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
That is actually kind of brilliant. Having to go through MFi and getting the Apple DRM chip into the manufacturing pipeline can be a real pain (and expensive).
With this scheme, they could also run all the wired on/off and volume control actions through Bluetooth AVRCP. Even have a Mic on the wire, so if a call comes in, switch to HFP to talk/manage the call.
Damn, that’s clever. Hats off to whoever came up with it.
Incidentally, there’s very little Apple can do to make this stop, unless they decide to break Bluetooth and third-party accessories.
Stupidity at its finest. The whole point of cheap 3rd party apple accessories is to use workarounds to get past apple DRMs and use them without paying the apple tax.
Blame apple foremost for creating such a market in the 1st place. You don’t need such workarounds in other phones because they just work.
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.
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 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 don’t really see the big problem here? Like sure, it’s silly that it’s cheaper to make wireless headphones than wired ones (I assume - the manufacturers are clearly not too bothered by trademarks and stuff if they put the Lightning logo on it so they wouldn’t avoid wired solution just due to licensing fees), but what business does Apple have in cracking down on this? Other than the obvious issues with trademarks, but those would be present even if it were true wired earphones. It’s just a knockoff manufacturer.
Cheapest possible wired earphones won’t sound much better than the cheapest possible wireless ones, so sound quality probably isn’t a factor. And on the plus side, you don’t have multiple batteries to worry about, or you could do something funny, like plugging the earphones into a powerbank in your pocket and have a freak “hybrid” earphones with multi-day battery (they’re not wireless, but also not tethered to your phone). On the other side, you do waste some power on the wireless link, which is not good for the environment in the long run (the batteries involved will see marginally more wear)
Honestly the biggest issue in my mind is forcing people to turn on Bluetooth, but I don’t think this will change anyone’s habits - people who don’t know what Bluetooth is will definitely just leave it on anyway (it’s the default state), and people technical enough to want to turn it off will recognize that there’s something fishy about these earphones.
Cheap Bluetooth might have connection hitches and, to my knowledge, Bluetooth doesn’t work with airplane mode although I think most airplanes these days aren’t actually affected or we’d have planes dropping out if the sky daily.
Also, does Bluetooth get saturated the way WiFi does? That, I don’t know, but an airplane full of 100 people all on Bluetooth might create some noise issues that would hurt the performance.
Apple sort of shot themselves in the foot here with removing the headphone jack if they had any interest in this issue.
Fair enough, but I’ve only ever seen this happen with cheap wireless cards / chipsets that do both Bluetooth and WiFi and don’t properly avoid interference between these two (for example, I can get perfectly functioning Bluetooth audio out of my laptop with shitty Realtek wireless card if I completely disable WiFi (not just disconnect)). I think this is less of an issue for dedicated Bluetooth devices.
Bluetooth doesn’t work with airplane mode although I think most airplanes these days aren’t actually affected or we’d have planes dropping out if the sky daily.
Yeah, that’s true. As for the second part, AFAIK there was never an issue with 2.4 GHz radios (which is the frequency band Bluetooth uses) interfering with planes, it was more of a liability / laws thing - the plane manufacturer never explicitly said that these radios are safe (so the airline just banned them to be safe) and/or laws didn’t allow non-certified radios to operate on planes.
Also, does Bluetooth get saturated the way WiFi does?
Eventually yes, but it’s much more resilient than WiFi - 2.4 GHz WiFi only has three non-overlapping channels to work with (and there’s a whole thing with the in-between channels being even worse for everyone involved than everyone just using the same correct three channels that I won’t get into), while Bluetooth slices the same spectrum into 79 fully usable channels. It also uses much lower transmission power, so signal travels a shorter distance. And unlike WiFi, it can dynamically migrate from channel to channel (in fact, it does this even without any interference). 100 people actually seeing each other’s devices might be a problem, but I don’t think that’s a realistic scenario - Bluetooth will use the lowest transmit power at which it can get a reliable link, so if everyone’s devices are only transmitting over a meter or so, there shouldn’t be any noticeable interference on the other side of the plane.
to my knowledge, Bluetooth doesn’t work with airplane mode
The radio regulations were amended about 10 years ago to allow both Bluetooth and Wifi frequencies to be used on airplanes in flight. And so cell phone manufacturers have shifted what airplane mode actually means, even to the point of some phones not even turning off Wi-Fi when airplane mode is turned on. And regardless of defaults, both wireless protocols can be activated and deactivated independently of airplane mode on most phones now.
an airplane full of 100 people all on Bluetooth might create some noise issues that would hurt the performance
I don’t think so. Bluetooth is such a low bandwidth use that it can handle many simultaneous users. It’s supposed to be a low power transmission method, in which it bursts a signal only a tiny percentage of the time, so the odds of a collision for any given signal are low, plus the protocol is designed to be robust where it handles a decent amount of interference before encountering degraded performance.
even to the point of some phones not even turning off Wi-Fi when airplane mode is turned on
I didn’t know that part (the rest yes). So much for using airplane mode to conserve battery. I suppose it’s the tower handshake that is most energy hungry in my experience.
both wireless protocols can be activated and deactivated independently
100% although my comment was in the context of people who don’t really understand Bluetooth at all.
So much for using airplane mode to conserve battery.
Your understanding is slightly off.
Airplane mode Does In Fact Turn off your CELLULAR Radio This radio is what powers your (2/3/4/5)G and LTE (This is 4G btw) connection to the cell towers.
Most international radio communications laws can prohibit the use of Cellular Radio in flight; however they often don’t prohibit the use of shorter range radio technologies such as WIFI or Bluetooth.
It’s all about ‘loudness’. Think about it. Your phone must ‘scream louder’ at a farther away cell tower than it would need to communicate with a nearby WiFi router or a Bluetooth headset.
Also, phones don’t use a lot of power to purely listen for Wifi beacons. They’re not transmitting until they actually try to join, so leaving wifi on doesn’t cost significant power unless you just happen to be near a remembered network.
Not sure why you’re saying that. I wasn’t disagreeing with any of your points, but adding to them another angle that answered the parent comment’s concerns about whether leaving wifi on for airplane mode drains battery. You addressed the cellular radio side, and I was adding a separate point about the WiFi radio that complements what you were saying.
Who defines toxic behaviour? Is that definition clearly stated to players in a way that is not hidden? Is every report case of toxic behaviour carefully reviewed by a human?
This is an interesting idea but I can totally see this being maliciously abused.
Before you first launch the game, you must agree to the Riot Games terms of service. The terms very clearly state what is toxic behaviour and are pretty easy to read through. After the tutorial and before you queue for the first time, you must agree to an in game code of conduct, which is a summary of what “[good in game conduct]” (paraphrased) is.
Although it’s not confirmed, players seem to be punished based on the volume of in-game reports and some sort of review. When you report a player, there are categories you can choose that describe their conduct. There’s also a text box where you can type out what you feel they did.
For text chat violations, this sometimes happens automatically, and even without reports. For example, if you use a racist term, you will be immediately muted in text chat for a time.
Although it hasn’t been confirmed, Riot has been trailing a system where they actually record and transcribe in game voice chat. The rumour is that an in game report will trigger an automated and/or manual review of the transcript. For most reports, you’ll get a confirmation in a few hours that the player was punished and a thanks for the feedback that will help the community.
Punishments range from a competitive queue cooldown (these get progressively longer the more you repeat the behaviour, and reset after a stretch of good behaviour) to hardware ID bans for the worst cases. A hardware ID ban prevents the player from playing on any account on a PC with the same hardware fingerprint for at least 5mo, and, in some cases, permanently closes accounts that are suspected to be theirs.
If someone bought a bunch of in-game cosmetics, this will very likely cause them to move on to another game. But, of course, the worse offenders will find a way.
And btw, the terms also make it clear that when you buy in game cosmetics, you’re actually buying a non-transferable, revocable license to use them in-game. This license can be revoked at any time; for example if you violate the terms of service.
And also, Riot’s support site gives players a way to dispute bans, just in case a player was banned by mistake.
It’s not perfect (and the game isn’t even perfect in any way… far from it) but they at least make it clear what is toxic behaviour, and have put some thought into this system for trying to handle it. I think the video/article is more about stepping up manual review and scale of punishments for the worst offenders.
Pls Rito don’t ban the toxic players, keep them in League and Valorant you’e like the SCP foundation or some shit. Don’t just release them inters back into the real world I BEG YOU RITO PLESAE
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