Apple patents all sorts of weird shit. 99% of it never gets made. They just want the money from patent litigation and licensing.
I have earbuds that don’t need to be charged and use a cable for easy connectivity and sound quality.
You know what’s easier than a cable? No cable.
I’ll give you sound quality, but the whole reason that wireless earbuds took off is the hassle of wires.
And also no latency. Even expensive Bluetooth headphones and earbuds have crap latency. The systems that don’t are either proprietary and not widely supported (e.g. aptX) or expensive 'phones-and-dongle arrangements that must always travel in a pair and still don’t compete on latency with a pair of dollar store earbuds.
Unless you’re using them for gaming or some other interactive medium, latency doesn’t really matter though. For music, latency is irrelevant and for video, your device will take care of syncing the audio and video playback so it’s a non issue. Audio quality is an entirely different matter of course.
not widely supported (e.g. aptX)
I can find over 600 aptX capable headphones as well as over 850 phones, also any laptop I ever had supported it (Linux though, so probably not always “official” lol).
Low latency is a thing, you can get this as low as ~30-50ms either through aptX LL / Adaptive, whatever the manufacturer apps do or by manually meddling with the settings for SBC. Will get rather unstable though since you effectively get rid of the buffer. Really depends on your usecase what you prefer. Personally I love having ANC headphones that support bluetooth but also got a headphone jack in cases where I sit in trains, buses or planes for hours and want to play some games or listen to music with a DAC.
I feel like I’d forget to charge them. Or drop them in a public place and not want to put them in my ears because I’m a germaphobe. I know someone who dropped theirs in a toilet.
Yeah, it’s a risk. But, there’s also a risk of getting your wired earbuds cord caught on something. I’ve had that happen and it yanked the phone off the table and sent it crashing to the floor. I’ve also had the buds get yanked out of my ears multiple times.
If I lived somewhere where winters were mild, I might still use wired headphones. When you only have to worry about a t-shirt or something managing the cord isn’t too bad. But, when you have to manage a hat, scarf, coat, etc. there are just too many things to get in the way of the cord.
I feel like I’d forget to charge them
I thought that to but turned out to be a non-issue. Since most earbuds come in a case that holds multiple full charges for the earbuds themselves, and the case begins to complain about low battery early enough, even if I forget the first one or two times I notice the low battery state I’ve so far never run into a situation where I wanted to use them as had no charge left
I finally went wireless a week ago. I realized their advantage when the cable on my headphones broke for a millionth time.
This is what did it for me a decade ago. So many wasted wired earbuds, I was literally buying a new set every 3 or 4 months because all it took was one bad yank to destroy them. I’d wear the cable under my shirt and tuck the slack into my pocket, but the fucker still got caught on… well pretty much everything it seemed like. The countertop, chairs, my hand, somebody else, vegetation, my bike. Sometimes their own momentum was enough to yank them out of my ears when I was skating or something. I still use wired at my PC and with my roku, but if I’m not sitting still then wired are simply too fragile and annoying for me to use. As annoying as a spotty Bluetooth connection can be, a failing wired connection is way worse.
The reason wireless earbuds took off is that phones with headphone jacks stopped getting made.
Consumers didn’t prefer wireless earbuds. They preferred thinner and more water-resistant phones.
I personally switched to wireless back when my phone still had a headphone jack. It’s just the better overall experience for me, and I suspect that I’m not alone in that. I’m going to continue arguing for manufacturers to keep including a headphone jack, but it’s not because I prefer wired headphones personally.
You really think that’s a dunk? “Wireless” just means you plug it in when not in use. There’s nothing hard about plugging in a 3.5mm audio jack. I’ve never been sufficiently convinced to actually use wireless headphones. They seem like more of a hassle for a worse listing experience.
Wireless means you plug it in occasionally, maybe once a week.
If you don’t value the convenience of wireless headphones, that’s great for you. For a lot of people, the cable is a real pain in the ass. It gets tangled up when it’s off. It gets caught up on things when it’s on, etc.
You know what’s easier than no cable? Not losing your ear buds
Haven’t been able to use ear buds outside of the house ever since they got rid of the jack
I’ve never lost one in at least a decade of using them. But, I don’t use the kind that just balance on the edge of your ear.
I guess if I listened to crappy music I wouldn’t care about the sound quality.
Both have their pros and cons. I miss my Westone 1 IEMs that I had back in college. My buddy’s dog chewed them up. They were comfortable and super light, had great sound quality, a cord that wasn’t obnoxious. Not having a cord is great though too especially when I’m working. Multipoint connection is great too. I can be listening to stuff on my phone with it in my pocket, no cable getting in the way, and when I get a call on Teams, my Pixel Buds just switch over to the computer.
I really dont get cable simping here on Lemmy. It’s awful UX and yall can’t hear the sound difference anyway lmao
can they even patent that? its already a thing that made it to production on at least one brand that sells in north america and another two or more in china
To an extent it is. Apple is or has started the patent for this. The image is just rendered for a visual representation of what they are doing, and for us to see they are reinventing old tech.
I was gonna say, pretty sure I’ve seen something like this on Amazon already, except from some weird Chinese company.
I just see another device to run Doom
But will it be better than pregnancy test doom or the doom-like game entirely embedded in a QR code ?
I mean the latter is just minified JavaScript, compressed and base64 encoded. The hardware is the browser, which is cheating IMO
You can on Apple’s lightning to HDMI adapter:
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/06/running-doom-on-an-apple-lightning-to-hdmi-adapter/
Just an excuse to charge more for them. Cant think of any useful reason to have a screen on the case when you have your phone with you.
It’s an excuse to keep your product in the news/review cycle. You can’t just create a useful product and leave it at that. You have to constantly change shit so people are constantly talking about it. Why do you think iPhone keep switching between rounded and square edges? It’s not because one style is better then the other. It’s so reviewers have something to talk about. It’s why commercial OSes keep getting features no one asked for. It’s why car and truck bodies keep changing even though body lines have no effect on driveability.
Highlighting the importance of individualism even in communitarian beliefs.
You must have your taste so that you know what you need and want genuinely. Rather than new emotions being better. This is important to acknowledge as there will always be thoughts of neighbor has it better due to just differences.
You’d have a point, except in the case of Operating Systems, one of the reasons I bailed on Mac was the reduction in customization of the desktop. They kept removing the colors in favor of a safe for business grayscale.
In the case of trucks, I’d rather have the same grill be used for 20 years so I can cheaply get a replacement from the junkyard if I need one. I’m so frustrated by the commercial options, I’m building a light duty 80’s C10 for my daily. Easy to work on, easy to fix, parts are cheap.
