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I actually have a problem with this. I want AirPods to be undeniably the best experience for me because I am fully locked into the Apple ecosystem, and I know many folks have complaints against that. I find it to be rather pleasurable to use compared to all the other alternatives out there. So if I have to start sacrificing my experience in favor of universal support, that really sucks.

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But this isn't sacrificing your experience, you're free to keep using your Apple AirPods with the quality and reliability you'd expect from Apple. This just means other brands can create products with similar features to AirPods, and if they're not as good or reliable, well that's why you're paying Apple for theirs.

I see their point.

If Apple knew they would need to expand this feature past their gear, possible they’d never have implemented.

We may never know what stays unimplemented due to this.

(This is a neutral take - note I do not have a personal opinion formed in this “debate”.)

> If Apple knew they would need to expand this feature past their gear, possible they’d never have implemented.

And this is EXACTLY why they need to open up more core access to their devices. So someone else can innovate.

Why they need to be forced to, you mean?

I'm not seeing an incentive structure for them to change being the only source of good workflows for their users - it's their whole thing "It just works" - regardless of if it's true in practice or not.

Indeed. They have shown (and keep showing via blatant malicious compliance) that they can’t be trusted to play fairly.

If you want the "it just works" experience, you can still buy the Apple products though, that's not changing. You just also have the option to not do so.

which other company spends as much investing in UX? there is not a single other company on the planet with as polished of a user experience as apple, so who would develop a better workflow?

The best code is no code. Every line of extra code added, and every extra platform supported is potential for more bugs, which has the potential to affect my user experience.

It removes incentives to differentiate a platform because the EU will just come in and make every company exactly the same by forcing others to allow other companies access to their R&D budgets. Why bother? It’s easier to just avoid the EU market

Is there anything that makes you believe they'll sacrifice quality to have universal support?

They won’t, but Apple previously lied similarly against PWAs.

Spite? It's standard practice for corporations to take the ball home when they are forced to play fair.

They did their initial AirPod implementation in a pretty insecure manner because it was securely locked to their hardware and they could trust themselves to not be malicious. If they have to build a feature, plus all the security around it, plus documentation, etc… it makes it much harder to bring to market. They may opt to skip it in favor of something else.

the long term innovation outlooks are still better, so you benefit long term as well.

It’s just less obvious / measurable that immediate benefits.

And also, short term, isn’t it that other EarPods are getting better, rather than AirPods getting worse?

Medium term, I don’t think that Apple will stop innovating on AirPods just because of the EU market and this one feature not being exclusive to AirPods anymore. But it’s a possibility, I agree.

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