They are buying cheap earbuds and rant about cheap manufacturing. Doesn’t make sense. I think it’s a genius solution to avoid ridiculous licensing costs. Also why does it matter if the audio goes through the cable or wireless? In this price range it all sounds like shit.
Yea, this is not cheap companies doing cheap things. This is companies getting annoyed by stupid licencing and restrictions, getting around the problem.
Even if it’s a nice solution the licensing issue, they are still deceiving their users. I don’t think I have seen anything like them but they should be clear that they are bluetooth.
I don’t understand why you don’t blame Apple first of all for their methods of locking up open standards and/or modifying them just enough that non-apple products won’t work.
I don’t support Chinese companies for doing shitty products, but fuck Apple for everything they do to lock you in their “ecosystem.”
Yeah, I feel like oop reached the wrong conclusion after this. Apple treats its consumers as if they were mindless children and they (for some reason) love it. Just look at the whole “green texts” issue, for example.
Some manufacturers found a smart workaround but the apple brainrot is stronger, I guess.
I wouldn’t call this a “smart workaround”. I mean, I can hardly blame the opportunistic fucks for doing it this way, and certainly the original sin in Apple’s licensing/certification bullshit, but it’s just an amazingly stupid way of doing this all around, brought about by both Apple’s and the earbud manufacturers’ greed.
I mean…is it? I don’t really get what to be upset about here. If it were really DLC sans game, then yeah, that’d be ridiculous, but if people want to buy these things, why not? And $10 for both seems like a decent price, tbh.
I dunno. I just don’t see it as a big problem, I guess. Just because it has some useless stuff attached doesn’t mean it’s a scam or something, as long as the artbook and music is accessible and are considered worth the price.
Also, looking at the pack, the “dlc” is 4 whole cosmetics. If it’s considered a scam without those, then it should be considered a scam with them.
I lost my earbuds in a remote town in Chile, so tried buying a new pair at the airport before flying out.
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True Apple lightning devices are more expensive to make.
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I wish @Apple would devote an employee or two to cracking down on such a technological, psychological abomination as this.
He wants to take away a budget option from developing countries where people can’t afford the expensive version of the proprietary technology, and he wants Apple to be the one to do it?
I suspect the ranting author failed to appreciate that Bluetooth is probably cheaper to implement for the audio because regular headphones require three wires while power supply only requires two. Ingenious really.
EDIT: Proper wired headphones would also require a soundcard in the dongle.
There is a soundcard in the bluetooth headphones and wires are dirt cheap, it’s not about that. Proper lightning headphones require getting your product certified by apple ($$$) and a special apple chip added in ($$$) because iPhones refuse to connect to devices that aren’t.
But they will connect to all bluetooth devices.
Nah, it should be like the audio jack, you plug in the headphomes with no proprietary bullshit…Apple is locking poor people out of this easy method by being dicks about lightning connec tors. Im glad EU forces them to USB-c but Apple will probably lock devices out on this also
Yet… have you tried a non apple USB headset to see if it works? Just becauae you have USB doesn’t neccessaeily mean kernel allows all devices. But even if it works to placate EU now have you noticed that all giant companies start out with something that is OK, then later alter the deal, once you are trapped.
Also I mention apple locks poor people out of headphones and you reply IPhone 15 is out. You realize many people can not afford a brand new iphone just because it came out?
Every iPhone has been expensive on release. As time goes on more and more people get newer and newer phones. And what was new and expensive becomes cheap and available.
Not so much in places like Brazil, Africa, India etc. you can get a cheap Android phone for $25 but iPhone is still a premium luxury. The new phone every two years is a privalege thing.
Does he want to take a budget option away? At one point he says “And they still charge $12” to me that says that’s close to what proper wired earbuds should cost. People are getting screwed buying something that should have higher sound quality and getting the cheapest Bluetooth quality instead.
Not only an airport, but elsewhere would likely not have been able to negotiate to same prices as a local. Sticker price is almost always the foreigner price, at least when it’s matching or higher than the price one would pay back home.
I’m almost certain I’ve seen $5 “lightning” headphones here in the midwestern US.
What’s wrong with submitting bugs? That seem standard, that’s one part of getting it attention and hopefully getting it fix. The reason Bluetooth probably suck back then because low adoption and likely it was still getting started.
I feel like GN really went for the throat releasing their hit piece right as asus was launching another one of these. Hopefully it gets hit with some shit sales and encourages asus to pull it’s head out of it’s ass.
First of all, he is an Apple user… What do you expect?
Bet he was happy to pay cheaper price and disappointed to be… Tricked into buying something of the same value he was paying for?
Hard to stay serious on apple brainwashed guys.
At the same time, interesting to learn how even the most idiotic restrictions are always bypassed one way or the other. This fills me with hope for the future.
I wish I could still get a higher end phone with an SD card slot. I’m holding onto my s20 ultra (I like the pen) until I’m forced out for security update reasons.
Yeah. I have t mobile, so the xperia 1 V, and the newly released but not officially sold in the US xperia 1 VI would work, but rare phones tend to lack support, amd I can’t bring myself to shell out $1400 for a phone like that.
I haven’t seen a 2.5mm jack on a phone in a long time. I still have a 2.5 to 3.5mm adapter that I used to listen to music on my flip phone in 2006 though.
I got second-hand annoyance for the people standing behind this guy in line while he argues with the clerks and tries to flex his “computer science degree”, only to be proved wrong again and again. Is there a techbro equivalent to a Karen?
I mean he’s not wrong, wired bluetooth earphones are a weird thing! But I’m getting huge Redditor vibes off this dude and I mean that in the worst possible way
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