Real vs. fake AirPods with industrial CT
lumafield.com
lumafield.com
The pods themselves looked exactly the same. The case was the real sign. It was clearly not the same as an original case. They actually worked, but they were essentially just generic bluetooth headphones.
We ended up listing them on FB Marketplace. Clearly marked them as fake. Person came and picked them up and I said again that they were fake. Got the same amount we paid for them. I don't understand this world sometimes.
The fake sellers must make enough off of people who don't realize that they are fake that they can just write off the few that do.
The fake sellers must buy them by the crate for cheap to see any real profits.
1. Buy a new pair off Amazon.
2. Return the fake and get a refund from Amazon.
So they made some? Spent time/energy for science of course ...
I heard that there are fake airpods that will connect and behave just like a normal airpod to iphones, as if they have a fake H1 chip or something. Can anyone confirm?
Seems like that level of functionality with (fake) Apple products is super rare.
I’ve heard that Apple drives such a hard bargain with some of their suppliers that selling ghost shift parts and the parts that fail QC to counterfeiters and repair shops is the only way they make any profit. The Apple contract pays for the factory and the bills but they make the real money on the side.
A good will gesture to reduce the chance of you reporting them as selling fakes, and tarnishing their carefully manicured feedback scores, if they were in the business of doing this regularly.
Someone wants ear buds, they want to signal wealth so choose expensive brand, but they want knockoffs because they're actually poor[er].
The main risk with knock-offs is they arrive broken, or just don't arrive, or... basically it's a scam of some sort.
So, you took on the risk of buying, assessed the earphones as working, the earphones are now probably worth more as they've been QC-ed (by you), moreover the buyer can actually see them working and refuse them if they wish.
Within the context the buyer seems relatively rational.
>$100 product
It really boggles my mind that this works on anyone. We all see the commercials for financing. We all see teenagers with no jobs having them.
I'm a bit mind boggled that Apple was able to turn <$1000 tech products into 'luxury' products. Maybe it makes more sense if you didn't get screwed by iTunes DRM and were more open minded during iphone Era.
I’m wondering whether you have to live through in world of plenty during formative years before you have that realization.
So I'd say the main risk of putting those things in your ears is suffering the horrible audio quality.
We're dealing with tiny batteries in the 100mWh range here, which is less than 1/100th of phones famous for their... combustibility. Ejection of hot gas requires there to be quite a bit of energy present during the failure so that a certain extreme temperature can be reached. Below that, you'll just get a warm earbud.
> hot gas and flames
flames are hot gas
And yes, flames are hot gas, but not all hot gas is flames.
Samsung is a huge brand, and had significant issues with battery fires. The bigger the brand, the less they lose because they swim in money and have specialists dedicated to PR damage control.
In fact, brands seem more likely to be the ones that manage to stuff more battery capacity in there, increasing risk and scope of damage.
The big companies cannot lose anything that matters to them, as they're too big and powerful, brushing off even the worst publicity. A small company collapses under pressure, and can be killed by even a viral meme going against them, with the owners suffering personal financial losses as a result.
Suing a big company like Samsung is an almost guaranteed loss with you thoroughly crushed and case precedent set so others have no reason to try. Suing a small company is a much more likely win, with reasonable damages.
What convinced me that they were originals - packaging looked genuine - paired out of the box without much hassle - showed up as air pods with serial number
Lesson learned and bought the new ones and these were the differences:
- print inside the lid was 20% larger in original
- packaging of original was not shrink wrapped
- slight off-colour white of the packaging
- the lightning port of the fake was not feeling right
- the button on the case did not click distinctly
- the button on the case did not enter the special mode after 10 seconds like original
- ANC of original light years ahead. More modes displayed on the menu.
With hindsight the biggest give-away probably were the
- shrink-wrap plastic around the package
- lightning port feel
- much, much lower microphone quality. But since I never checked that out myself as I don't use them much for talking and so complaints from others were not so frequent.
- imperfect find-my performance but since I did not care about this feature much I suspected I mis-clicked somewhere and gave up.
- transitions from case to ear to case with sometimes not registering that it was back in case (contact issues in the case?) not so reliable with impact on battery.
- battery erratic behaviour
I guess if I would have been in the market for them and then bought them I may have found out immediately but so I just started feeling Apple starts slipping on quality with new products more complex but worse. As I got them as a replacement and just wanted to get on with listening during my walks they were able to fool me. They are certainly good enough to fool casual buyers and they are certainly bad enough to hurt Apple's reputation for quality products.
Another pro tip for buying used stuff online... request a photo of the sn#. Even a partial will get you a match in google.
However several statements like
provide optimal power efficiently
along with other assumptions made this a bit awkward to read. What does it mean to provide 'optimal' power except making it sound like a commercial? Maybe it's just me, after all I was expecting a very technical article (as have been on HN previously, also from CT scans IIRC).
Decided I wasn't going to fish out for a fourth set, so I bought some Sony ones for £20 with a wire between them. Seem to work ok and for that money, meh!
Personally, I have the beats fit pro. While still owned by apple and benefiting from the same chip integrations, these have held up just fine for me for a few years now of daily use.
It seems the switch from pouch cell (in regular AirPods) to button (in Pro) made a huge difference.
They do get used heavily but no excuse at that price.
What you can always do is upgrade when the new versions come out and sell your old ones before they die. They have a good resale value.
The warranty covered the second pair because they lasted less than a year. I'm not sure if it'll cover the third pair, but I'll probably buy another if not, because I really like the hear-through design, and no one else makes anything like it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-airpods-out-why-cool-kids-a...
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/wired-earbuds-are-so...
And in that time I can't think of a single manufacturer who has brought back 3.5mm headphone jacks.
Meanwhile Qualcomm recently announced WiFi-Audio which brings lossless audio.
Sony's models are too inconsistent for me to figure out what it's the successor to, so I can't say whether it's a good example of bringing back headphone jacks.
Wireless headphones might be a feature that "signals" wealth, but we should be careful not to confuse that with quality or value. Features like headphone jacks and expandable storage get removed because they save/make money for the manufacturer, not because they offer better value to consumers.
Many people like not having to deal with wires, but bluetooth (in addition to being used extensively to track you and reducing your security) is inferior in several ways when it comes to headphones (audio quality, latency, pairing issues, stuttering, disconnects, battery life, expense) but thanks in large part to the power of marketing, people can be made to feel good about being forced to pay more while getting less.
https://sports.yahoo.com/wired-headphones-are-making-a-comeb...
Sorry as I re-read it and realized it could be mistaken….
That's obviously more that wired earbuds but I'm OK with that to have noise cancelling headphones I can always keep in little pocket of my jeans wherever I go.
I've had a piece of (probably false) information stuck in my mind about how industrial design can be IP protected in some way, making it problematic to publish x-rays without licensing. Which I've thought of as another silly example of IP gone mad.
But apparently there is nothing to this, or has something changed in that space?
That's ironic, as being lighter would actually be an advantage (makes them less likely to fall out on sudden movements).
The friction in a pocket should be a function of tension (how tight your pants are, especially around the item) and not, as often is the case, proportional to the mass of the item. So this particular method of losing the item should be less common with something lighter.
For B2C, monkey likes pink sparkles. Wow! I want.
This seems to refer to charging safety, but the thing that makes me fork out for genuine headphones is ear safety - I _assume_ Apple tries to protect from damaging sound levels and frequencies, and could be held to account in a way that counterfeiters could not.
I doubt Apple tries this too much, or that they could be held accountable. There is the volume alert thing, but that (partially) works with 3rd party headphones too (though it's likely much more inaccurate). Android phones too give a warning if you set the volume very high for headphones. I don't think using 3rd party ear/headphones really change much.
That said, it is important to keep volumes "reasonable". Ear damage from high volumes is unfortunately very real.
> Apple Facing Lawsuit After AirPods Allegedly Ruptured Child's Eardrums With Amber Alert
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/17/apple-airpods-pro-amber...
This just seems like wild speculation to me. It totally reads like we found differences between Apple and the counterfeit. Let's make up a reason why Apple is better. Instead of coming from a place where you give it the counterfeit benefit of the doubt.
That's undoubtedly true, but my anecdotal experience was that a pair of $250(?) AirPods Pro broke after a couple of months, and the $40 Chinese knockoff pair is still going after almost a year. I'm sure that, on average, the Apple ones last longer, but it's so hard for me to shell out another $250 on something that broke so quickly just because it's from a company with a headquarters that looks like a Lifesaver. And at about 1/5th the price, it's a pretty easy decision to replace the ersatz airpods if (when) they should break. Unless Apple comes out with something new and exciting, I'll stick with the fakes.
I recommend Horos and Osirix, though I’m a Mac user. And MRI of course, not CT!
Saying available for ‘Apple Mac OS X platforms’ isn’t encouraging but auto segmentation and 3D printer support, and screenshots look good.
There badly needs to be a cross section platform viewer that gets full support on each platform. I’m using InteleViewer currently and it’s borderline abandonware on its native platform (Windows) and it’s creaking badly on the Mac. Having copy and paste being the Windows default keys (when in the Mac) is like a middle finger to the user every time you use it.
I did it with MRI scan of my head (isolated the brain specifically) and kept it on my desk at work, ready to be handed to whoever came by wanting to pick my brain.
Paired exactly like AirPods, was super shocked. Work great with an Apple TV. They don’t have multi connect though. But are actually more comfortable than the real deal. I find the originals hurt after about 45 mins.
previous ones:
It's the same problem as with the satirical "evil bit" proposal for IPv4 [0]: Someone who is scamming you has already shown no compunction against lying to you through social means, and will lie to you through technical means as well.
The key might leak, which is why you could have a new key everyday that’s signed by an intermediate key and these are internet connected devices (iphones and macbooks and ipads) that could easily download a key block-list for a kilobyte everyday.
Additionally, if the device has already connected to a charger in the past but then the key gets revoked, it could continue to show it’s authentic across their devices connected to their iCloud account, much like how wifi passwords and airpods just sync across devices.
like great so I can't charge from the wall unless I buy a sony-branded charger at a huge markup?
one true way to prevent counterfeiters from circumventing your verification would be to give each plug a unique code, then have the device send off to your manufacturer servers to check the unique code is valid, which the device then remembers. you'd also have to either permanently lock the plug to one device, or have some pretty invasive location data to ensure the codes were genuinely unique though. either way it requires network connectivity, servers, etc
alternatively, you could have a long and complex call and response behaviour, perhaps dictated by a deterministic neural net. this would certainly be hard to counterfeit, but not impossible.
Most of the time when you buy Apple you are buying a better engineered product and maybe these scans are just proving that it's actually hard to match their quality for the price.