...and I tell my iphone to stop sending audio to the bluetooth speaker and it disconnects, then immediately reconnects, until I un-pair it. And when my wife pulls into the driveway my phone call unexpectedly switches to her car. Or my headset just announces "disconnected" in my ear in the middle of a zoom occasionally. It's positively weird how infrequently these type of things happen when you just ... plug or unplug a wire.

and today while I was making dinner and listening to music on the bluetooth speaker in the kitchen, it suddenly disconnected from my phone and connected to my daughter's laptop where she was playing minecraft with her friends and everyone started screaming "what's going on?!" at me at a volume loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

Until they get caught on something while walking around, running through the airport, trying to get on and off planes, etc.

There is a reason I use Bluetooth headphones with Apple chips…

Yes, having them get caught on something is annoying, but 99.44% of my headphone use is seated at my desk, where that never happens, and where most of my bluetooth problems DO happen. I doubt in my entire life I've ever gotten on or off an airplane or run through an airport while wearing headphones.

I don’t either. I have my Beats Flex just for travel and I fly on average at least once a month. I take them off and hang them around my neck - not connected to my phone.

But that begs the question. Has the entire industry not figured out BT headphones aside from Apple?

I think that's a fair question. My understanding is that when airpods are talking to an iphone, they are not acting as merely BT devices, but use some proprietary apple juju that's "better." And I'm sure it's better, if wirelessness is your priority. But the drawbacks and price are far too much for me. I like being able to have all my computers, devices, mixers, and headphones be compatible without worrying about software. It's just two analog signals going through a wire, and it's easy. And as a bonus I don't have to have two separate sets of headphones to accommodate the non-bluetooth things like my electric piano.

My Beats Flex cost $59 - at the airport. They are probably cheaper other places. They also have the Apple “juju”.

My AirPods Pro work well almost all the time, but notably, not 100% of the time. Everything feels like magic until the things won't pair for some reason, or there's minor gaps in the audio, or the case won't show its charge state when opening it near the phone — and there's zero UI or feedback to deal with it. It's infuriating.

Lastly, I enjoyed both wired headphones AND my Airpods when I still had my iPhone 6S. The choice between wired or wireless is a false dichotomy.

And then you can buy headphones with a lightning connector or a $10 adapter…

So the solution to a problem that didn't exist before is to buy new hardware? Seems pretty wasteful and worse, not to mention some of that hardware is a vehicle with only an AUX port.

The $10 adapter apple sells doesn't sound as good as the one they used to build into their phones, and removes inline volume/play/pause controls. Not only that, but now I lose access to my phone's charging port in order to use a wired connection (Charging needed during GPS usage), unless I buy an even more expensive adapter — most of which are unreliable and have universally terrible reviews.

Macs still enjoy the best of both worlds with wired + wireless support — including the upcoming 2022 models — and it's hard to deny the phone (And tablet!) experience hasn't gotten worse without the 3.5mm jack.

> The $10 adapter apple sells doesn't sound as good as the one they used to build into their phones, and removes inline volume/play/pause controls.

? It is just as good and it supports those controls and the microphone. There's multiple standards for the inline controls on TRRS though.

It also tests better than most audiophile DACs.

If your vehicle has only an aux port…

https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Lightning-Braided-Compatibl...

Time moves on, should they also have not gotten rid of the 30 pin adapter?

The play and pause control still works on the headphones

That adapter forces one to choose to listen to music or charge a phone, which is very problematic when using GPS, as it's very battery intensive, especially as the phone is often in direct sunlight.

>Time moves on, should they also have not gotten rid of the 30 pin adapter?

Apple is still releasing new hardware with a 3.5mm port! The port is far from outdated. Again, both wireless and wired audio coexisted nicely on the iPhone, this is a problem of their own doing, and they've made the experience objectively worse.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree.

Apple is also releasing new hardware with multiple USB-C ports and an SD card reader. Does that mean it should also release an iPhone with all of those features?

iPhone never had SD card support, so that's a non-sequitur [Edit: Because we're talking about unnecessarily deprecated features, not new ones]. And yes, iPhone with USB-C support would be incredibly well received! Time to ditch the Lightning port asap.

It’s not a non sequitur that Apple should have kept a headphone Jack on the iPhone because it is on other devices?

They did have 5 generations of phones with 30 pin adapters.