You unpack your Bose headphone, eager to use them. But before that, you have to download an app on the iPhone, then download a software update program on your laptop, which in turn opens a program in the browser that downloads an update, then you connect the headphones with a wire to the laptop that the update gets installed, and THEN you can start using them.
I send both back and now I'm a happy AirPod user.
I do find the Bose UX to be horrible though for another reason, which is the incredibly stupid “feature” that the headphones can be connected to multiple devices at once. Since I use it both with my phone and laptop and they’re often in range of each other, sometimes the audio control will just switch back to the other device than the one I’m trying to use, I assume because of some background process that’s still open, and I lose my sound. If one device is on the edge of connectivity range, it’ll beep every couple of minutes as it connects and disconnects even though I’m not even using it. Then if I ever want to connect a third device like a tablet, it’s made to switch back and forth between exactly 2 devices not 3 so things get even more messed up.
It’s quite annoying, and I feel like I’m the only one bothered by these issues because I don’t see a lot of other people complaining. But I’ll definitely be switching to a different brand away from Bose when these headphones wear out. Probably the upcoming over ear Apple headphones, since I find airpods to not have any of these issues and generally work great at switching between two devices without being stolen back by the previous device.
I found this project which helps with the later problem: https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze
I suspect it's the generic Bluetooth chipsets, mind, rather than anyone in particular because this happens with the PLT headphones and the Taotronics dongle I've got.
Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years.
So you aren't really paying $250 for a pair of headphones, you're paying $125 a year to rent them, as they will only last 2 years due to planned obsolescence. This seems to have been a deliberate decision by Bose as the previous model had a removable battery.
I've used my QC35 II's 6 to 8 hours a day for 5 days a week for 4 years. They last approximately a full week on one charge; they'd die mid Friday if I used them a lot that week or early Monday if I forgot to charge over the weekend. I've had them unplugged and unused since March (work from home) and they still had 60% when I tried them just now.
IMO this seems like a very big detail that should be included when describing your battery longevity.
Beyond that, it could just be a battery defect. Devices that last for multiple days should last for several years before seeing that kind of degradation.
Many Big Tech ask their suppliers to use green energy or reduce carbon footprint.
But, their product is not "green" at all. Many of them make battery extremely hard to exchange. It is quite common in laptop and cellphone.
I have the original QC 35's and they never originally gave us the option to change the ANC. Only through an update and using the app that they switched it on.
If our headphones didn't use can app, we would still be stuck without being able to modify the ANC level.
I kind of like the tether. Harder to lose them under a bookcase. And less of a problem if they plop out during exercise.
Took my bank account months to download my an iPhone to update with.
What is the OP talking about? And why would anyone install an app to use headphones?
Well, you can, but you first have to enable that using the app.
The QC II’s bluetooth range is horrible. Less than half of the QC I’s.
You don't ALWAYS need/want that feature.
Some reasons:
* Safe battery life
* Hear conversation or important sounds in the background
Most headphones (all I've purchased) have a dedicated hardware button. In fact, all of them have 3 modes: Noise cancelling ON, noise cancelling off (Switch), noise cancelling off + enhanced microphone (quick transient button, to quickly hear e.g. captain announcement etc). Can't imagine having to do that through software, it'd defeat the convenience.
That being said, fully agree; my Sennheiser HD380 with 3.5mm jack have lasted a decade and I don't know when or if I'll ever need to replace them. They sound and feel as good as new.
The expensive Bluetooth headphones and headsets are a disposable commodity with inferior user experience for at least some use cases (Pairing? Latency? Battery? Software? You don't have to worry about those with 3.5mm:). Yet, there's a positive ARMY of people who always join in to defend the removal of 3.5mm jack - even though they gained nothing from it, and some of us lost a lot :-/
I sometimes wear glasses which prevent the headphones from forming a perfect seal. If I walk around with the headphones on, I get a "wow" going on which is quite tiring. Turn the NC off and they're ok. I only rarely do this, so I wouldn't have bought a dedicated pair only for this purpose.
If this is Sony's way of forcing me to use their app, they guessed wrong. I just bought these and am considering returning it.
For some reason mine's volume works as expected on an iphone (phone and headphone control the same volume) but on a pc (windows / mac / linux) the controls work separately...
My experience with the Bose headphones has been excruciating.
They have a feature that’s quite handy to me (the proprietary quick changing from one Apple device to another IFF it has the same Apple ID — so no good for shared hardware like a tv) but “quite handy” is far from invaluable.
You can program a tap on each earbud to do certain things: again, handy but you don’t have that ability I doubt you’d be upset.
Apple’s quite clever on figuring out how much “bleed out” from their own stack works for them (e.g. iPod support for PCs, which open standards to embrace, which not, etc). They are hoping you’ll switch to an iphone next, but even you don’t you are revenue.
I switch between my Mac and my iPhone daily so if I had to re-pair to do that that would suck. My guess is many modern alternatives let you pair more than one device at a time which would be another possible solution (better or worse I don't know). Apple's switching sometimes fails for me and when it does it's infuriating since it can end up taking several minutes to fix when all I wanted to do is use the damn headphones.
The tapping is pretty useful too though the features I use (pause/play/skip to next song/backup) are also part of the bluetooth headphone standard so while I can't change them to something else my other bluetooth headphones have the same standard features that I actually use.
This is also one reason I didn't like the Airpod Pro's. Tap is replaced with squeeze. Squeeze requires 2 fingers, Tap works with a knuckle. I can tap with full hands. I can't squeeze it full hands so they effectively downgraded the product with pro.
I guess I forgot to mention “tap for siri” but I’m not sure anyone would miss that much, and I hear android users have a better equivalent.
Apple has some additional out of band signalling so that if it is paired on one device you don’t have to do any handshaking to switch it to a device it’s never seen before as long as that device uses the same Apple ID.
It’s nice, it reduces friction but as you say it’s a small. Ice to have at best.
You have a valid point that the app can misbehave regarding updates and lack of internet connection. I personally find myself never using the app, it only really provides 3 somewhat useful features; equalisation (which forces the audio codec to SBC which is inferior to LDAC so I've never used it); automatic profile switching, e.g. ambient sound if detecting you are walking and finally, the level of noise cancellation to apply.
This model has a dedicated switch on the headphones to change the profile where a long press even "calibrates" the sound based on atmospheric pressure, not sure I buy into that gimmick, but they're perfectly useable without the app. I have them paired with Android, Windows, macOS and Linux and all work perfectly (with the minor exception being Linux does not support Bluetooth absolute volume). The headphones also support volume control from the unit for devices which have an older Bluetooth stack which does not support absolute volume.
Overall, I agree the app needs improvement but I'm not sure there's anything that warrants burying the company of these decisions. I suspect for many users, the app is entirely useless and not worth installing.
(Well, as ‘alright’ as could be expected. Switching between devices requires slow re-pairing through long power button press, but I don’t think Sony’s app would’ve resolved that.)
If I want to avoid this sort of thing, I'm thinking / hoping it's sufficient to simply avoid headphones that require an app.
Does that seem right?
Every effing time they convince users to install an app they magically have a tool to steal peoples personal data.
Not just headphones: the kids toy drone can be controlled using an app from the cellphone? The security camera just purchased doesn't use standard protocols over a web browser but needs its own app? The IoT system doesn't use standard protocols as well but forces the use of their app? Bad, bad and bad! And so on for every piece of hardware that needs a proprietary app that -betting all my horses on that- will ask for full permissions to access everything.
In this context, headphones are among the easily replaceable accessories with secure and better sounding ones. Just get wired ones and avoid architectures that force the use of wireless phones just to make a bigger business out of a misfeature.
Or you could just get some basic noise-isolating bluetooth headphones. It sounds like most/all of these headphones that spy on people are ones with active noise cancelling.
Or just get one with a good old 3.5mm jack.
Beyer Dynamic, AKG and Shure have several options much cheaper than these Bose or Sony headsets which still give you at least 10x the audio-performance.
For headsets, if you care about usability, portability, longevity and performance, wired is still the no-brainer choice.
It's complicated.
The lowest level opinion is "Bose and Beats are awesome, soooo much bass!!!" That's the typical consumer.
The level above that is what you said. That's sometimes called mid-fi. At least these things don't have major flaws anymore.
The next level is companies and products specifically focused on high performance - Stax, Audeze, Sennheiser, Etymotic, etc and their best models. That's the "audiophile" level (and here truth is mixed with a lot of bullshit also - stay away from head-fi.org, it's a cesspool of pseudoscience).
And the level above that is when you realize imperfections in headphones can be corrected via DSPs, for the most part.
I have the Sony noise cancelling flagship model. By default, it's deeply flawed. It's tuned to the taste of the average consumer at Walmart ("moar basssss!!!"). But apply the oratory1990 corrections (from Reddit) and they sound like some nearly-flawless high end devices. The corrections are based on precise lab measurements of the headphones, and basically revert some of their flaws via digital processing.
The future is DSP.
With proper corrections based on objective measurements, any headphones can sound neutral and balanced.
That's just an audiophile meme, there's no reality to it.
> you'll never get the noise cancelling ones sounding good because there are 2 processes affecting the sound
That's so wrong I'm not even sure where to begin refuting it.
Seems like you're picking a lot of audiophile mythology along the way.
The problem with the wire, at least the provided one, is that it's pretty stiff so it picks up a lot of noise and the plug doesn't lock to the headphone side so I'm not sure how well it would hold during prolonged usage. But the plug is standard, so at least the cable can be changed easily.
But if you want to buy headphones today with NC, most of them will be wireless.
I’ve returned them and replaced them with much better, naturally damping, closed head-phones. And the audio is so much better, at a fraction of the cost.
Noise cancellation in the hifi-space is just snake oil, and I’m not having it.
It just blocks/reverses sudden sharp, loud noises (shots). It will let normal speech and such (and pretty much everything else) right through.
No, but noise cancelling headsets are often sold as premium headsets, with the obvious implication that they are to have high sound-quality. And quite often, they don’t.
It's not for hi-fi. Livable-fi in combination with noise cancellation is a bonus. The headphones are for noise cancellation, not hi-fi.
(These cans are usually not too bad with noise cancellation turned off. But when you turn it on, it's because noise cancellation is what you want.)
There’s still lots of places you won’t find Bluetooth, but there’s very few places you won’t find a connector for a 3.5mm jack.
The WH-1000MX are very good headphones, but sony gonna shit the bed. (PSN anyone)
- Them being hugely defensive about the fan backlash over Tlou2 https://www.altchar.com/game-news/sony-contacts-website-over... - They've removed early release credentials from reviewers who give sour reviews - The shit return policy for the digital only games - The way they are trying to push digital only
etc. I realize Sony isn't the only one doing this but with every iteration it feels like they are trying to be as crap as possible.
I'd hope so - as far as I know there's no way for a Bluetooth headset device to get internet access via the thing it's paired with. It's getting harder and harder to be confident about this kind of thing, though.
As shitty as the app collecting data is it isn't as if the app is required for me to have had an excellent experience with these headphones so I'm not really all that bothered that the app is invasive.
If any real functionality was locked behind it I'd be annoyed, but honestly the app seems like an afterthought with no real purpose other than "EVERYTHING NEEDS AN APP" type thinking.
I'm grateful that you and I both know to be critically-minded, and we understand the difference between essential features and data-grabs, but honestly... my Dad needed me standing over the sketchy wifi thermostat (that required an app and Facebook login), loudly complaining about how invasive it was, to even understand that this was not OK and worth returning the product. And he's spent years osmosing conversations with his tech-savvy, upper-middle class son. Further, many people take for granted that they can trust a brand like Sony, so they're not in critical-thinking mode about this stuff -- it's quite confusing to know what is reasonable when you're just trying to get the thing done that was literally just a male-female plug before.
I do believe you're a caring person (most ppl are), but the practical effect of your position would lead someone to judge that you don't actually care about the data of the vast majority of normal people across many demographics. I kinda suspect that isn't true, so I'm wondering if maybe you'd find some dissonance in your own views on closer inspection <3
However if the app isn't really pushed at all then this is so minor an infraction compared to so many others happening in the technology space it honestly doesn't really illicit a response from me.
I do want to point out that not really giving a damn isn't the same as thinking it is a morally ok thing to do. I definitely agree that they shouldn't be doing it, but again given the state of the industry I'm honestly just glad the app isn't required.
Lastly I do kind of think personal responsibility has to enter into things somewhere. I understand that the average joe doesn't really understand how these work, and that the information you share is greater leakier than you might think it is given how things are phrased - and I absolutely agree that it is terrible. However for years now high profile data breaches have been a thing. The fact that the average joe hasn't defaulted to a "I don't understand why this device/app wants X information or how it could use it, therefore I won't use this app" is what is letting companies get away with this kind of thing in the first place. You don't need technical competence to be wary of this stuff (in fact I know someone who isn't technically competent who is concerned and they ask my opinion on things).
Ah ok, that's understandable. I get desensitized to a lot of this too :)
> I do want to point out that not really giving a damn isn't the same as thinking it is a morally ok thing to do
Good point. I'm glad to be reminded of this :)
> Lastly I do kind of think personal responsibility has to enter into things somewhere.
Ah, this is prob the root of much of our divergence. I recognize that tons of my view emerge from my skepticism of what seems to me a cult of personal responsibility in the west. I lean much more toward collectivist mentalities, and suspect individualistic perspectives in USA are it's achilles heel.
The content and information flow of the world (and so a single life) has become densely packed with so much more context compared to 100 or so years ago when these ideals took form and served us. A founding principle of personal responsibility will increasingly fail us as we become emmersed in an ever-complexifying data and knowledge landscape. imho we can choose to be darwinian about that, or we can insist that our duty is to push knowledge and learning up through the system to _shared_ strata, to higher levels of societal abstraction beyond individual daily affairs. At least that's my hot take :)
Anyhow, thanks a ton for engaging! We may disagree, but your perspective got a lot more "real" to me as you shared :)
The comment about personal responsibility is more representative of why I don't especially feel sympathy about this stuff on an emotional level anymore. We've had multiple, huge, public data breaches in years and the average citizen does not care. Hell in Australia we have some of the worst data privacy laws in the world. I wrote my member about it and only know one other person who did. The "personal responsibility" thing isn't a comment on people not reading the T&Cs, it is a comment on them letting the entire industry get away with this shit time and again.
The fact that people on the whole don't seem to care makes it hard for me to feel a good deal of emotional sympathy when it bites them at this point, even if I do feel they shouldn't have been bitten.
I shouldn't have been too surprised, though, given that it was Sony that brought us rootkits on music CDs.
the headphones still work fine without the app, they're just bluetooth headphones that the OS can interface with directly if you don't want the location-based profiles.
This is a textbook example of a GDPR violation. In fact, it is a clear violation of the first of the five requirements for consent.
See recital 43:
"... Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance."
There has been research done on identifying people by their ears. [0]
> You can't use it because it requires the internet to get the latest _required tos_ to use your headphones.
Can't you just uninstall the app entirely? They're standard Bluetooth headphones, right?
[0] https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2010/10/new-method-to-ide...
But I'm also a long time suck fony guy so, I basically accepted it as karma for buying this witch doctor voodoo noise cancelling anyway.
They've got a few settings that are software controlled (one being the bluetooth's internal volume) What happens if you get a software update and you open the app on a plane without wifi? You can't use it because it requires the internet to get the latest _required tos_ to use your headphones. You can't proceed further without being forced into an agreement. Clicking "don't accept" pushes you back to the tos screen.