AirPods can connect to any device and perform on par with other Bluetooth headphones. This is about availability of special features which require a dedicated driver non-Apple devices are not expected to have.
- Multi-device Connectivity
- Accessibility Settings and Hearing Aid
While the following are exclusive to Apple devices for market reasons:
- Receive Battery Information
- Set/Receive ANC Modes
- Set Adaptive Audio Noise settings
- Receive In-Ear detection Status
- Personalized Volume (use at your own risk - might randomly boost volume to some high level)
- Conversational Awareness
- Ear Detection
- Siri (Voice assistant on long stem press)
- Hold and Press configuration
- Head Tracking (for Spatial Audio and Head Gestures)
- Rename AirPods
https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods/issues/20
I imagine limiting such features to Apple devices is more about incentivizing the Apple Ecosystem than quality or software concerns
They have a basic app for some of their other devices like the Beats line. One other thing you simply can't do without pairing AirPods with an Apple device is enrol them in AppleCare One.
Care to offer a justification for why this is the case without resorting to "the multi-trillion-dollar behemoth can't be bothered to build an app"?
It's not uncommon (at least for me) to have a low earbud battery level (because I've just binged Slow Horses) or a low container battery (because I've just charged the earbuds from the container for the third time and drained the container). There's a suggestion above that you should "just choose the lowest one because 99% of the time that's what you're interested in", except that's not true in the second case.
I'm fairly sure that if you could report both, then Apple would report both using this hypothetical standard method, but since you can't, and there's no easy way to just "choose one" without misleading the user about something, they choose to do it properly, even though that means it's an Apple-only thing.
As additional evidence, there are "AirPods-like" earbuds on the market such as the Sony WF-C700N, which have no problem reporting three battery levels over standard Bluetooth on e.g. Linux.
[0] https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/Files/Specifica...
The Bluetooth Battery Service spec allows for a single device with multiple batteries
No, implementing multiple instances of the Battery Service to report battery state for several batteries has been there since the 1.0 spec. [0]
This spec was released in 2011, five years before the first AirPods were released.
Doing what several commenters claimed was impossible has in fact been possible with native Bluetooth for a decade and a half.
[0] https://www.bluetooth.org/docman/handlers/downloaddoc.ashx?d...
If you'd bothered to dig into the spec, v1.0 basically says do what you want. v1.1 defines a proper namespace and well known descriptions for multiple batteries. Apple did well to avoid the interoperability minefield.
> If you don't like the Apple device, use something else. It's not like a messaging platform where you'd need compatibility with other peoples' phones.
I own and use lots of devices, for both work and personal tasks, including Apple and non-Apple devices. I own a pair of AirPods. I'd like them to work well across all the platforms that I use. There is nothing technically preventing Apple from achieving this, aside from Apple's arguably illegal tying behavior.
> If you'd bothered to dig into the spec, v1.0 basically says do what you want. v1.1 defines a proper namespace and well known descriptions for multiple batteries. Apple did well to avoid the interoperability minefield.
I have read the spec; please don't accuse me of not reading it. Have you written Bluetooth device firmware before? In case you haven't, at a high level:
* The BT device exposes a "profile," which defines one or more "services", which are essentially different types of data that can be read from or written to the device.
* Multiple instances of the same type of service (the Battery Service in this case) can be exposed in the profile. I don't know if this ability was always present in the spec or was added after the fact, but it was, at minimum, present in 2011 when the BAS 1.0 spec was released.
* So, if your device has more than one battery, its profile will have an instance of the Battery Service defined for each one.
I will grant that the 1.1 spec document is a lot clearer and provides lots of diagrammed examples, but the only net new functionality in 1.1 are a set of new battery-related fields (these are called out near the beginning).
1.0 absolutely does not say "do what you want."
When a device has more than one instance of the Battery service, each Battery
Level characteristic shall include a Characteristic Presentation Format
descriptor that has a namespace/description value that is unique for that
instance of the Battery service.
When a device has more than one instance of the Battery Service, each Battery
Level characteristic shall include a Characteristic Presentation Format descriptor
(Volume 3, Part G, Section 3.3.3.5 in [1]) that has the Name Space field set to
”Bluetooth SIG” and the Description field set to a valid value from the GATT
Namespace Descriptors [4] and that is unique among all instances of the Battery
Service exposed by the GATT Server.
On the subject of the multi-trillion-dollar behemoth, Apple is a private company. If you have the capital, you can acquire a controlling interest and then they’ll work on whatever you like. Until then, you’re out of luck.
Companies are not acts of God or nature. They are a private company operating on a society that allows it to exist because it is believed to be the for the public good. The public has very much the right to question it's practices, and if they are anti consumer, monopolistic, or a list of other things, to correct them. Shareholders be damned.
Like a lot of parts of the (especially earlier revisions of) Bluetooth spec the battery status took a slapdash approach to defining things. Look at anyone who's used Bluetooth on Windows to see what a nightmare interoperability still is. So Apple released ear buds that implement poorly defined parts of the spec but otherwise work with third party bluetooth devices, and that's bad?
Yikes.
Meanwhile, the Bluetooth SIG released an update at the end of 2022 that actually starts to require some sort of standardization. You know who's name was on that little update? Big bad awful anticompetitive Apple.
No, it's not. The Bluetooth Battery Service spec allows for a single device with multiple batteries and individual battery reporting for each. [0] They even give the example in that doc of earbuds which are one “logical device” but two physically separate pieces, each with its own battery.
> On the subject of the multi-trillion-dollar behemoth, Apple is a private company.
Apple is, by definition, a public company.
> If you have the capital, you can acquire a controlling interest and then they’ll work on whatever you like. Until then, you’re out of luck.
No. Anticompetitive behavior such as tying (what I would argue is happening here) can and should always be subject to examination, criticism, and possible litigation by the public.
[0] https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/Files/Specifica...
Ugh, trillion dollar market value doesn't mean they are incapable of making a basic android app. Check their move to ios app if you have any doubts.
The argument about whether they ought to is in some other thread I imagine, you might have lost your way. I don't own their airpods so in this particular instance, IDC about the outcome.
Caps for emphasis, not frustration.
Except for the biggest obstacle of it all in capitalism: capital.
If that's the only way anyone can try to change companies' behaviours we are in a lot of trouble :)
> Apple is a private company
As a neurodivergent person I lack the innate human skill to filter voices out of a cacaphony of noise so loud bars etc are hell. There also the "talking with earphones in is rude" but that's an issue that can just be explained.
Needing root to enable it is a major deal-breaker though :( and moving to an iPhone is impossible for me. Too much stuff that's not supported.
Apple, like every other vendor, does not have a choice but to implement this as a proprietary characteristic. Pre-BLE, other vendors copied Apple's de-facto `HFP AT+IPHONEACCEV` standard for reporting battery levels to the OS.
They could publish the details, and not block other manufacturer details, so that it is easier for other platforms to develop drivers for them. Or develop a new standard that works for their earbuds.
I need to know individual levels to do that
companies actually can build and ship stuff that isn't inter-operable with the world, this is Actually Good for user experience
Imagine if every human on the planet would operate like this.
We'd be back in the Stone Ages.
> companies actually can build and ship stuff that isn't inter-operable with the world, this is Actually Good for user experience
...
god forbid someone prioritize concrete user experience over abstract interoperability
Android obviously is out of the game totally for AirPods - no spacial audio, no changes of ANC, no battery level, but at least ANC modes can be changed on AirPods directly, and button press works to answer calls, and pause/play audio, and also volume control works.
I'm three-generation Airpods Pro (around 5 years) user on Android and Macbook (no iPhone at all). In first and second generation there was a "bug" (or intentional feature) that even when connected to Android, and not being connected to my Mac, the latter was showing the charge level on both Airpods, but at some point it was removed.
In first and second generation I had an issue with one AirPod making strange noises, in both cases even Apple Support at the Genius Bar didn't know what to make out of it that I don't use AirPods with iPhone, but only with a Mac (and Android).
Literally all other earpieces work flawlessly with that phone including dirt cheap chinese stuff, apart from apple.
Now somebody could come and claim multi trillion company couldnt just nail that pesky bluetooth protocol well, but everybody else can do it better than them, including 15 bucks products. Its all by design. They clearly dont need hardware revenue to have products who can compete on open market, they need their closed ecosystem revenue, hence these dirty practices. There is hopefully a billion or ten lawsuit in the making by courts with balls, ie EU.
All the downvotes in the world won't change above.
I'm not a fanboy but I never use Airpods with any Apple product and I can use them properly without any hiccup with several others (windows, linux and android).
Maybe there's something up with your phone?
You can't do that, you certainly agreed to binding arbitration with apple at some point.
Unpopular opinion in these parts, but I think yes, they should be able to (continue) to sell products with lock in.
Where Apple should get in trouble is specifically locking others out, rather than locking their own stuff in. If Apple wants to make a smartwatch that only works with iPhones, fine. What they shouldn't be able to do is block (either intentionally or via undocumented/private APIs and TOS violations) third parties from making a smartwatch for iPhone that can compete on the same playing field as the Apple Watch, with access to all of the same features.
Same goes for all tech companies. If you want to lock-in your own first party products, fine, but you absolutely should not be allowed to lock-out others.
Let's say I'm Samsung and I want to make a phone that works with the Apple Watch. Isn't the Apple Watch locking me out? Apple is preventing third party devices from working with the Apple Watch.
Samsung not being able to make a phone to work with Apples first party accessory isn’t the problem.
The problem is Samsung can’t make a watch that functions on par with the Apple Watch on iPhones.
Having first party, integrated accessories is fine. Locking out third party accessories is the issue.
Whatever Apple makes first party for the iPhone , third parties should also be able to make for the iPhone with the same level of access and functionality.
Heck, I don't really think of my Apple Watch as an accessory. Mine has its own LTE connection; it does need to be connected to an iPhone during initial setup, but after that I don't think there's anything stopping me from giving my phone away and using the watch by itself. Many of the children I teach have an Apple Watch but don't own a phone yet.
Besides, I think this will create surprise and confusion for less technical users. In my experience, many will blame the incompatibility on whichever device is new, without understanding who is gating out whom. And even for technical users, consider CarPlay and Android Auto: From the phone’s perspective, the car is a peripheral, and that makes sense; but lots of people will still consider the car the “core device.”
Once paired, AirPods just work like any other bluetooth headphones.
I was asking about multi-device connectivity, which is a slightly more advanced feature that lots of other earbuds can do in a cross-platform way.