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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   5657 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 13, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What I would do myself: I'd go "yeah I knew it, wireless earbuds are a stupid product" and go back to wired forever. I personally think that wired earbuds are just a flat out superior product and many times cheaper to boot.

I don't suspect that's on the table for you, though (else you probably wouldn't have bought them in the first place). So given that you probably want to stay wireless, I would stay the course for now. Maybe return them to Google if you feel you would rather get another brand considering the issues, but otherwise keep them and see what happens. If they do indeed start acting up again, don't try to fix them or troubleshoot, send them in for warranty repair/replacement. You aren't responsible for trying to fix their broken product, that's what a warranty is for.

I'm as far of the opposite opinion as possible, wires are incredibly frustrating for anything but sitting still. Connecton and battery problems every day are preferable to occasionally ripping your ear buds out when the wire gets caught on something.

I can't say I've ever had that problem, though I'm almost never actually moving around while listening to music or whatever on my phone. Earbuds are for sitting in the car or on a plane or what have you, not for going on walks (not that I really do much of that either, lol).

Right, I'm frequently in a gym with many awkward shaped bits of iron everywhere for wires to catch on or on runs or commuting. Wireless is king when moving. And really it's freeing around the house as well, I have over the ears and buds tethered to my basement desktop and nice Bluetooth radio and can go anywhere in my home while still able to listen. Most of my engagement on themotte is text to speech fed through a wireless headset while doing chores.

Yeah, most of those are simply use cases where I don't actually want to listen to my phone. Barring commuting, where I can easily plug my phone into my car. So no real advantage to wireless earbuds in that scenario. Your last point is especially curious to me, because that sounds like a downright hellish way to interact with anything. I think we are simply wired very, very differently as far as our desired use cases go.

Your last point is especially curious to me, because that sounds like a downright hellish way to interact with anything.

It works out better than you'd think, especially since on the new site there is much less garbage that gets copied when you highlight multiple posts. You can more or less highlight a thread, throw it into ttsreader.com and go wash the dishes or vacuum the house while listening to discussions. I mentally flag points I'd like to come back and comment on. My nemesis are naked links.

It's not much different to a podcast.

Wow, this might be the worst take. Wireless earbuds were a shockingly huge improvement for me on headphones as a product. I spend an astonishing amount of time with one earbud in use cases where I couldn't use wired headphones.

I can't really conceive of wireless earbuds being an improvement, but hey if it works for you then great. For me, there's no advantage in them. Being wireless is useless to me because in the (very rare) case I am actually moving around, my phone is on my person. So for my own usage, there's no upside and considerable downsides in the form of needing charging/connection issues/can lose them easily.

Have you tried them? Genuinely having them changed my potential uses.

No. I'm not really in the habit of spending a good amount of money on something I don't have a use case for, after all. ;)

Get cheap ones. These are 25$ and seem closest to the ones I bought five years ago

So many uses I didn't think of that wouldn't be practical with wired buds. Like driving in a convertible or shopping in a store with one in for a podcast/book without losing awareness.

The car thing kind of confuses me, because cars already have sound systems. Who is using earbuds in the car?

As for the store scenario, I don't listen to things (as in have no desire to) while I'm out and about. So that isn't something I would ever do.

Good to know that cheap ones exist though. I at least would be willing to drop $25 to try it. Most likely outcome (imo) is that they sit in my car/drawer/pocket and get no use, but $25 isn't much of a loss.

Who is using earbuds in the car?

Convertible, can't really make out a podcast on the car speakers over the wind on the highway. Which is something I never would have thought of before owning them, which is the thing: you'll find your use case after you own it.

Kind of like carrying a multi-tool. So many of the situations I use it in were things I didn't even notice before I was carrying it.

Eh, I don't think there's a good reason to carry a multi tool either. People do it and hey good for them, but I've never thought it was a useful thing to do. So the analogy actually works against you in this case.

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What I would do myself: I'd go "yeah I knew it, wireless earbuds are a stupid product" and go back to wired forever.

I use wired headphones with a USB dongle on my Pixel 6. There's a loud white noise effect that plays whenever the volume falls below a certain threshold.

I refuse to buy any phone without a headphone jack. If they ever stop making them entirely, then I guess I will stop buying phones or something? I don't know, really. But the point is that I don't get phones that chose to reject a universal standard that worked great in favor of making people use a dongle.

I hear that. The headphone jack was a great standard. You could bring along a cheap male-male cable and interface with nearly any device with a speaker.

The good news is that Bluetooth in the current year is that universal standard. It's supported by as many, if not more devices. I initially thought charging the headphones would be annoying, but I find I rarely need to do it. The charging case keeps them topped up. Plus, you can still use your wired headphones with a lapel clip BT adapter. It's much better than trying to use the awkward phone port ones that always come loose.

That's the thing, though, it's not universal like the headphone jack was (or even close really). My car doesn't even have an aux input jack, let alone bluetooth! I have to use a tape deck adapter (which, naturally, uses a headphone jack). Granted, my car is 21 years old, but there are a ton of legacy devices hanging around which don't support bluetooth. Maybe in 20 years bluetooth will be as universal as headphone jacks are today. But for the moment, it is really unfortunate that short-sighted manufacturers have opted to get rid of one of the very few connections you can reasonably expect damn near everything to have.

Are you sticking to wired with the help of USB/lightning phone adapters? Your days may be numbered, since they'll probably be getting rid of all physical ports soon!

I refuse to buy any phone without a headphone jack.

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