x3ro a day ago

You mean it will benefit Apple’s customers, who prefer headphones not made by Apple? If only the incentive for Apple to improve their interface was that its paying customers will have a better interface.

  • stavros a day ago

    I really don't understand people who defend Apple on this. The only reason I can imagine is that they're shareholders who don't use any Apple products, or shareholders who use exclusively Apple products and can't understand what sort of poor scrub might want an accessory not made by them.

    • darkwater a day ago

      It's the second one, but without being shareholders.

      • tt24 13 hours ago

        Strange opinion. Anyone that holds the SP500 (which is probably 99% of HN users between 9am and 5pm PT) are Apple shareholders, and what’s good for Apple is entirely aligned with what’s good for them.

        Taking a further step back, this same group of HN users probably understands the straightforward idea that what’s good for Bay Area tech companies is beneficial to them in a much broader sense, since they’re generally employed by them or by a very small group of other companies closely related to them.

        You can accuse them of being greedy, selfish, or whatever, but certainly not that they’re unaware of where their interests lie.

    • hopelite a day ago

      [flagged]

      • tt24 13 hours ago

        Your comment is absolutely spot on, no notes. Wish your attitude was more popular and prevalent around here. My guess is that before 2017 or so it used to be.

      • Y-bar a day ago

        > I don’t see it as a matter of defending Apple, it’s really a matter of technical understanding and competence.

        So do I. And my >20 years in the business gives me the experience and knowledge to see through Apple’s FUD.

        > […] but also wanting to benefit from all the work and focus that went into creating it, is understandable to me.

        It is my device. I paid for it. If Apple thinks they deserve more money for what they did they are free to ask me, the customer, for more money.

        > […] unelected bureaucratic despots

        Aha, the dog whistle of the AfD brand of conspiratorial bullshit ”unelected” nonsense! Career bureaucracy is supposed to be certified and educated, not elected, because that is the only way they can properly implement the laws of the electorate. Bureaucracy still answers to elected officials, but they are supposed to act without political interference and provide specialist knowledge. For the same reason you do not vote on every captain and colonel in the military hierarchy, or every tax collector/auditor in your IRS equivalent, you do not vote on every bureaucrat in the Commission tasked to execute and implement law.

        • hopelite an hour ago

          You had me convinced that you were a self-absorbed narcissist at “it is my device” without any self-awareness about the fact that it is your device that you purchased as it is, under those conditions; not some fantastical conditions you imagined you should have.

          But you really just emphasized it with the AfD nonsense, as if everyone in the world cares about your little provincial political obsessions. “Eeek, the eradicated Italian ideology of 80+ years ago that I have been conditioned with basic Pavlovian techniques to hate to control my mind is coming for me”. Ever hear of the book 1984 and the purpose of Emmanuel Goldstein? You seem to have totally missed that they used that very same technique on you, they just templated a different event on your little mind.

          Are the commission popularly elected? No they are not, child. But do explain your narcissistic rationalization for how being not elected by the relevant populace makes calling them unelected nonsense. You can’t.

          Why are you so fixated on running interference for what amounts to being a cult? Do you personally benefit financially from it or something? Nothing else makes any rational, sane sense. At least if you financially benefit from your own subjugation to unelected tyrannical despots in the commission and the council, at least you can say you are corrupted, greedy, and unprincipled… if you have the confidence and character to admit it.

          But you lack the most fundamental understanding of how the EU and government, let alone different systems work or are suppressed to work, so I am not sure that your statements allow for any other conclusion than that you are deluding yourself either intentionally or in some belief that you can fool or gaslight me and others.

          Besides, let’s have you put on your own thinking cap for a second. Take off the mind control cap for a minute and put your thinking cap on. Ready? Do you think it is smart for the same commission that originates imaginary “legislation” that the parliament votes on like any other dictatorial system’s apparatchiks do, should also be the body overseeing the implementation of that law? It breaks the most fundamental and major human advancement in governance produced by separating powers through the Constitution. You said people should be educated. Forget government education for a second, you seem to lack the ability to think at all. Do you not understand the danger of the legislative also being the executive? It’s basically just a novel form of aristocracy you are defending, a regression, total conflict of interest in abusing power … which they aren’t even elected to.

          What has been done to your mind and all of Europe is commonly called a bait and switch, also known as coercive control in basic abuse patterns of toxic relationships.

          You’re quite literally just a textbook abused person rationalizing and excusing the behaviors and actions of your abusers, like someone in any other toxic relationship or a cult.

          Please reconsider the harm you are doing to the world and yourself too. I get the EU told you there was candy in the windowless panel van, but you have no idea what mistake you are making and are going to make others suffer for.

      • nutjob2 15 hours ago

        Your whole post is an ignorant, ugly and hate filled rant of little value, but I will pick out this one trope:

        > Not the EU and its blob of unelected bureaucratic despots and unelected Commission of dictators

        EU haters have two complaints, that it is unelected and that it takes away sovereignty, yet it consists of the members of national governments that not only elect the various officers of the EU (including the Commission) but also vote on all major decisions of the EU, as well as the directly elected EU parliament. So in fact the EU preserves both sovereignty and the votes of EU citizens, both member governments and citizen representatives must approve all EU actions.

        It's a little complicated sure, apparently too complicated for some to understand.

        • hopelite an hour ago

          I’m not affected by your typical narcissistic abusive projection. It’s none of those things, you narcissist. So stop trying to abuse people with that clown show. You just look like the lying fool you are.

      • tclancy a day ago

        > Frankly, I wish Apple had the non-binary balls to simply just cut off all iPhones in Europe rather than bend to EU despot dictates

        Perhaps you should come back when you’re less emotional. Suggesting incredibly poor value for shareholder decision while also being hateful (non-binary balls, indeed) is showing the whole ass. Never go whole ass.

        • hopelite an hour ago

          I’m not emotional at all. What are you imagining in your own mind? Do you want to talk about why you are projecting things? It may do up well to do so.

          Your logic also does not hold, as is expected. But you clearly have not figured that out. Here’s a hint, it’s a question of short vs long term value.

          You can also save yourself the nonsense about hate done it’s just narcissistic, manipulative, abusive projection that is no longer going to work. You should try to get your abusive nature under control.

      • llmslave2 a day ago

        You're getting downvoted but it's absolutely true that people simply don't want to (or are incapable) of considering second and third order effects that arise from applying interventions on systems that they do not understand.

        • hopelite an hour ago

          HN should really just do away with the down/negative voting or at the least only use it for order sorting, not “points”. The point-punishment only enables abusive and toxic people and behaviors.

          I for one believe every human has equal worth and right to speak whatever they want. It may not be relevant, important, smart, or even benevolent; but I still think they should be allowed to say it and even more importantly those who choose to, should be afforded the ability to see/read/hear it. Everything else is just authoritarian, even if it’s just some narcissist who believes HE/SHE is the authority over someone else.

    • blell a day ago

      [flagged]

      • Y-bar a day ago

        > always ends up catastrophically.

        Government intervention like forbidding led-based paints or asbestos in homes? Or government intervention like doing something about the ozone depletion? Government intervention like forbidding roaming fees? Intervention like requiring 3-point seat belts? Like progressive taxation? Like forbidding discrimination based on skin colour? Like air travel safety? Like a max ceiling on credit card fees?

        Always?

      • xandrius a day ago

        You call it government intervention, we call it good government.

      • valesco a day ago

        Hopefully this uniquely American push for dysfunctional government stays on their side of the ocean.

      • stavros a day ago

        Because a monopoly extracting 30% of every purchase you make is a dream scenario?

  • vachina a day ago

    non-apple headphones work just fine with Apple products. In fact, Apple's bluetooth stack seem to work best among all the portable devices I come across (no random droppings, connects on first try etc.)

    • geraldwhen a day ago

      I was unaware that my headphone experience as impaired in some way.

      I exclusively use non Apple headphones and I have no issues. I had AirPods for a while and I don’t remember them being better.

      • array_key_first 15 hours ago

        They have nifty apple-only features, like you can hold them close to the iPhone and they'll pop up and pair with a neat UI.

        It's mostly gimicky, but it does give the user the impression that the apple Air pods are higher quality because they have all these things thought out. In actuality, Apple just made it so they're the only ones who can do that.

    • eptcyka a day ago

      My iPhone has plenty of trouble connecting to various devices at times. God forbid it has to manage connecting to my car and my headphones at once. It works OK most of the time, but at least once a week it proves to be a problem.

latexr a day ago

Apple used to brag that “it just works”. That included peripherals it did not control. Nowadays, it can’t even have its own devices work correctly.

Apple has stopped improving long ago, and it’s not regulation that’s at fault.

  • vachina a day ago

    I was unconvinced till I switched my devices, one by one, to Apple products a few years ago. They really do just work, especially with specification abiding devices.

    Everything else feels flakey.

    • Macha 12 hours ago

      I will say, I have an Apple device minority ecosystem, and it seems to be that the Apple devices are the bad citizens there.

      For example, I have Sony and Bose headphones with bluetooth multi point. The way this is supposed to work for example is that I can connect them to my PC and my smartphone and have my PC playing videos or whatever, and my phone can override that when something "priority" like a phone call comes in.

      Except if the iPad is one of the connected devices, then it will claim priority once a minute or so, _even if it's playing no audio_, thereby interrupting other audio streams pointlessly. This makes all the other devices look like they can't play audio and the iPad can, and I'm sure the iPad plays nice with airpods, but it seems weird to me that every non-Apple combination of devices I hve also plays nice with each other.

    • ruszki 13 hours ago

      Except of course these things:

      - Reliable internet sharing, especially when connection is spotty, and when your connection switches between operators or countries

      - Making alarms randomly silent. I missed a flight once because of this. There is no excuse for this.

      - Randomly not working AirPlay

      - GPS is terrible compared to any of my previous Androids. Even my first Android in 2010 was better than this.

      - Finding an operator can take a loooong time after crossing border

      - Random restrictions in App Store, like no torrent clients

      - Generally terrible keyboard for my native language (Hungarian). Prediction and basic accent fixing doesn’t work at all. The exception is when I don’t need to change a word with diacritics… when the keyboard’s dictionary clearly contains them

      - Apple Maps is still a joke. Many times it doesn’t load the underlying map layer at all. I switch to Google Maps search for what I want, finding it, reading some info, looking some images, then switching back to Apple Maps, and it still doesn’t load. Also, navigation and speed limit information are unreliable to say the least.

      - Heavily underdocumented MacOS virtualization API, and half the features can’t be used in a real environment, but these restrictions are completely undocumented

      - Wanting to have a running DNS server is a challenge on MacOS

      - Unusable GPU when no monitor is connected

      - You basically need to turn off all security features in MacOS to allow some basic automation, like with FaceTime

      - Generally terrible compatibility with anything non Apple. Do you want to show your photos on your friend’s random TV without hassle? Good luck.

      - Many built in features (eg SSH, VNC) are heavily restricted, and good luck if you want to replace them cleanly. Most information on internet is “just use the built in solution”. Also they are many times completely insecure.

      There are hacks for these, but “they just work” is not true at all. On the level of how “they just work”, top level Android and Windows devices are also on that level for more than a decade in case of Android, and at least 20 years for Windows (if not more). Maybe Apple TV is my only device which just works without hitting some quirks. Especially compared to my other TV and TV adjacent devices. But even here its FaceTime solution, let’s say “interesting”.

SvenL a day ago

Based on the latest iOS / MacOS update they don’t want to improve their interfaces anyway.