I’m curious to know more.

And yet I guarantee the Linux computer that's been sitting in my closet for 10+ years will boot up just fine. As would it's Windows partition. As would the old MacBook I don't have anymore. Those are a lot more analogous than cars or gardens.

Ssds don’t hold data for 10 years so there’s a strong possibility that in fact it would not “boot up just fine”.

If there’s critical keys that have been lost etc it might indeed be unrecoverable, especially in this era of automatic bitlocker.

It has spinning rust. Additionally it's true that SSDs have trouble retaining data for long periods of time, but afaik this is separate to actual degradation. So if it had an SSD it might not boot off it, but the hardware is otherwise fully usable. Same situation if you lose an encryption key.

This is more equivalent to garaging your Tesla for 10 years, firing up for a drive and wondering why the cell network no longer works. Tools that require infrastructure are dependent on things that can cease existing one day.

Yes, and if I had a car that depends on Internet connection to function as a car, I'd be quite pissed. :)

It was only a couple of years, nowhere near 10 or even half of that.

I can get replacement hardware for my lenovo laptop, it got repaired twice under the warranty. My android cellphone is on it's 3rd screen. My bicycle got a bunch of new pieces this summer. Fixing hardware isn't that different from fixing software.

> Fixing hardware isn't that different from fixing software.

It absolutely is different. How do you propose even changing the software when there is an interlock preventing access?

Should Apple also be responsible for people who enable FileVault, set a 50 character password of random characters, and then not write it down? How would you fix that software problem without introducing glaring vulnerabilities?

Software is scalable in ways that hardware simply is not. It presents vastly different challenges than swapping out standardized pluggable components. It’s incredibly difficult to change a complicated software system without introducing side effects. Comparing an operating system to a bicycle is absurd.

Sure you do. You own a very nice paperweight.

...with some rentable extra functionality.

Did a restore not work?

Sounds like it happened around 2011 when iCloud was introduced [1], but way before Activation Lock was a thing (that happened in 2013 [2]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_7

I don't remember the details at this point, I do remember spending quite a bit of time exploring every avenue I could find on the internet, but still couldn't get it to work. I brought to the Apple store and they basically told me I was out of luck and they couldn't do anything about it.

I thought you could just hold the button on the back to factory reset?

It probably does still work, but you need to append the one-time icloud passcode to the login password.

> I worked at Apple years ago in Apple Retail.

You haven’t said if you emailed Tim Cook to see if they take it more seriously. I’ve read anecdotes of some people getting their problems solved by writing to some top names at Apple. No guarantee that it’d work, but it’s worth a try.

Steve Jobs used to occasionally reply directly to tech support emails, for better or for worse.

Or, more simply: go back to the store, calmly tell them that your property was made non-functional by their staff, and you want them to make right on that.

If they decline, calmly say you'll resolve the matter in small claims court with a suit for damaging your property.

People: stop letting corps push you around. Exercise your rights.

What do you think the response from the Genius is going to be when you do that?

probably will hand you a card with an email like legal@apple.com and ask you to leave?

I think you should reconsider mentioning legal action. As soon as you do, they may need to stop helping you, and might refer you to council.

Do what you can to resolve the matter, if you want to file in small claims do it, but warning/threatening them ahead of time is not helpful.

I wonder if the new one is a different generation than your original set, I don’t think they’ll work together if that’s the case. They have tiny model numbers printed on them, do they match? They probably gave you the right one since they’d see the model you already owned in your profile and match it in their inventory, but maybe…

I don't think there's any company out there that would actually care to fix a situation like this. We're all just disposable customers to them...

Maybe, but I know that Google or Samsung don't care about me. There has never been any pretence that Hoover give much more than a Walmart greeter level of concern for you, Microsoft would throw you under a bus for an extra cent.

Americans seem to think that Apple really cares about them and not just in a way to extract as much as possible from your wallet.

Apple would throw you under an Airbus...

My experience with pretty much any consumer company is the opposite? They generally help out.

Random example: I had an expensive Sonos speaker just the other week that broke in a move across the Atlantic. Sonos support helped for nearly an hour trying reset options, then gave me a 30% discount coupon for any product, even though the speaker was long out of warranty.

It's really hit or miss, and kind of depends on the product category, and the manufacturer. Sonos has an uphill battle convincing people to even think about an option other than AirPods. Some manufacturers will give their support reps tremendous freedom to just send free shit out for positive word of mouth.

Apple is in no need of positive word of mouth, and in fact thrives despite a very vocal subset of consumers that are adamantly against anything Apple does (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly).

That is, Sonos has to work to keep you a customer, but plenty of Apple customers will just buy Apple no matter what.

I don't think Sonos really cares either. Their shuffle has been broken forever (you simply can't shuffle a playlist on Google Assistant), my Roams frequently randomly disconnect, they tried to alienate half their userbase with the S2 update and only changed their tune with massive outcry, the desktop app auto-update doesn't work on Mac... I can go on and on. I tried to report these issues to support, and then to their beta community, and every single thing I reported was ignored for years. Shrug.

I really like their hardware but their software is so bad it's making me want to quit their ecosystem altogether. Their support is bad too.

How did they help? Your expensive speaker is still broken. All they accomplished is making it likely to get another direct sale. Anybody can get a 20% discount on almost any Sonos product by buying it retail instead of direct.

> Your expensive speaker is still broken.

Well, they didn't break it. Why should it be their responsibility to replace something they didn't break for free?

Now if the product was defective or something, sure, but this is asking way too much.

I wasn't asking for anything. I wouldn't expect much help from Sonos, and, indeed, and the OP got what I'd expect.

If pressed, I'd wish at least an aspiring boutique manufacturer like Sonos would make service manuals and replacement parts available. But again, I wouldn't expect them to do that unless they were forced to. (And it may not have been viable or cost effective for the OP in any event.)

I don't think the expectation is to do it for free, but it sure would be nice if companies could repair their expensive products for less than the cost of a new system.

Modern electronics is just planned obsolescence + replacement.

I dunno, I own nearly like a third or half of Sonos's product line, and have had numerous software and UI problems with them. Their support has never been very helpful and I just gave up. Giving you 30% off an expensive new product isn't really the same as just repairing it...

In Europe you’d be covered under consumer protection laws.

I have no idea how a case like this would play out in the US. But it certainly feels like something that should be illegal.

Of course it's not legal. OP's property was damaged by store staff.

Also, in the US there's implied merchantability warranties, and most people have no idea it exists. If your expensive high quality headphones die a week after the one year warranty ends, implied merchantabilty still applies, because people expect headphones to last several years if treated appropriately.

OP needs to go back to the Apple store and say "I came in with a working airpod and case, and left with nothing working. Please make this right."

If they refuse, say "my next stop is small claims court for your staff damaging my property."

They'll just shrug at you and say okay.

In the US nothing happens. We only protect our rich people, not our consumers

A climbing equipment company (camp) replaced a carabiner free of charge for damage I had caused to it due to my own fault.

It's a few bucks of aluminum, but they've guaranteed more loyalty than they already had.

Actually, that's a good point... outdoor companies tend to be great at that!

Patagonia repaired/replaced damaged clothing for me, Yakima and Specialized sent me free parts, NiteRider fixed a bike light, ReeLight sent me a replacement from overseas, Osprey replaced a backpack after my dog chewed it up... all for free.

Maybe it's just electronics companies that's bad at this stuff

To think that I've been able to mix and match left and right earbuds from the same manufacturer+model, and they pair up as the same, and be able to order replacements only from one side from Aliexpress, directly from the manufacturer after explaining myself, for very little, really tells me a lot about this unnecessary convenience baked in, where the lesser option is much cheaper and less hassle when it doesn't work, for very little sacrifice.

Also, just a heads up on Apple ID's 2FA: it's different from the trusted number used in recovery, which can be repeated across many IDs. I had my parents set my number for their Apple IDs, as they seem to constantly forget their passwords and don't really understand much of the app downloading process, so I end up getting the SMS but it doesn't interfere with my own accounts.

Similar - 2021 MBP 16". splash of red wine on the keyboard and despite all the usual solutions a few keys don't work. Works fine with external keyboard. Apple Store: we can send it away to be fixed but you must agree to a charge of up to $1600 because we don't know how far the damage has gone. Me: It all works except a few keys. Apple: That's the deal, and actually we'd recommend its not worth repairing and you should buy a new one.

You might try a third party repair place.

Sounds similar. Charging circuit on an MBA. Laptop worked perfectly on AC power. Battery health via various tests and Apple diagnostics, healthy, just 0% charge.

"That will be $890 to repair. Maybe you should wander around and have a look at the new MBAs."

Have you tried just pairing them again like-new? As in put both in one case, close it, open it, and hold the sync button until it glows white?

I've personally lost more Airpods than I want to admit and now have roving pairs of unpaired AirPods in my apartment, which I randomly re-pair when I'm in a hurry and don't want to find the correct pair.

I'd imagine that's as much of a torture test for the pairing system as could exist and it still works...

Anecdotally, I've had several good experiences with Apple support and no bad ones. The one bad experience I had wasn't supports fault (there was a bug where if you tried to use a Time Machine backup on a Airport to restore onto a new machine it would sometimes backup the new machine instead and wipe out your backup) and even then they admitted it was a bug and not user error immediately.

> or I can spend $250 for them to diagnose the issue (the price of a new set of AirPods).

FYI they are on sale right now for $199 on Amazon, and Costco has them for $10 less. Hopefully you can get Apple to do the right thing though! At the very least you should be able to "return" the AirPod you bought from them, since it doesn't actually work.

My one year old AirPods Pro has a problem charging the left ear pod. And, this is my 3rd AirPods in as many years. I have promised myself that I won't buy another one once its battery dies like the previous two AirPods.

It's well known that the contacts occasionally need cleaning, and there are all sorts of tools to do so that cost barely a few dollars.

I have cleaned contacts everywhere with electronics alcohol wipes. I see that the pins inside the left holster are not as protruded as they are on the right holster of the case. I have tried to pull it gently with a tweezer but it has not helped. Its 1 year warranty period just expired as well.

When you have near complete vertical integration there is no reason to handle edge cases. Everything plays well together because you made it all. Until it doesn't, and then it just doesn't work at all.

>I worked at Apple years ago in Apple Retail.

I assume that was before 2016 or possibly before 2014 ?

Apple retail has changed, a lot over the years. But people still don't believe it.

Can't believe they can't just re-flash the firmware, shouldn't it take like five minutes?

any possibility that the apple rep screwed up and unpaired/replaced the wrong pod? i.e your "pair" would now have two pods, neither of which are actually associated with the hardware you have access to

They wouldn’t fit in the case.

to clarify what I mean: GP lost the right one, but is it possible the replacement pod was never actually associated as the "right" one due to a mixup? In this situation, the charger case would have left and right pods, but neither of them would be associated with the "pair"

Return the newly-purchased airpods, wait 4 days and buy some new airpods.

Ya know, for $5 from AliExpress you can get a pair of airpod clones and a charger case. They are remarkably good considering their price is just 2% of the money apple wants!

And they won't mess you about with any 30-minute-till-they-work behaviour.

Their audio quality is distinctly worse, I tried a couple.

You still love apple products? This sounds like Stockholm syndrome, I seriously mean that. You are paying your captors.

When sonething Apple does not work (e.g. icloud sync) it simply does not work, there is nothing you can do.

If windows or linux does not work, there is easy 50 step manual fix on arch wiki, toutube, tomsguide (you have to try all to find the right one)

Do you know how nice is to be able to tell others, that there is nothing you can do, and mean it?

lol, plausible deniability

The 50 step manual fix is actually just generated by chatgpt and sounds plausible, but does not actually work. It's just a red herring to get page clicks / ad views.

Ah, you tell me this now I just go to step 47!

Except these kind of guides have been available for over 15 years. Maybe now it'll be harder to find the genuine ones, though.

that's the thing. the horror. the horror is not controlled by ai, but people use those junks to abuse search ranking of google.

I guess we may find again the old old yahoo! is useful

There are times when I find this utterly infuriating, but other times it's an absolute blessed relief. I know there's no point wasting time hunting for a solution (that may or may not make the situation worse) and I should just walk away and do something more meaningful instead.

I told my family: fine, you can buy Apple products, but don't expect me to fix them when they fail.

Right. 50 step manual fix! Only that it actually is like generally 3-4 step fix.

But I get it. As opposed to trying to let it sink in that something that could have easily been fixed and diagnosed you get to hear “buy a new one; nothing can do”, I am sure being able to fix something is less appealing. Because we must not lose sight of things like the organismic satisfaction one experiences when being able to pay for something Apple. That opportunity! Oh, my breathing is going up already. Just the thought of it.

Yeah, I get what you mean.

I mean, right, right? Once friends and family agree to promote you to their voluntary tech support position, you are installing, reinstalling, upgrading no end.

But if they have sony, apple or any of those - endless vacation!

It's interesting when somebody lists A, B, and then comes to the exact opposite conclusion C that you would. What a different life you and I must have lead.

I think it's more like defence of investment. They have spent tens of thousands of money, time, knowledge on this brands ecosystem of devices and software. It's not just airpods it's the phone, watch, desktop, laptop, all the software purchased over their lifetime and the identity that goes along with it. In deciding to leave there's also future costs of moving to something more free but "worse".

The pain needs to be way greater than the cost of what they have invested. In a way they are not captors of peoples freedom but bankers who hold people's time, effort and money. Even with OP's case I can almost guarantee that whilst he might consider moving away from Apple because of his bricked laptop, he won't - he will side with his investments. Leaving this ecosystem would also cause psychological pain - its very hard to tell oneself that "I was wrong".

The genius is that Apple makes good stuff and they know that what they make "just works" and it all works great together and people will invest not only money but their very selves in the company. The company is the world biggest tech company for a reason.

I don't understand how you draw a connection between this and Stockholm syndrome. "The products are great when they work, but Apple is horrible to deal with when something goes wrong" is a completely sensible opinion.

And after all, the 99% case is that things work well. Choosing products which are worse 99% of the time but where the company is more pleasant to work with in the 1% case where something goes wrong is a tough sell. (Omitted from this discussion is whether Apple products are truly better when they work or not. That's a wholly unproductive discussion which comes down to opinion and mattcantstop clearly thinks that they are.)

there are various programmer types who find the Apple way really onerous and problematic, because they want to control everything, these can be either Windows or Linux since both give you the ability to control and mod your system at very high level.

Every example of bad behavior by Apple in relation to their products, customer service etc. connects in the mind with this underlying philosophical difference between how computers should be used, and so the indignant feeling wells up in their brain that Apple users are misled and abused, and if you are misled and abused you must have Stockholm syndrome.

This however is just my reading of the phenomenon I have observed quite a lot.

Before anyone tells me I'm an Apple lover, I would say until the M1 I considered all OS'es equivalent with some various benefits to each, but as long as I have M series Macs I do believe they are very superior (but haven't tried recent - this year - non M machine)

The problem with the "walled garden" is that it is insidious.

At some point they control everything and at that point, it's too late to create an alternative product as it would be like 20 generations behind in performance.

You don't have to go so far back as to build your own NAND gates or a computer out of falling marbles, but giving the user almost zero ability to customize is just crazy.

> The problem with the "walled garden" is that it is insidious.

The problem with all the other options I’ve seen is that they are worse.

>there are various programmer types who find the Apple way really onerous and problematic, because they want to control everything

Treating customers like renters after they buy your products at a premium is a pretty onerous practice and it's pretty surreal to see the pushback characterized as megalomania.

Funny, because I get the impression that users of Windows and Android systems are treated as renters. They're certainly not treated as owners, because the devices and OS continuously give the OS and software more control over the device than they give the end user.

Sure, Android has improved lots, mostly because of comparisons with iOS, but who can forget that it used to be the case that you literally couldn't install and run certain apps without agreeing to ALL of the apps' demands? What if someone doesn't want to give Facebook access to your microphone and location?

The fact that you can't uninstall Edge or even have links reliably open in your browser of choice just shows how Microsoft thinks of you, and it's only getting worse, with the extra steps you have to take to even just have a local account. They'll phase that out eventually.

Sorry, but most people, myself included, want and are happy to use a "walled garden" device, particularly if it means I don't have to deal with spyware and apps trying to steal all the data they can.

It's kind of sad that you seem to think that Windows and Android-as-supplied-by-the-phone-maker are the only alternatives to Apple.

Your example about Edge shows that Windows is also a walled garden. They just haven't finished all the wall building quite yet.

Apple is, at least often, better than those. It's just that none of them are good enough.

> It's kind of sad that you seem to think that Windows and Android-as-supplied-by-the-phone-maker are the only alternatives to Apple.

Oh, I don't think that Windows and Android are the only alternatives. Android is pretty much the only smartphone alternative, though.

My primary machines run NetBSD :)

when one makes a statement it happens in context, this context is often important to consider to get the meaning of the statement, this is especially important in the English language.

This importance of context in English is the reason why "Buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo Buffalo" and similar expressions are valid sentences.

One should try to be precise in usage, but it's also reasonable to assume interpretation follows normal usage all of which is preamble to pointing out that:

Hey, given the context it should be obvious that "because they want to control everything" actually means "because they want to control everything on their computer" which is a commonly expressed desire by a large portion of this community and thus the expression is not an accusation of megalomania.

It's a completely sensible reason to avoid products that are undependable by design.

Many Apple "engineering" decisions favor the walled garden over robustness; for example, I am unable to update many important applications on my old work Macintosh because they were installed from the app store using an "Apple account", or whatever it's called, that cannot be used anymore because the colleague who knew the password has left the company; having a privileged account on the computer isn't good enough.

It is definitely reasonable to avoid Apple products! For both these sorts of reasons and others. I'm not trying to argue otherwise. However, the claim "it's reasonable to not use Apple products" is very different from "using/liking Apple products is a sign of Stockholm syndrome".

That sounds a lot like your company allowed either a personal account or an account tied to an individual to be used to purchase the software. Surely a better policy would be to use an account not tied to an individual in that case?

This is universally a bad design. It's not just Apple. I know, for example, Microsoft closed a loophole with Microsoft accounts being allowed to be opened using a company email address when your organisation has a hosted domain. This is stupid. Every year I now need to purchase my MSDN subscription using a personal email address based account because my corporate account is not allowed to buy anything from the Microsoft Store. To add insult to injury - unless I am very, very careful and make sure the personal account is completely logged out, I then can't apply the activation code correctly to my corporate account that is associated with the subscription renewal. Before this renewal, which was successful, I have had two years in a row where I have ended up needing to file a support ticket and wait for the "magic" activation flag to be re-set because my browser was half logged in. This year I just logged in to my personal account with Edge and use Chrome for my corporate one to register the activation for the renewal. It shouldn't be this hard!!!

Also - yes, this should probably all be done by IT for me in the background, but we are a small company and that is just the way it is. The subscription was set up years ago and I inherited it from another developer when they left about 3 years ago.

> That sounds a lot like your company allowed either a personal account or an account tied to an individual to be used to purchase the software. Surely a better policy would be to use an account not tied to an individual in that case?

It wasn't even obvious that the personal account existed in the first place; if the app store "just works" and the former designated Macintosh user doesn't care about software updates too much, forgetting that the account was necessary and it should have been either handed over to posterity or purged by uninstalling the involved apps is a reasonable outcome.

The way Apple handles this sucks. It is not clear how you can transfer purchases, or if that is even possible. It would be nice if there was an easy way to merge obsolete/outdated accounts in to a valid one.

> It is not clear how you can transfer purchases, or if that is even possible.

I agree, but there are at least a few clear reasons I can imagine why Apple don’t want this:

1. They don’t want people to resell software that they bought.

2. If you could transfer licenses, a group of many people could share a single license between them, transferring it back and forth. Instead of all of them buying one license each.

3. If licenses could be transferred there would for sure be cases of scammers tricking people to transfer their licenses for paid software to them.

> They don’t want people to resell software that they bought.

Aren't people legally allowed to do this, regardless of what Apple wants?

I used to think so, but it gets difficult with DRMed digital downloads.

For example, I owned a piece of hardware called Akai MPC X. It came with a companion software for the computer, a DAW called “MPC2 Software”.

When I sold the hardware Akai MPC X to someone else, I wanted to transfer the companion software for the computer to them. Akai demanded a ridiculous €100 fee to transfer the license for the software from my user to their user. I had other software on my user as well, so me handing over the user as whole was not an option and therefore only Akai could have helped us transfer the license.

In the end the buyer of the hardware therefore got only the hardware and not the companion software for computer.

That experience soured my opinion of Akai by a lot.

The MPC X is still nice hardware and I kind of want to buy an MPC X again in the future. But it sucks that Akai is like this with the software license.

I work in IT and that's how my workflow is set up.

Chrome for my work Google/Microsoft accounts and Edge for my personal.

These bad practices are just second nature now, and I dread when the time comes where it becomes another aggravating problem again.

Microsoft has the tools to manage these subscriptions in a business, they work pretty smoothly even for a small org. There's no reason for you to continue to do that other than just inertia of the way you've done it in the past.

Microsoft makes the tools you want available, you're just not using it and acting like it's Microsoft's fault.

I don't get mad at the knife maker when I cut myself cooking.

Probably, but my org leans very heavily on outsourced IT, and so we are at the mercy of whatever their policy is. Also - if I let the said outside IT take over management - it will go wrong. The current system just means I need to go find a director and ask them for a company credit card - it really isn't any more complicated than that. The big drama is that I never created a personal work account, so I only have my AD one, and I am not allowed by MS to create an account associated with that identity now. If I go to renew, I guess as we have always done it via retail, that is the only option. The pain I went through to transfer this account to my identity after the original owner left the company, I am not really likely to mess with it again if I only have to do this dance once a year.

That seems like a "your company" problem, not an Apple problem.

Would you say that they're sort of... holding it wrong?

I mean, yes, fairly literally; this is not how any company should be installing software. Anywhere; they'd have the same problem if they were using the Microsoft one, or had just had a former employee register commercial software directly with their personal email on the company's behalf.

Or an AWS etc. account.

Maybe that account with a personal name and company domain as an address is a company thing and maybe it's a personal thing. In the case of the former, that's bad company IT practices. In the case of the latter, it's bad personal IT practices. In any case, I'm not sure I want a vendor to just hand over access because there's a company domain in the email.

Maybe there are circumstances where it makes sense to do so, but it's not clear that as a general rule, setting up an account with a company email should magically hand over all the data and other information associated with that account to the IT department. Maybe you should assume it does though.

Apple's system design is brittle and forces both the individual and the company to be meticulous about stuff that shouldn't matter. How is that not an Apple problem?

I think it's rather "pick your poison". It's not like there are non-sucky options available. And I mean this generally.

All of these ecosystems have problems. I'm a long term Google Pixel user and I could list all of the irritating problems I've had over the years

Stockholm Syndrome was invented by a man who didn’t even talk to the people he accused of it, but simply asserted it as explanation for why former hostages were criticizing the police, while those former hostages were clearly stating that it was because the police were aggressive and irrational, escalating with acts like unnecessarily pointing guns, and generally disregarding the safety of the hostages. The only other famous case turned out to be acting under duress. It is to this date not a real psychological diagnosis.

Similarly, if you’d like to understand why people put up with Apple’s moderate abuse, maybe ask not how one might write them off as insane, but instead what their alternatives are.

Hardware-wise it's hard to beat Apple on build quality and resale value. The software side though has really gone downhill.

Oh please

I yearly upgrade on the iPhone for the better modem support. I always buy Apple leather case, also a yearly upgrade, to protect the phone. A number of years ago I had a screen break and I mentioned at the Genius Bar how I did the best I could using the Apple Cases, and they ended up replacing the screen, a $150 charge, for free. This is Apple.

You may have had a firmware incompatibility problem. That is what had happened to me when a few month-old AirPod Pro v2 earbud battery lost charge. I have AppleCare+ (I recommend that for all AirPod purchasers because the batteries wear out after 2 years of use). I used the Apple Support app, selecting my device, and selected for Apple to call, which they immediately did. Apple did the CC hold sending out a replacement. When I received it, it did not work, and the reason was that the firmware on the case and airpod earbuds was recently updated and the earpiece sent to me was not. It is a kind of race condition that occurs whenever Apple updates firmware.

In the process of trying to get things to work initially with the replacement earbud, I disconnected my AirPods from the phone, following instructions. When I could not get it to reconnect, I tried to contact AppleCare+ for the AirPod Pro with the Apple support app as I had done 2 days earlier, and this time my device was not showing up in the device list, even though I still owned the device. This is an Apple bug.

So, I called 800-APL-CARE, but had to wait on hold to talk with someone a couple of minutes. Then I asked to be escalated to 2nd tier tech support. I explained the firmware incompatibility problem to the advisor. I expressed my annoyance since Apple has known about this problem since shipping Airpods, yet never fixed it. The tech rep had me go through a couple of more steps, including the 30 minute charge of the case with the earbuds (they called me back after 30 minutes). Then they resolved the issue for me.

So, Apple had 2 repeatable bugs. 1. Firmware incompatibility with parts replacements. 2. Even though I still owned the AirPods Pro with AppleCare+ support associated with my AppleID, when disconnected the phone, it no longer showed up on my device list.

But overall, Apple has been great at support.

With AppleCare+, you don't have to go to the store for replacements. They send it to you with a CC hold and then have a prepaid label for Fedex Pickup returns. Call Fedex for the pickup, and that is that.

>something must have gotten messed up with the software [...] I can spend $250 for them to diagnose the issue

It's a choice you made when buying apple

As Woz said at his funeral, "Steve gave us some of the greatest tools known to mankind: Apple fanboys."

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