Crowdfunding to Solve Apple's Biggest Product Problem... Tangled Headphones | Hacker News Reader

Crowdfunding to Solve Apple's Biggest Product Problem... Tangled Headphones

fundable.com

16 pointswhoisjg33 comments

What about the quality of the headphones?

For me that's the main problem of Apple headphones: they are utter crap in terms of sound quality.

Another problem I could see: you add weight to the chord which will make the headphones more likely to fall from the ear, that's a big deal if you do sports with it.

The weight issue is a good point. It's also an issue if you have them hanging from your ears for hours. I would think it'll begin to hurt sooner.

These headphones are the standard issue Apple headphones but we could release a higher quality headphone with the same magnetic cord. As for the weight, the magnets are so small they make it only slightly heavier, about the weight of a quarter. From our testing there is not much difference. The magnets secure the split cable under your chin so they stay in place while running.

How much does the just the headphone cord weigh (i.e. without the ear buds or the jack)? I would guess it's less than a quarter, so that you're more than doubling the cord weight, but I don't know. It's the proportional change in cord weight which is important.

I haven't had tangled headphones since I started using a cord-wrapping technique I found on LifeHacker years ago, as shown in this video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IImQNcIyf18>.

I'm not sure that I'd want to buy custom earbuds just for this particular feature. As jsherry suggested, this is something that (IMO) would be better licensed to name-brand headphone manufacturers.

If you can secure the patent, sounds like licensing might be the way to go here. Competing on the quality of the headphone is an entirely different (and expensive) problem, crowded with a ton of established companies. And if the headphones you produce aren't of decent quality, my hunch is that people won't buy them b/c sound is going to trump the inconvenience of tangled wires.

They are currently patent-pending. We are working with a manufacturer who already produce headphones. They make a range of models from cheap, average quality headphones to expensive high quality models. We can incorporate this design into all of them.

Yeah but are they Sennheisers? Are they Koss Porta-Pros? Are they as attractive as Skullcandies? People take their choice in headphones very seriously and for many reasons other this magnet thing. I'd buy this if it sold as a kit that I could mod my existing cans with, but I'm not going to switch headphone brand just to have slightlier easier cables.

These will likely be prohibitively expensive given the cost of materials. Considering that the headphones cost $29 and that each magnet (in bulk) costs $0.90, you're looking at headphones that cost $99.20 to produce in materials alone. After labor, fixed costs, and profit, you're looking at a very expensive pair of headphones with bad sound quality.

This is a cool idea but the price of rare-earth metals might be its undoing.

You are right, magnets are expensive. However, we have already found suppliers and the cost of the headphones will be $49.95.

Cool! It's good that you found a cheaper supplier.

Not sure how well this will work when someone wraps their old hard drive based iPod (or brand new iPod classic) and wipes some bits on the drive...

That is a good point. We do not recommend using these with those models as the magnets would cause problems.

Other commenters here seem to think that they wouldn't be a problem. I would find out definitively and say one way or the other on your product page. Geeks will worry about it.

The only models in question would be the hard drive based models. There will be no problems with the iPhone, iPad, iPod nano or shuffle. The iPad case uses these same magnets.

It's fine to put magnets like this on hard drives. They are not strong enough to do any damage, especially given the space between the platters and the magnet that the case of the drive and iPod ensure. (Credit cards with high-coercivity magstripes are similarly immune.)

The hard drive itself contains comparatively huge neodymium permanent magnets. Those tiny magnets on the headphones will not affect the hard drive.

Looks like it works well if you wrap them right away, but I can envision it being worse than no magnets if you just toss them in your bag.

Yea but wrapping them up right away would be a sinch, right? 1-2 seconds.

They do a very good job staying how you place them. If you didn't wrap them and threw them into a bag you will have problems but if you neatly wrap it before you toss them into a bag they will stay nice and neat.

I'm confused about the Compatibility section. Do these headphones not work in non-Apple devices? If so, why? I wasn't aware that there were proprietary specs for headphones. I use the standard Apple headphones in other devices all of the time without issue. What is different about this product?

The headphones will work in non-Apple devices. The compatibility is for the attached mic/remote. The microphone will most likely work in other devices but the remote probably will not.

I can attest to this, the headphones will work for any device but remote and mic are only compatible with apple products

Am I the only one that can use the Apple provided slider, slide it to the top, then wrap my headphones neatly and put them into a pocket in my bag and have them come out the same way they went in?

I haven't had issues with tangled headphones for years now...

You are not. Although, I had more trouble with the Apple earbuds than with a more premium earbud.

Once someone pointed me to the Better Way to wrap headphones [1] I also haven't had a problem with tangles.

Though Apple increased the stiffness of the stock earbud cords at some point, so using this method (IME) can cause the cords to spiral and twist in weird ways. The extra weight of some magnets might well hold down that problem. [2]

[1] http://vimeo.com/223505

[2] puntacular

This just isn't a big enough issue for me to move away from high quality sound.

ps: it's pretty sweet how this problem belongs to Apple. If headphones are Apple's biggest product problem, it's because their headphones suck, not because the cords get tangled.

We could easily introduce a high quality version. It sounds like that is what you guys want, so that is what we will do!

Until wireless earbuds show up, this is my solution.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=n%3A172282%2Ck%3Awire...

It's quite irritating that this doesn't exist yet. I'd even be okay with two wireless ear-clip headphones or something.

I had a pair of these:

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&safe=off&...

But the headband was too heavy to do any running or anything in :(

Great idea but I can see this hitting ebay from copycats before these guys even get into production.

Apple's biggest problem, right.

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