I absolutely agree with everything in this post, but the newest model of QC35s has like 15 hours of battery life. Even if it degrades 50% over 3 years they will be perfectly usable. Airpods don't have enough physical size to overprovision battery that much.

Unserviceable laptop and cellphone batteries are terrible and apple is by far the biggest offender.

disclaimer: typed from a macbook :(

I have a pair of Sony over-ear Bluetooth headphones, with NFC, about 7 years old now, MDR-1RBT.

I have used them 5 days a week, for ~2 hours a day for almost the entirety of those 7 years, I charge them approximately once per month.

They cost £400 at the time and have been by far the best consumer electronic investment I have ever made. When the battery becomes unusable I'll find a replacement and fit it my self, but I have no plans to replace them until they are deader than dead.

I don't care much for "fashion" and they already have more features than I need (I use the physical switch to toggle off the NFC because I never need to use it), they do high enough quality audio (AAC/AptX) for streaming 320/16/44.1 and the battery life is better than any other battery powered device I own (barring the TV remote) even after all this time.

I'd love to see a premium pair of over the ear headphones driven by a licensed Apple Bluetooth stack, which by all accounts is vastly superior. It's still a win for Apple since the added bluetooth features only activate when paired to another compatible apple device; otherwise it's just standard bluetooth.

I know nothing about Apple's Bluetooth stack so I'll take your word for it; have they not licensed it to anyone to make some high quality over-ears? I just don't see Apple ever making any in-house, and I'm not sure why that is (maybe not compete with those awful Beats headphones).

The QC35s also only need the battery for wireless use/active noise cancelling, so even if your battery dies on you you can still use them with a wire and a standard 3.5 mm jack. That is, assuming you still have a 3.5mm port to plug that jack into :)

It's also a lot harder to crucify the QC35s on their cost when comparing to airpods, which don't seem to have comparable noise cancelling. If you are going to shell out for a premium product at least make sure you get a premium product.

I absolutely love my QC35s...

I was bracing for downvotes on that comment for shilling. It appears the QC35s are loved by many, myself included.

Honestly if you regularly write code in an open office like I suspect many here do; a serious, professional pair of headphones are one of the best things you can get. Wireless with active noise cancelling that are comfortable and have a robust battery life. The Sony model mentioned by another poster appear to be quite nice as well.

Smart management would make sure these things are available to their employees no questions asked.

> Smart management would make sure these things are available to their employees no questions asked.

My experience with this made me laugh. I had a company that had the right idea when they moved everyone to open floor plans; buy them "premium" headphones. The headphones they bought were expensive (valued around $150 new), but were utter garbage. I can't tell the difference audio between $5 earbuds, and $100 earbuds ... but I can tell when these beats headphones have the sizing for children. Nearly everyone ended up selling theirs and letting them collect dust.

Yea, unfortunately HR or accounting is going to be lurking around waiting to torpedo any incarnation of this; but the best option is to set a reasonable dollar amount for gear and let your engineers allocate it as part of the onboarding process. Desktop/laptop, phone, headphones, monitors, keyboard etc. If engineers want to go above the amount you set, support that as well and reimburse up to that maximum.

I worked at a company and our team was the first to move to the open floor plan.

I convinced my manager to get us all Bose headphones.

Several people from other teams (all of which had private offices) raised a stink to the CEO, who refused to approve the purchase, leaving my boss to foot the bill by himself.

I tried to love them, ears would hurt after a few hours of wear. Airpods are so comfortable I forget they are in.

Loved my qc25’s, but when time came to upgrade to wireless - new Sony’s are just so much better - better noise cancelling and USB-C charging (Bose has much better feel overall).

I often hear people saying that making such things repairable would entail massive increases in complexity and less thinness/etc., but in this case it's relatively easy to imagine how Apple could have made the batteries in each AirPod replaceable (as for the charging case, that one is pretty trivial...) while maintaining the dimensions and weight:

https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/30055-49077-999-Air...

This is a metal-cased cell, like an AAA battery, only smaller. They could simply make the "stem" of the AirPod unscrew from the top to access the battery. They came up with an unserviceable design because they didn't want to, not because they couldn't. Think of things like quartz watches too --- they have just as small if not smaller dimensions, and yet you can still replace the batteries in them. (And if you think threads of that size are impossible for Apple... look at the few screws that hold iPhones together.)

You're not wrong, but I have no noticeable issues with my QC35 or AirPods after 2 years. the battery life on the QC35 is simply astounding. I once wore them on a transatlantic flight including lounge stays. Got to my destination after 16+ hours of them being on the entire time, save 60mins during a nap. Some noise cancelling, lots of podcasts and music... Battery was at 60% still.

> You're not expected to keep them that long, it's targeted to people who buy the new generations pretty much as soon as they are released.

I really don't think that's the case. I was really quite tempted by them, but was put off by the lifespan.

I think that's literally the point they were trying to make. You're not the target market so you didn't buy them.