foundddit
History shows that it never happens in America and politicians always drop the "it's time for our nation to heal" line, but if the pendulum swings as far in the other direction as it did in the 2024 election, maybe things will be different. And the only hope of that happening is for people to stay pissed.
One thing I will say is the outrage about this has lasted longer than I initially imagined. America has had a lot of "this controversy won't be forgotten!" stuff that nobody remembers 2 months later. In contrast, I feel like this has been steadily ramping up and maintaining some degree of inertia for 2 years. Will it burn out by 2028? Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised. It was washed out of the news by trans people playing sports and that was somehow the biggest issue in the world. 2028 will undoubtedly have some weird "problem" that we can't yet imagine.
Otherwise it's merely a temporary disconnect.
Apple themselves even says if you want to turn off Bluetooth, you need to do it through settings: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102412
That's why I said you need to do it through settings directly. Otherwise it won't do anything.
For some reason, my AirPods silently connect to my iPhone while they're in their case and both devices are asleep. Why they do this, I have no clue. Just quality 2020s Apple programming.
Anyways, there's an easy solution: go into the settings app (not the drop down menu) and turn off Bluetooth on your phone/ipad when you don't need it. Your AirPods will no longer randomly drain at night. Neither will your Apple Pencil, if you have one of those.
You'll find a lot of comments on Apple support forums/reddit/etc saying it's impossible for it to be Bluetooth and that you should never turn it off for any reason because it's crazy. People for some reason are very assertive about that. But they're wrong. I now make a habit of only turning Bluetooth on precisely when I need it and immediately turn it off afterwards and now nothing gets drained needlessly.
Now the only AirPods bug that drives me insane is the volume randomly shooting up halfway to max randomly sometimes when I connect to my computer, but I made a script to somewhat fix it.