Disatisfied people tend to be more vocal.

Something I learnt many years ago when I worked in sales was that a happy customer might tell one or two people but a pissed off one will tell everybody.

That said it doesn't negate the underlying issue if it's a real one.

A Reason why Apple is affected relatively often is the huge volumes of products they ship. No other manufacturer ships that many identical phones and probably no one has shipped that many identical headphones over such a short time frame.

Even a problem affecting only 0.01% has a sizeable number of affected customers if you ship 100 million devices. If you only ship 1 million, that same problem is much less likely to find public support. Apple already has good quality control (my opinion) but to reach the same level of public complains as other companies, they need to be several magnitudes better.

There is also the expectation of quality, given the branding, price and the presentation. If a $50 pair of headphones break, it's not a big deal. If a $300 pair of headphones break (repeatedly, it seems), you start to talk about it.

This would be an explanation if most people wouldn't report that the replacement had the same issues, which points more to an engineering problem than a 0.01% rate.

Quality is a broad concept. Warranties are probably more about durability and cost of replacement. Two manufacturers giving the same period of warranty (no matter how long and no matter the number of items they sell) probably expect the same failure rate or service costs as % of their margin. The functionality can be much different though.

Apple sold over 60 millions AirPods. Even if 0.01% is affected - thats 6,000 negative complaints for you. The page that is linked to the post has about 200 quoted complaints.

Most people won't post about it though. I had this exact issue (replaced the left airpod 2 weeks ago) but hadn't posted about it. Until this post, anyway!

Significantly more won’t post about their product working as expected.

FYI:

> How Widespread is This?

> It seems this is very widespread. Just a quick internet search turns up tons of people having the same issue. Sadly, most people think it is specific to them, that they've done something wrong, or they're waiting for a firmware update to see if that fixes it.

See https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/airpods-pro-rattlegate....

That doesn’t really answer the question. They’ve sold tens of millions so a rare and obscure problem is going to turn up tons of people.

I’m sure there’s something going on, but it’s very hard to tell how widespread it is. Apple knows, but won’t tell world. If they start an out-of-warranty replacement program, that will be a hint.

I’m curious too. I bought the pros when they came out. While the water resistance continues to be terrible, I haven’t had audio issues

It took a bit down to get to someone like me too. Have had no issues since day one and now I'm going to be insanely critical of them.

Happened to me... twice.

Both time Apple replaced them quickly with no fuss.