We used to have earbuds that don’t need to be charged because they had a headphone jack, didn’t get lost so easily because they had a cord attached to a headphone jack, never lost the bluetooth connection because they had a headphone jack, and they cost less because they had a headphone jack. https://bsky.app/profile/daisyfm.bsky.social/post/3l3mfjc6sn62k
In the before times, in the long long ago.
But they did tangle all the time. That was annoying.
and then you’d just replace them with one of the other three dozen you bought from Wal-Mart for five bucks back in 2016
And people wonder how the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and others like it came to be 🤦
Yeah, you’d snag the wire or slightly bend the connector and then you were just playing a game of making sure it stayed plugged into the exact right angle.
Yeah! That’s why I loved Sennheiser IEMs, they had oval cables that never tangle up, no matter what you do. Still have a pair for my Switch
Remember when they got stuck somewhere and yanked out of your ears? Somehow my Bluetooth headset don’t get that because it has Bluetooth
You know you don’t have to dangle cables about willy-nilly at full length? You can partially wind them up or tie a loose knot so they’re effectively shorter, or hold them in place under clothes or a peg or anything. I thought this was self-explanatory?
I do this simple trick (Warning: YouTube video), and my cables don’t tangle at all, unless of course I forget to do that. It might cause cable to break more easily, but idk., my earphones tend to break just before warranty ends, which is fine for me.
And they used to get tangled on everything all the time, got caught on things all the time, frayed and wore out all the time, had janky connectors that had to be jiggled to sit in just the right position to get stereo sound, and got tied in knots when you put them away not matter how carefully you wound them.
There’s a reason everyone is using Bluetooth now, gramps.
Bluetooth is lower fidelity, and I’d rather have tangled cables and ports than batteries that only last 5 years or less.
Don’t know where you pulled the 5 year from. I’ve got mine for longer than that and I have no problems with the battery. Also, didn’t notice the lower fidelity, but I mostly listen to podcasts so I not gonna dispute that claim. Why I bought the bluetooth earbuds was because no matter how much I paid for wired earbuds (up to 120€) none of them survived more than 2 years. Approx after a year one would stop working and some time later the other would die too. So yeah, if you enjoy the shitty ultra thin wires that’s great, but in my experience even cheap bluetooth earbuds work minimum three times longer than wired ones.
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Bluetooth as an audio standard is factually lower fidelity
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The average expected life span of a Li ion battery is 5 years
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I don’t know how you kill headphones so quickly, but you can 100% get quality wired earbuds for a third of the price of wireless earbuds with nice, thick, threaded cable. The YouTuber dankpods has a few videos about this with recs for cheap, good headphones.
It might be lower fidelity but it’s not like it’s bad. I got some AirPod Pros using my credit card points and they’re awesome, plus the active noise cancellation means that they have more space to work when they aren’t fighting the metro system or whatever else. I did have some $100 ones that were pretty mediocre so I totally get that bluetooth can be bad but so can most anything else.
People chasing that last 2% of sound quality…I’m not going to waste our time saying that it doesn’t make much of a difference but they need to understand that almost nobody gives a shit. The only people that need to care are doing it for their job and that’s an entirely different situation.
And none of that even gets on the fact that without a cable to manage I can deal with them much more comfortably on the metro, in a car, on a bicycle, while walking, etc. I don’t need to think about where my phone is and I can even share them far more easily and comfortably. The battery, for my use case, just goes and goes and I barely need to charge them. They do everything better except for sound and they already crossed the threshold for great sound quality ages ago so that one is irrelevant to 99% of users.
Right but you could better quality and the same quality of speakers for literally less than half the price, and they’ll be more repairable because all you need to do to fix them is solder some wire. I also disagree that they do everything better but that’s really subjective. I can see using wireless headphones at the gym and things, but wired headphones still very much have a place imo.
On the other hand Bluetooth can crackle if the airwaves are too noisy, you have to spend more for the same audio quality (and it’s still going to take a nosedive when calling someone because A2DP codecs like AAC or AptX aren’t available in HSP mode), and the buds have limited batteries which makes them unreliable for long-term wear.
It’s all about trade-offs and individual requirements. Of course these days you’re pushed to get wireless ones because most phone manufacturers are too cheap to include a headphone jack.
There’s a reason everyone is using Bluetooth now, gramps.
Such as not having other options with their current phones
Or not being up to par with Bluetooth. Seriously, you would still see Bluetooth everywhere even if you had a jack. I prefer Bluetooth over cabled alternatives even now with a phone that has it, so does my brother my sister my friends and family. I’m also sorry to say this but even my grandparents have preferred Bluetooth
What do you mean used to? I still do. IEMs with replaceable cables are nigh on indestructible.
Yeah this is just another case of apple diehards forgetting the rest of the world exists. Almost everyone still has earbuds with cords.
Eh. I went for TWSes for my latest purchase because I wanted anti-wind ANC. I still have a wired pair (and one of those silly USB adapters) for long-term operation, though.
How are you liking the ANC? I feel like it’s a cool concept that can work well but that my noise isolation from a tight fitting pair of plugs works nearly as well without the complexity or extra battery requirements
Hardly just Apple. Android phones have been shifting to removing the headphone jack as well. The workaround is meant to be to use a USB-C dongle, but I ended up just getting multiple bluetooth headsets. I miss my wired earbuds though, that I could hang from my ear when I needed to talk to someone, and never had to worry about charging.
Have been? It’s already done for the most part. AFAIK, there’s only one, maybe two companies still making phones with headphone jacks. Drives me up a wall, I fucking hate it.
Really? From personal experience it’s completely the opposite. Almost everyone I see wearing earbuds are wearing wireless ones and it’s not just Apple users with their air pods, it’s android as well.
Can’t beat an infinite battery that doesn’t need the resources, production, and disposal of batteries.
Any wireless connection that is less than a meter and connects 2 or more objects that are already physically attached otherwise, is a useless wireless connection.