Paradigms shift quickly in technology
It wasn’t long ago that I was plugging in a pair of Skullcandy earbuds into my phone or computer when I wanted to listen to music or have a hands-free conversation. A good old fashioned analog connection. Anytime I wanted to hop onto a new device. I simply unplugged the 3.5mm headphone jack from one device and into the next. Simple, effective, immediate.
Shiny new things
Along came an entirely new category of earphones around 2016 called, “truly wireless earbuds.” I’m not usually an early adopter of new tech, but I was excited about this category of products. I could sense that this was the future and hopped pretty early on the bandwagon, backing an Indiegogo project from Crazybaby called the Crazybaby Air wireless earbuds. They had some solid backing too, raising over $2.7M of their $1M goal. The project shipped a bit late, but still shipped.
image: (Crazybaby Air) techinasia.com
The buds were nice. The carrying case was even nicer. The fit was solid, the audio quality was good. But, they had one fatal flaw… abysmal connectivity. The one thing that will kill the transition from wired headphones to wireless headphones is connectivity. This was a new problem that had never existed, brought on by advancements technology. I didn’t end up using them much longer than two months. I tried my best, but just couldn’t get the connectivity to remain consistent.
Maturing quickly
I was using an Android phone at the time and hadn’t considered Airpods. So I moved my way over to the Pixel Buds from Google. They were OK, but suffered similar connectivity issues. Back to the drawing board. I had an iPhone for work even though my personal phone was a Samsung, and was used to the Apple ecosystem. After reading reviews of the AirPods and seeing that connectivity was strong and consistent, I pulled the trigger.
The sound quality of the AirPods was pretty poor compared to sealed buds, but the connectivity was spotless, and the convenience of not having a dangling cord was real. Though the sound quality listening to music was subpar, walking around NYC every day I was able to hear my surroundings which helped me feel a bit safer and less sealed off from the world.
I still longed for better sound quality, and the product category was advancing at a blistering pace. It felt like between 2018 and 2020, there were so many new buds being announced every month. Samsung released their Galaxy Buds+ in 2020 and since I had a Samsung phone, I jumped from Apple back to Samsung.
image: (Samsung Galaxy Buds+) theverge.com
I donated the pair of AirPods to a family member and didn’t look back for over over 3 years. Even after I transitioned from a Samsung phone to an iPhone, I kept the Buds+ because they were really good. The battery life started to degrade and with Apple releasing the AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) late Q3, 2022, I decided to jump ship from Samsung and rejoin the Apple family.
Final form
image: (AirPods Pro gen 2) apple.com
The AirPods Pro feel like a completely different generation of product at this point. The software has been upgraded at least once since I’ve owned them and are due to be upgraded again with new software features quite soon. Looks aside, they just work.
It’s almost hard to believe how quickly we’ve gone from non-functioning earbuds to the AirPods Pro (and others) which have features like audio pass through and active noise cancellation which seem almost too good to be true. It feels like a mature product category after only 6 years.
Are truly wireless earbuds (at this point just called wireless earbuds) truly in their final form? Probably not. I can imagine a world in which battery life improves even further, voice isolation for the microphone improves, and AI features are added to get us closer to Her.
The tradeoffs
Tradeoffs are something I have been thinking a lot about when it comes to technology. Is the convenience real or perceived? One of the most stark examples playing out in real time is the inside of our vehicles. A lot of companies were quick to do away with physical buttons, moving aircon and other controls to the touchscreen. It saves the companies tons of money not having to develop and produce new buttons for each model and each new generation, and it appears convenient because who isn’t accustomed to using a phone 24/7 at this point? The only problem? They weren’t really thinking about what someone was primarily doing in the car… driving. Good old fashioned analog buttons and switches allow people to keep their eyes on the road due to muscle memory and tactile feedback. One company who didn’t forget this? Toyota, and their sales figures show it. Go to any new car review on YouTube and nearly every reviewer praises vehicles for their use of physical buttons. Why? Because they work.
At the core of this is the fact that the march of progress can’t really be rolled back at this point, especially when an entire product category has moved in a specific direction. The almighty dollar reigns supreme when it comes to a consumer-driven capitalist society, and if people are purchasing wireless earbuds ten to one, it’s not realistic to think these companies will suddenly say, nope, we’re OK making less money.
The tradeoffs are real, though. Wired earbuds: Someone started talking to me, I could take on bud out and hang the cord over my ear to hear them. Wireless earbuds: Now I have to click and hold button on the side of the AirPods to turn on audio passthrough. One shows I’m paying attention. The other, I have to hope someone assumes I’m paying attention because frankly, taking one bud out of my ear and putting it in the case is just not practical. Wired earbuds: Need to change devices, I could unplug and plug in. 5 seconds max and I’m listening to whatever I need to. Wireless earbuds: I need to have all Apple devices (hint, I don’t) so that I can easily handoff one to the other. But, since I don’t have all Apple devices, I need to disconnect and connect, needing to go into software settings and hoping the other device will connect properly (hint, it rarely does).
Everyone needs to decide whether the tradeoffs are worth it for them. Wired earbuds still exist and are being sold, especially at the high-end for audio engineering. But there are tradeoffs, and at times, it can be frustrating to the point of wanting to go back to wired earbuds. But just when I think I’m about to go back to wired earbuds, I remember that Apple and every other company did away with the 3.5mm headphone jack. No way I’m carrying around a converter dongle just to swap from my iPhone’s USB-C or Lightning port to my Lenovo laptop with a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Between a rock and a hard place
So where does this leave us consumers? Well, on one hand, we have some really cool new products with genuinely useful features. On the other hand, using them with any frequency often leaves us longing for the “good old days.”
There is almost no product category that is untouched by advancements in technology. And as long as companies perceive they can sell more products by changing what works to what’s new, we’ll have to deal with the tradeoffs of adopting those products.
The other day, I sat down with my family at my dinner table with my AirPods in. I had audio passthrough on and didn’t even realize they were in my ears until 5 minutes into dinner, my wife asks me “What are you listening to?” I was a bit embarrassed until I thought to myself, hey, at least the tech is working!