I HATE APPLE

I've had my airpods for a few years and they work great. There was one spell where they were having trouble connecting and I thought maybe they were dead but I put them in the charger and reset everything and now they're fine again.

tips i give new parents that are not obvious but turn out to be incredibly valuable:

get a grabber for picking things up/recovering things from under furniture

get massive s-biners for hanging stuff off the stroller like a pack mule (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nite-Ize-S-Biner-SBP8-Charm-01BG/dp/B0056NNVXO/)

get wireless earbuds because you're going to be stuck in place under a baby a lot, audiobooks and podcasts will keep you sane, and wired headphones will make keeping the baby calm impossible.

personally though i just get cheap "earfun" brand buds for lke $30. don't listen to music on them so don't care about sound quality.

i bought a $50 pair a couple years ago and they are honestly one of the most unexpectedly life-improving things I've ever purchased because untangling headphones is something that would be assigned to me in hell

same. was skeptical but cannot imagine going back.

My “damn, they actually are worth it” transition was from other Bluetooth (inc. some true wireless JBL ones) headphones. Pairing and swapping between different devices (Apple ones at least) is just so much smoother, as is charging. Wired headphones are great too depending on the context, sure.

Who cheapo wireless earbuds do people recommend?

Which? #AtLeastOneTypoPerPostGuaranteed

my wife has these and is fine with them but she's easily impressed (she is my wife) https://smile.amazon.com/EarFun-Bluetooth-Waterproof-Earphones-Headphones/dp/B07R5MKX3K?th=1

i stepped up to these because the mic on those cheaper ones is terrible and i take a call on them once every couple of months. but never use the noise cancelling feature https://smile.amazon.com/Cancelling-EarFun-Bluetooth-Transparent-Waterproof/dp/B08LYXGB89/.

the cheap ones are one of the wirecutter "under $50" recommendations

untangling headphones?

<blockquote>Pairing and swapping between different devices (Apple ones at least) is just so much smoother</blockquote>

right. definitely don't get the ones i recommend if you plan to connect them to more than just your phone.

lol <blockquote>

i bought the fancy wirecutter recommendations (jabra 75t) and they work but kinda suck, like they sound bad and i had to superglue the tips on b/c they kept getting lodged in my ear and i would have to fish em out with tweezers, thanks wirecutter

gonna try the cheap ones, noise cancelling is fucking stupid

On my walks I often see lonely single ear buds laying on the ground... such a waste

I've never owned Apple's version, but wireless headphones/earbuds has been a game changer for me - I'll never willingly go back to wired.

guess it’s just mw and Chewshabadoo backing the Ludd Gang then

I don't use earbuds at all. They're much more damaging to your hearing than cans.

xp My AirPods have better sound quality than my sub-$30 Bluetooth earbuds, but they fall off every time I put them on, so I only use the cheap ones

i bought the fancy wirecutter recommendations (jabra 75t) and they work but kinda suck

yeah there are multiple reasons why I prefer the wireless ones which were mostly stated above. Anyway, seems to be confirmed in that reddit thread above that apple fucked something up completely which is affecting some but not all airpods on the market and to fix it you either have to upgrade to a beta version of iOS (which will only fix your ability to connect to your phone, so no help if you need to connect to your laptop) or wait for them to fix it. Quite annoying.

Dropouts when using AirPlay to stream from Music to an Airport Express. (Dropouts kinda understates it, it'll just stop streaming.) Switching back to the Music app always fixes it, so I'm guessing that "keep miniplayer on top" would work. Trying renice -20 first though. I shouldn't have to do any of this though!

Trying renice -20 first though.

failure

keep miniplayer on top working so far but ugh

fun fact about Jabra earbuds is they don’t support “computers”, ie if something doesn’t work and you’re not connected to an android or iOS phone then they you’re out of luck.

for babies and any other situation where earbuds help sanity but you can't afford to not hear stuff around you... the Sony Linkbuds got me to take the plunge on wireless. They have a hole in the middle. Been very good. Would only recommend trying if you can get them somewhere that would accept a return though. Very subjective fit (and thus, sound too).

(the airpod shape doesn't stay in for me either)

God, yes, airplay dropouts, the bane of my existence for a while. You can avoid it with a wired connection. Eventually I gave up, put my entire library on an older Mac Mini, and control it using iTunes remote. No issues since then.

I have this issue in apple notes on the phone where after I scroll to the bottom of a note, it suddenly jumps up to somewhere else in the note. Amazing that apple can’t fucking do notepad

wow macOS really wants to dump every photo i've ever taken onto my iPhone. it wants to do that SO BAD. i have turned all the things off and it's still doing it. i guess i just have to sit here and wait until it puts all 11K of my photos into my phone, or until my phone fills up, whichever comes first. and then delete them all and hope it doesn't try to do it again next time.

It’s just loading the thumbnails (by default)….

I have 13k photos and they (thumbnails) take up 3.5 gigs on my phone

i .... i just don't want or need photos on my phone. i use my phone as a camera, then dump the photos onto my computer. ?!?!?!?!eleventy!!1111!!!?!

Eventually I gave up, put my entire library on an older Mac Mini, and control it using iTunes remote. No issues since then.

needing a whole different computer to stream music reliably is perfect I HATE APPLE material, thanks.

Very true, but for less than a CD player I now have it sitting in my hi fi stack, feeding a superb DAC, and haven't had to tinker with it much in four years.

I'm definitely tempted.

if anyone's interested - I run it headless, use Screen Sharing / VNC to control the iTunes screen and edit track data, shared folders to drop files into the library (or import lossless using the CD drive, it's an older machine) and the iTunes Remote to call up the library on my phone or iPad. Optical out thru the headphone port to the DAC, run it at 24/96 even tho most of my library is 16/44, so I can adjust volume etc without iTunes having to do any math beyond multiplying. Typically just leave my amp on, set to the highest volume I usually want, and control volume via iTunes. Also run rsync jobs from the Terminal app, to differentially back up the library to a NAS. The only weird thing I had to do was buy a Mini DisplayPort "monitor simulator" plug for a few dollars, so it runs at a high resolution for the remote screens.

oh it also responds to one of those white Apple remotes that came with Minis and iMacs, which I leave nearby for quick pause, volume change or track skip

I think I might get a used tablet to run iTunes Remote. Big part of the appeal is not having to look at one of my my primary distraction engines just to put an album on.

I’ll stick with a stereo cable running into a mixer, thanks.

If anyone’s interested, I’ve got a Walkman that takes AAs. I run it straight into some crappy headphones that have the ear foam falling off

now we’re talkin

btw there is an article on Pitchfork at the moment which accurately describes my pathology

yeah that's not bad reading for anyone thinking hard about these things

(the half dozen state of digital music and music biz articles on the front page atm)

i'll post it on the relevant thread -->

Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

It's very impressive, mattttkkkk, no lie. But I still lol @ The only weird thing I had to do... because Sir.

fans running near full speed all the time. 75% idle. yep i reset smc.

er, actually, resetting smc seems to have worked.

ok no

I feel like resetting smc is way over-recommended