They're tiny, they pair to multiple devices trivially, and are well designed. They're one of the big reasons Apple is supposed to have removed the headphone jack off the iPhone 7. "You don't need it, let us show you why" kind of thing.
The other reason is that this is releasing MONTHS LATE. It was supposed to be released at the end of October, now it's coming out end of December. That's HUGE.
When was the last time Apple screwed up the launch of something big like this? The biggest one people can recall is the white iPhone 4 which basically released 9 months late. At that point most people just waited the extra 4-5 months for the iPhone 4s.
Ignoring that they're neat little headphones, this is big news today because APPLE SHIPPED LATE. That just doesn't happen. Maybe quantities are low (Apple watch), but not a flat out delay on a major product after announcing a release date.
It's months late, it's still not here yet, AND there's a "big" warning on the page that even when it is here it will only be in limited quantities and that prospective buyers are "advised" to check online for stocking levels... very un-Apple.
Auto-mono: I guess I see some people listening in only one ear sometimes, but that's not my way of listening to music or podcasts. The cheap Motorola headphones I use are traditional "headphones" and not earbuds. I prefer headphones over earbuds. But even if I used earbuds, I'm not interested in single-ear listening.
Carrying case: This is a big deal? On my walks, I "carry" my headphones on my ears. When I get home, I charge via a USB cable.
Whatever; I suppose I don't begrudge anyone for being excited by Apple headphones. I just find the hype level amusing and silly.
The effective remaining bandwidth fell far short of what the default Bluetooth codec, SBC, required. SBC was already pretty low end, more like MPEG Layer-1 audio. Even so, for point to point streaming if the devices cooperated well there was enough bandwidth for fairly good audio quality. It's just that it was a crapshoot what any pair of devices would get you.
The other big issue is that there wasn't, at least at the time, any standardized method for synchronizing the audio sampling rates of the source and sink. This could have been achieved by slaving the audio PLL to the connection master's frequency hopping clock, which the slave has to follow to even maintain a connection, but there wasn't any requirement to do so. Plus it'd be a massive layer violation in the Bluetooth stack. We basically ran a software PLL on the sink side to try to match what the source was giving us, but packet retransmissions due to loss could gum up the timing. You could get a pitch-bending effect as a connection was starting up, or had just suffered a lot of loss.
I imagine they've sorted most of that out by now.
I think they have. Giving some leeway to my bluetooth Motorola headphones since they are super-aural, to my ears—and I feel I am fairly picky—they are not significantly worse than my circumaural Sennheiser HD 380 pros on my workstation. I suspect the principal reason I feel my circumaural headphones sound a bit better is simply that they are circumaural.
I believe modern Bluetooth headphones are indistinguishable from equivalent non-Bluetooth headphones. If you can tell whether headphones are Bluetooth or not—the other components being equal—then you have particularly acute hearing. And if that's you, then you are probably a FLAC aficionado.
For what it's worth, I listen to MP3s on Bluetooth headphones and they sound great.
(Though to be clear, I've not actually researched the bit rate of Bluetooth, though I suspect it's high enough for 44 KHz stereo. To my ears, Bluetooth is indistinguishable from an analog 3.5mm connection.)
Again, that's my point. Bluetooth has a undeserved/outdated bad reputation for adversely affecting audio. I contend that, all else being equal, I could not distinguish a modern Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired headphone.
Yes, as you point out, they also need a DAC. So I will clarify my contention: all else being equal, I could not distinguish a Bluetooth wireless headphone from a wired USB headphone that uses the same DAC.
Just go grab a pair of BT headphones with aptX support and you should be fine. Unless you are a tube amp and $1.5k headphone kind of person - then you most definitely aren't in the target segment.
They're from ~2009 or thereabouts. Traditional headphone form factor. Works great for my use case (pedestrian commutes to and from the office).
That said, I'm not a fan of earbuds, wired or otherwise. So whether removing the bridge wire is a revolution is lost on me since I'm not interested either way.
The whole point of the brand is that you're getting a quality, consistent product.
But I understand you. If you've not previously used wireless headphones and you're satisfied with Apple quality, this new offering is a known quantity. I'm still not really feeling the innovation. Except of course, as someone pointed out, this is a subtle redefinition of "wireless" to mean not just removing the wire to the device, but also any bridge between the two ears. For me, that bridge isn't something I care to remove. But okay, that's cool.
I've had a set of $25 Motorola wireless (Bluetooth) headphones that I use on my daily walking commute to and from work for many years. They work and sound great. They double as a wireless microphone and playback controls. I charge them every day via a USB cable. Woohoo.
I can't see anything specs-wise with the Apple headphones that is interesting. Auto-pause? Okay, cool, but I can press the pause button on my Bluetooth headphones from 2010. Switching between devices? I can enable or disable Bluetooth on my devices, I guess, if I had wanted to use the headphones with more than my phone (though I do not want that).
These new features seem incremental at best. The clamor for these—and the fact that their availability is a high-ranking news item on HN—seems to suggest I am missing something very fundamental. And yet, it feels that I am not. These are wireless headphones with a couple incremental features and an Apple logo.