Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out | Hacker News Reader

Apple starts pushing AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out

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69 pointsspenvo40 comments

I don't understand why people buy Apple devices then expect to maintain control over them. The Literal CEO refers to your purchases as "their platform". The thing you bought... is his.

This is just part of the Apple experience these days. Don't get attached to anything.

If changes to UI = loss of control, then you have zero control over anything and the word is meaningless.

facepalm emoji

fan bois

Nobody is asking the most interesting question: why.

Why is the option to use the AirPods in “normal” mode being removed? Is Apple hit with some lawsuit or something?

My theory, from the post: "All of this is likely tied to a relatively new feature called Loud Sound Reduction that only works if AirPods are in an active “Noise Control” mode. So Apple perhaps recently decided that everyone needed this feature enabled, and that’s why they made all these annoying changes to Noise Control? I can only speculate."

And yes, as JamesonNetworks suggested, the cynical side of me thinks Apple execs knew that this would negatively impact a subset of users' batteries and were at least OK with that (despite environmental/shortened-product-lifecycle implications)

> Apple execs knew that this would negatively impact a subset of users' batteries and were at least OK with that

Seems like every 6 months or so they come out with an update almost specifically designed to do that for their phones and other products, so that's not even surprising.

It's not removed, it's just moved behind a specific toggle. I suspect its one of two things:

1) It's part of parental controls. You can disable in the parental controls the ability to turn off "loud noise reduction", it's possible that since setting to the off mode also disables this, that the toggle exists so that the off mode can be removed from the mode list as well with this restriction in place. I can't validate this because that parental control does not appear to be something you can enforce on your own device when you're the "parent"

2) The medical certifications for the hearing aid functionality require that the device can not be accidentally placed in a state where using the device as "intended" can cause further hearing damage. By placing the mode which disables hearing protection functionality under a separate explicit toggle with notes about what that does, it satisfies the requirement while still allowing the use of the mode.

Off hand guess: reduce apparent battery life in order to nudge people to upgrading, thinking their batteries are going

that's exactly what the connect implied. as with apple having done that at least twice in the open.

Which instances would this be?

Total speculation, but I’m guessing Apple is afraid of liability for hearing damage caused by AirPod use. Someone can argue that the aggregate damage from the hearing loss is worth billions of dollars and do a class action suit or something.

At this point, Apple clearly has a bunch hearing loss experts working there, and they’ve introduced features like Reduce Loud Sounds, the hearing test, and hearing aid mode. Apple can show that they are doing everything possible to prevent their products from causing hearing damage and even taken steps to help users who already suffer from hearing loss. Burying the option to disable Reduce Loud Sounds helps Apple’s case, because it makes it harder for users who suffer from hearing damage to argue that they disabled it accidentally, and perhaps Apple even has evidence that this measure reduces harm to users.

So, there’s a tradeoff between the feeling of frustration some users will have at Apple’s apparent paternalism, and the permanent harm that users are being protected from (and Apple’s liability).

> Why is the option to use the AirPods in “normal” mode being removed?

I'd challenge the idea that off/passive really is the "normal" mode, from the ordinary user's POV or Apple's POV. The headphones just don't sound good in this configuration, with neither the background nor the audio sounding clear. They aren't engineered to give good sound isolation OR good background pass-through without active support, and until this post, I didn't even realize that the active modes use more battery life.

The messaging to users is also unclear. Without understanding how ANC works, what does "off" actually mean? It's not turning off the audio playback, and it's not turning off the background noise. It IS however turning off the (newly-advertised) active features like Loud Sound Reduction, which users would expect to be working whenever they are wearing the headphones (or at minimum, whenever music is playing).

In typical Apple style, it makes perfect sense for "off" to be treated as an advanced feature; the problem is that they already shipped it a long time ago, and then removed it without any explanation.

>which users would expect to be working whenever they are wearing the headphones (or at minimum, whenever music is playing).

Why would that be the case?

One would assume because it's part of the reason for buying the AirPods in the first place. "Off" mode literally turns off all the ANC/Passthrough and other functionality and turns your AirPods into a basic set of in ear headphones. If people aren't expecting to use them with those features turned on, they are vastly overpaying for an experience they can get with any number of other cheaper non-anc headphones.

I suppose there are probably some people who buy AirPods for the better device to device bluetooth integration but otherwise don't use ANC, but I suspect they don't even approach a significant fraction of Air Pod owners.

>but I suspect they don't even approach a significant fraction of Air Pod owners.

A significant portion of Air Pod owners buy them solely because they are the apple brand of ear buds and don't think about it beyond that. A basic set of ear buds is mostly what people are buying and the other features are nice to have things and not the selling point. People in tech suppose that people shop based upon specific features and technology, but that's rarely true. Mostly it's people with an Apple device needing ear buds and the Apple brand of ear buds is AirPods, that's literally the amount of thought most of them are putting into it.

Could be that anything that puts more cycles on the battery means a replacement will come sooner.

The title should probably specify AirPods 2 and 4. As an owner of AirPods Pro (1st Generation), I was confused because I've only ever had two options: noise-cancelling or transparency. There has never been an option for “off,” so presumably this was a new feature in later generations, which the author explains is no longer available.

AirPods Pro 2 (Latest gen) have an off mode which is just no processing

I have also the first generation and the option off was always available. It turned off NC and transparency mode.

Hey, thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I toyed around with how to make it work in 80 characters but there were tradeoffs. The post itself has always specified in its title: "AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4". I would try again with the HN post title (something maybe like "Apple pushes newer AirPods owners into Transparency mode, with no easy opt out") but, alas, the window for me to edit the title has closed.

Regardless of why they're doing it, why does everything that involves an organisation always have to be such a tedious charade?

It's just so tiring to have to cynically second-guess everything all the time. Are they doing it to nerf battery life and promote return business? Scared of lawsuits? Secret AB testing? Technical debt? The word "Off" causes cancer in the State of California?

Just grow a some guts and level with customers for a damn change.

So much for "informed rational consumers" being the fundamental factor in the vaunted free market.

My Airpod Pros literally screech at an unsafe noise level if they're in Transparency or Noise Cancellation. I think some part of them got damaged ruining any kind of processing. I've been able to continue to use the in the Off mode for over a year. Hope this isn't too annoying to opt out of.

sounds like a microphone is broken or clogged up with human skin goo

Yep. Good chance it's clogged up with earwax or something. I have similar issues with mine (a high-pitched whine on when in any of the ANC modes on my current AirPods Pro 2's right AirPod, and a lower-pitched rumbling in my old AirPods Pro 1's as well).

I wonder if Apple runs statistics on controls and sees if a setting isn't used as much by the common user, so power users (audiophiles/etc), are hurt by these decisions.

You think an 'off' button is not used by 'common users' and is restricted to audiophiles?

This is also solved by using $8 earbuds and not shoving overhyped $200 hazelnuts into your ears.

I’d suggest the “off” function on AirPods is used by… almost no one reasonable. I don’t know why an audiophile would use it, honestly. It sounds measurably worse than turning on ANC or Transparency. The only use is if you truly truly need the extra battery life. If ANC bothers your ears, the much cheaper regular AirPods should be your buy… or any number of cheaper non-ANC buds.

I use "off" most of the time when in single ear mode(which is most of the time if I'm on calls or listening to a podcast). Transparency mode gives me weird artifacts and I have never liked it, for me the only two modes I use are "off" and ANC.

The new change in iOS 18 was highly annoying for me and took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get the previous behavior back.

I tried to remember when the last time was I used “Off”. I use my AirPods for about 4 hours a day, and I’ve never really had battery life issues.

This post will make me try it again though.

I used “off” when my AirPods had a broken microphone that caused the other modes to make weird noises. Only necessary until I could get them replaced by Apple.

Sure, that’s a valid reason for a broken use case … but it’s still a broken use case. If your mics weren’t broken then the other modes would be better.

Agreed, but quality products are designed to continue operating as best as possible when components fail. You can definitely take that overboard to extreme level, but a basic think through of especially common failure causes (like ear junk buildup) and design around it is what great product designers do.

Based on the noises I experienced that time, I think the microphone was detached and hanging by a wire. The sound was rhythmic and depended on my movement, kind of like what would happen if you had a bell hanging on a pendulum inside a cylinder. I don’t think this was caused by debris buildup on the device. To Apple’s credit, whenever I had a defective AirPod, it was easy to get them to replace it. Happened to me multiple times in the first few months of the AirPods Pro release.

I’m so unreasonable using them at home (where there’s no noise to cancel, besides, I often only use a single bud anyway) for prolonged periods.

I love using my AirPods, but they have become insanely buggy as of late (like, they will crash while playing audio; audio stops, then transparency cuts out and comes back after a reboot) and I often come to dead or dying AirPods when I try to use them.

This is not the case for AirPods 1. I still have my original ones. You can leave them in the case for months and both will still have a charge.

I have AirPods 2 and do not have this issue. Maybe you should go bring them to an apple store?

It's basically a UI/UX problem.

Apple rolls out features like the loud sound reduction feature that only work if you're in a non-OFF state.

Exactly how it should work really depends on the expectations of the average user. If they turn on loud sound reduction, for example, are they just going to be confused when nothing happens? How many people really understand how to toggle between the 3+ states and that additional processing might only apply to a subset of them?

And airpod state is already confusing: You have Off | Active cancellation | Transparency | Adaptive. My parents who have used airpods for years didn't even know about the airpods menu that shows you these states. They understood pinch-and-hold to change state but didn't know the third state was the OFF state. It just kinda sounds like a crappier unwanted state.

The TFA trade-off might have been the most sensible decision given these complexities. Replace OFF with one of the other states as the default and then give more techy users a switch to add OFF back into the possible states.

Granted, TFA points out there's a bug with this impl.

Yeah. There were clearly difficult decisions within Apple about which tradeoffs to make for people, but the big misstep for me was: Not communicating the changes to me. In a way, I was somewhat happy when they removed the Off option because at least it showed me that there were intentional changes occurring. Before they removed it, I thought iOS' switching me incessantly into to Transparency mode (for days on end) was just a really bad bug. It appeared that they had zero respect for users who preferred one of the four Noise Control options they were providing. (I'm not saying that was the case, but that's what it looked like as one of those users)

> If they turn on loud sound reduction

People are opted into this. No one gets to "turn it on". Apple turns it on. Which is why this has blindsided users.

And on its being tied to the feature, from the post: "All of this is likely tied to a relatively new feature called Loud Sound Reduction that only works if AirPods are in an active “Noise Control” mode. So Apple perhaps recently decided that everyone needed this feature enabled, and that’s why they made all these annoying changes to Noise Control?"

There's no annoying change. It's a good change for most people. Techies can fiddle with options.

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