We live in an age where cars reboot while driving (Tesla). It's bizarre because we never experienced it before.

But the additional flexibility offered via software updates is the core power of software. Where we are able to replace hardware with software functionality, there's additional flexibility for improvement and iteration. That's a valuable add.

The bizarre here is squeezing in matters into things just because we can. Using techniques just for the sake of using those techniques or approaches elsewhere is not a good enough argument.

It is bad putting software into anything and everything, just because we do it frequently to other things. It should have much better reason for that. Complicating unnecessarily and many times introducing risks and troubles is a no good.

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Sadly, we forget this simple fact.

It doesn't seem that bizarre to me. If something can be improved ex post facto, it seems more bizarre to me that this wasn't a thing sooner.

Headphones are purely electromechanical devices. They don't need software, except for silly contrived reasons.

That's a rather narrow view of things, one that I'm surprised to see on HN.

Automatically that view is disqualified because we are talking about Bluetooth headphones; there must be software on them to communicate efficiently with paired devices.

AirPods receive firmware updates to make adjustments to the audio, and AirPods Pro receive further updates to make adjustments to balance audio quality and the way the noise cancellation works in order to make sure that the AirPods fit properly in peoples' ears.

I don't know that (A) connectivity, (B) audio quality, and (C) fitting in peoples' ears are contrived in any way.