I personally own a pair of Beats fit pros - which are great for running, Zoom calls. But I recently acquired a schiit vestri and I pair these with some old wired seinheisers (HD1). I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality.

It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today.

Force sensor with volume swipe arrives on AirPods 5, a first for the open-ear form factor, adding the ability to quickly adjust volume by swiping up or down on the stem.

Pure apple marketing juice this one.

On the other hand in the past few years I have noticed a lot of people wearing Sony's Wireless headset and Earphones. Apple used to dominate this category when they first launch AirPods. I am wondering what happened they people discovered they could use other brand and Apple's brand loyalty don't quite work.

I have no idea why Apple has made AirPods harder to handle, impaired mic placement, and limited the battery capacity with shorter stems.

The longer stems offered more room for battery, got the mic closer to your mouth, and were so much easier to handle, manipulate etc.

Can't really fathom why they shortened the stem and made it harder for everyone, themselves and users alike.

they intentionally handicapped the non-pro version so you might as well wait.

For users who want even more, AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case add longer battery life and on-stem volume control for $149

This is a weird product feature versioning. Would people pay an extra $20 for these two features specifically? With the AirPods 4 the upsell SKU was ANC which made exponentially more sense.

Powered by Apple Intelligence, Live Translation on AirPods 5 breaks down barriers by letting users communicate across languages.

Thing that only happens in the minds of SV marketing gurus.

Let's feel some excitement in your voices!

But in the end, it'll be the desire to eradicate the lightning port from my life that forces my hand on the upgrade

[holding two items at a store] "Siri.. which one of these should I buy"

A bit strange for Apple to let fairly popular products just go so long without a refresh. Just the vision component of the new AirPods could have been delayed, not really a critical feature anyway.

Apple Watch seems to be getting pretty good, might finally switch away from Garmin if the Apple one is as durable.

I have a pair of airpod pro 2 and i have to scrape the leads almost every day

would be amazing if they did it thru induction charging (tho i guess thats really slow)

The Pros, completely different story. Maybe a bit pricey but the ecosystem, battery life, comfort, ANC, all of that is great. The difference that little rubber piece makes is wild.

Side note - the "directional" audio (Sounds as if it's originating from your device rather than standard L/R audio), not sure if this is still a thing, but it was super weird the first time I tried it. I literally had to check that I was actually using the earbuds a few times, and refused to use it after. Maybe it was TOO good, super cool tech though.

I have an iPhone logged in to my iCloud account.

My wife has her iPhone logged in to her own iCloud account.

Both of these iCloud accounts, plus a few more from my kids, make up our "Apple Family" thingy.

My wife bought AirPods. Paired them to her iPhone.

Why oh why every few weeks, when she gets the AirPods from their case, do they automatically connect to my iPhone and steal the audio from my (non-Apple) wireless earbuds I was using?

Do AirPods truly traverse devices based on the fact that separate devices/iCloud accounts are part of a family?

Are there non-Apple alternatives that also accomplish this?

In a multiple of ways: you become disconnected from nature and closed off to environments, and you also reduce safety because you don't know what is going on around you (high % of population live in cities).

Not a uniquely Apple problem though, I suppose.

best-in-class open‑ear Active Noise Cancellation

Devialet Gemini earbuds are superior: https://www.devialet.com/en-us/true-wireless-earbuds/

Also, they’re French acoustic experts, so cooler and deeper knowledge.

https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Sennheiser_Momentum_5

Whenever I have a call on my AirPods I feel terrible for whoever’s on the other end of my call because the quality is so bad, even when they’re connected to an iPhone. I originally thought I had hardware issues until I heard from others that all AirPods Pro are like this.

I dunno, can someone tell me what I’m missing here?

Like yeah, obviously anyone would understand "Thanks" but come on. Was this part of the discussion of some long meeting? Like if she said a word in Spanish it would imply the Air Pods translate your words?

I'm obviously nitpicking but I just found it oddly funny.

The new AirPods 5 were built with the environment in mind

A masterstroke of corporate gaslighting for their disposable product.

Please Apple let me easily swap out Siri for chatGPT voice! Work together .. buy them or something. Their voice conversation tech is superior and can help save lives when driving!

the apple tech confirmed it had the issue but it was too long outside of their coverage. Like... if it has a known manufacturing defect with a defined timeline, that means i basically rented the damn things.

their only remediation was like 10% off the latest airpods. which is just a massive slap in the face.