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AirPods Delay Attributed To Apple Ensuring Both Earpieces Receive Audio At Same Time (macrumors.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mac Rumors: AirPods were originally slated to launch in October, but the wireless earphones were later delayed. Apple said it needed "a little more time" before they are ready for customers, and it has yet to provide an official update since. While the exact reason for the delay remains unclear, a person familiar with the development of AirPods told The Wall Street Journal that Apple's troubles appear to be related to its "efforts to chart a new path for wireless headphones," in addition to resolving what happens when users lose one of the earpieces or the battery dies. The Wall Street Journal reports: "A person familiar with the development of the AirPod said the trouble appears to stem from Apple's effort to chart a new path for wireless headphones. In most other wireless headphones, only one earpiece receives a signal from the phone via wireless Bluetooth technology; it then transmits the signal to the other earpiece. Apple has said AirPod earpieces each receive independent signals from an iPhone, Mac or other Apple device. But Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion, the person familiar with their development said. That person said Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies."
Precision Time Protocol to the rescue!
I find it very hard to believe that Apple cares about what happens when one ear piece is lost or a battery dies, let alone that the ear pieces play audio in sync. Or, for that matter, anything else that affects the consumer.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Make then use regular off-the-shelf heading aid batteries. User replaceable and available at any pharmacy.
Apple should get out of the Courage business and get back into making computer hardware.
I don't know how much more "courage" the industry can take...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Where you been homeboy? White people have to worry about things like paying for food and housing. The people that I see upgrading to every new iPhone are the urban youths.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Christmas is officially ruined.
Doesn't matter how many times you say it, still doesn't make it true.
Back in my day we had wires, and no worries about synchronization or worries about single earbuds running our of battery.
You'd have thought Apple would have a working solution *before* trying to kill off the 3.5mm jack.
Next up: Apple complicates toilet paper.
Table-ized A.I.
...according to Gruber.
1. Build audience of people who buy products based on hype alone.
2. Make those products cheaper, crappier and more awkward.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Alternative Right.
perfectly synchronized no matter what.
None of this funny bytes or compression or latency.
Vs the existing implementation of sending the audio to one and having it relay the audio to the other? Apple's method would have less latency and higher throughput but does that matter for this application?
Seriously, do editors even read the shit they post? A lot of text twice, just for making volume I guess? WTF?
My headphones with the headphone plug get left and right at the same time, everyfricken time.
1. user loses an earpiece
2. battery dies
3. battery loses an earpiece
4. user dies
=
Meeting on Tue to discuss 1 & 2
Meeting on Thu to brainstorm 3,4 (tentative)
=
company meet with outside consultant Wed/reorg?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
You're as racist as GNAA.
They released their flagship product (iPhone) that requires wireless headphones by default, and don't have the wireless headphones ready for sale synchronized with the release?
The US economy actually depends on innovation similar to how the Middle East economies depend on oil. We are innovation addicts.
It's a myth that innovation itself is needed to stimulate consumption. There are plenty of existing things people already want, if they simply had the money.
But, anything that becomes a commodity to manufacture or manage gets shipped to cheap 3rd-world manufacturers (C3WM) where labor is cheaper. To maintain the USA's higher cost of living, we have to push the envelope to create new devices and markets that are too cutting edge to be commoditized (yet).
For example, when personal computers were new, they were mostly made in the USA. As they became more of a commodity, their production shifted overseas. Jobs himself used to assemble Apple computers in his garage.
Apple similarly knows they have to push the envelope to avoid being bowled over by C3WM who can throw labor at the problem. The expense and complexity of wireless earphones may seem like overkill now, but if they make Apple products slightly more convenient than the others, they have a sales and marketing edge over the C3WM that allows them to charge a premium.
Eventually the C3WM will catch up in wireless earphones and every phone will support them, and Apple will have to move on to the next Next Big Thing (which is probably already in their lab).
Thus, it's not just a "first world problem", but a first world survival technique (if you want to survive as a first-worlder).
Table-ized A.I.
So apple is charting a new path with their headphones... but what happens when a user loses a headphone or the battery dies? Perhaps they should have talked with someone familiar with their development.
Seriously... that summary is crap and made head spin trying to make sense of it.
Is quite repetitive.
Is quite repetitive.
This summary is quite repetitive.
#DeleteChrome
Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies
What's supposed to happen? FindMyDeadEarpiece[tm]?
So basically you are saying these headphones (and Apple products) are not manufactured in C3WM countries? What planet are you from?
So, there's 50 million urban youths?
Or maybe you're stereotyping a bit.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I saw that rumor Samsung, but it's not too late to retain a headphone jack in the S8. Please don't be courageous.
I guess I'm behind the times because I don't have this problem with my ordinary wired earbuds. Woe is me.
Please donate money to me so I can buy this expensive, technologically inferior bit of crap.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Why is this a problem just now shouldn't this have been found and dealt with much sooner than launch time?
Bluetooth is a packet protocol so I suppose they can make the earpieces smarter (cost more) and have the left side say delay the music for the necessary uSeconds until the right one gets it's sound. However :), that's going to cause an annoying, almost but not quite unnoticeable lag watching videos.
"Have fun with that Apple"
That paragraph was very redundant because there were a lot of redundant sentences in it. Also, there was a lot of redundancy.
CSR has several "receive-and-forward-in-sync" chipsets available. Of course, Apple doesn't like CSR for iOS type devices (hence no AptX for iOS, but AptX for OSX). But then, if they used the proven, off-the-shelf solution they couldn't brag about their W1 chip (which apparently doesn't work as well as the existing solutions), so... Courage?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Apple used to be "smug assholes".
Now it's "incompetent assholes".
The people that I see upgrading to every new iPhone are the urban youths.
More specifically, WHITE urban youths.
and the Subject i declared above is why Apple doesnt appreciate existing io technology and doesnt enhance them either. Dell makes more hardware than Apple from the get go. Apple resells and bundles their proprietary software that adds more difficult developnent options, and all this upon discounted Intel and IBM Power architectures with nothing more than a shiny spraypaint job.
While Apple advertised Designed in California labels, there were all-American comp hardware enterprises being stolen by Israeli-based Intel.
Just like all the other earbuds that cost $1.50 or less, they probably sound like utter crap. Given that they get their sound wirelessly, they probably sound even crappier. I notice that Apple is too ashamed to even post the specs ...
Then again, the apple fanbois don't care (just like the Beats fanbois don't care) how utterly crappy the sound is, as long as they can be happily on the bandwagon.
I'm waiting for a phone company to show some real courage and buck trends.
Give me a fatter phone. Use that extra space for more battery and useful ports. Maybe even make the battery removable. Add some rubberized trim around the edges for better grip and drop/impact protection.
Seriously, no one cares if it's 12.3 grams heavier, or 5.1 mm thicker. And we've long since reached a point where the internals are good enough. The incremental updates every year are nice for some top-end applications, or flexing them benchmark scores, but don't really affect a user's day to day experiences.
Have the courage to make a phone people actually want, and see what sells.
This signature is false.
Not just one battery to keep charged but TWO! This no headphone jack ideal just sounds more courageous all the time.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
WiFi is serial!
That means the Left (or Right) then Right (or Left) signal gets transmitted in the stack.
The human brain will interpret the signals as "echo" NOT "stereo".
Timmy's Greatest Discovery ... his own death!
Ha ha
Note the macrumors.com post has been updated to reflect more input. Suggesting that manufacturing at scale is the actual issue, not WSJ BS.
Well, I find it very hard to care what you think.
So that makes us even.
The real problem with Apple Inc. is that no employee at "Infinite Loop" Cupertino has any understanding of ... any technology!
Apple is populated by LGBTQs who are without any education in any technology, ... let alone html or even ... English ... as a written language.
Timmy's gay obsession is to have an LGBTQ as the President of the United States of America ... AT ANY COST, AT ANY PRICE.
Why and how ... has ... LGBTQ ... become a ... PROMOTION check box ... at Apple Inc.?
Even if Timmy lives to be 80 years old ... He will still ... die. And just a few minutes after that .... NOTHING ... he is NOTHING ... All his bickering and BS-ing ... came to NOTHING! Not even equivalent ... to the sands of Arabia.
Is that not the definition of IRRELEVANCE?! I ask.
Therefore, I give you ... Timothy Donald Cook ... THE IRRELEVANT MAN.
Take a simple design (A wired speaker) and turn it into some convoluted clusterfuck that doesn't work and charge lots of money for it. Oh, and it's not backwards compatible because there's no headphone jack. Apple engineers really need to lay off the crystal meth.
About 80% of the US population lives in urban areas. About 27% of the US population is aged 21 or under. That means about 22% of the US population is 21 or younger, and lives in urban areas. Given a population of 325 million, that's about 71 million urban people aged 21 or under. So his estimate of 50 million youths is probably pretty accurate...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I'll give you a hint, they didn't get all that money by hating their customers.
Why do we need cellphones?
1. The iPhone 7 does NOT require wireless headphones by default. That's retarded.
2. There are thousands of wireless headphones that work with the iPhone 7 (ever heard of Bluetooth?).
they aren't thinking about headphone jacks.
All phone companies know that the real way to make billions is to be build a 4 inch thick brick with 2 weeks of battery life; a phone where every component can be swapped using thumb screws.
But, alas, phone companies hate making money. That's the only possible explanation.
is screwing your customers, then ok. Personally I prefer companies that make lots of great products and sell them for barely any profit so I get to have great stuff for less. A company with huge profit margins is a company that is charging more than they have to.
If you are an investor, liking a company to make a high profit margin makes sense, though I still have to question it in the case of Apple since they hoard the cash rather than pay it out as a dividend. However if as a consumer you applaud high profit margin you are silly.
Finally, somebody gets it. :-)
Problem 1 - Lose one earpiece.
Solution 1 - Maybe use a tether of some sort to keep the earpieces together?
Problem 2 - Battery dies
Solution 2 - Maybe have that tether double as a charging lead? You could plug it into some sort of handy port on the phone to keep the batteries charged up.
Problem 3 - Audio sync between earpieces.
Solution 3 - Perhaps shift the audio hardware to the phone, decode the audio there and then transfer simple audio signals down the tether to the earpieces? That might work.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
They are mostly software driven. The hardware is not the key.
Table-ized A.I.
Wrong. They are driven by the magic of bullshit... and of course by diehard shills.
They're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars researching this, when they should have just stuck a $5 audio cable on them..
When we hear a sound and can tell what direction it comes from, the volume in one ear compared to the other usually helps only a little. Direction is determined more from which each the sound reaches first. There can be up to 0.7 ms of difference in time. So any sync issue that's anywhere near 0.7 ms will make it so the sound sounds like it's constantly coming from one direction, even if the volunteers are the same.
we don need no analog audio!
I have additional information on the "story".
* the trouble appears to stem from Apple's effort to chart a new path for wireless headphones.
* In other wireless headphones, only one earpiece receives a signal from the phone ; it then transmits the signal to the other earpiece.
* Apple has said AirPod earpieces each receive independent signals from an iPhone, Mac or other Apple device.
* Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion
* Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies
Also
* the trouble appears to stem from Apple's effort to chart a new path for wireless headphones.
* In other wireless headphones, only one earpiece receives a signal from the phone ; it then transmits the signal to the other earpiece.
* Apple has said AirPod earpieces each receive independent signals from an iPhone, Mac or other Apple device.
* Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion
* Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies
Also
* the trouble appears to stem from Apple's effort to chart a new path for wireless headphones.
* In other wireless headphones, only one earpiece receives a signal from the phone ; it then transmits the signal to the other earpiece.
* Apple has said AirPod earpieces each receive independent signals from an iPhone, Mac or other Apple device.
* Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion
* Apple also must resolve what happens when a user loses one of the earpieces or the battery dies
removing the headphone jack was a stupid idea
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
"But Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion, the person familiar with their development said."
So, I make a phone, shove it down your throats saying you either can buy generic crappier than crappy crap BT headphones or you can buy my fantastic BT headphones. There's only one catch: in can only play music in canon, but don't worry, I'll just need a bit to come up with a convincing selling point to convince you this is the technology of the future and all music was actually meant to be listened this way. Now go, spread the word.
Next time I'll convince you breathing is bad for you.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
So is #4 just a variant of "you're holding it wrong"?
MATH! Lord i wish more people knew and used it..
What is C3WM? I just Googled the term and the only relevant result was this post.
Overcharging their customers. They got all that money by overcharging.
Target is one I can think of off the top of my head. They have extremely low profit margins, in the realm of 3%. So you know that you are getting pretty much the best price they can offer you when you shop there based on what they are paying and the overhead of running their stores.
In terms of making lower margins than Apple though, that would be basically anyone. Apple's margins are INSANE. The only companies that see margins as high as they do are software companies, and then only a few. No other electronics manufacturer is even close.
For $159, they better make sure they work. Can you imagine the backlash?
I know you've been told you're an asshole before, but I just thought I'd remind you.
It's as if they had to do some big R&D project to figure out how to sync separate digital audio receivers. We've been doing things like this in the open-source world for years now--I hacked together a synchronized multi-sink audio system as a weekend project in 2011, for example.
That was UDP/IP/ethernet, but the same principles of latency-matching apply pretty much regardless of the underlying transport.
I suspect that this actually has nothing to do with "[having difficulty figuring out how to] ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion"--because, frankly, I don't think the people at Apple are so stupid as to think they need to invent latency-matching themselves and then also have difficulty with it.
They're probably just having difficulty sourcing parts from one of their vendors or something, but claims like `oh it turned out to be very hard to synchronize playback wirelessly because we're breaking so much new ground with multiple independent receivers' reads as much more profound to the general public who don't actually even know where to begin thinking through something like that.
Having the universe conspire against you with things like physics and math, vs. having let some plebeian manufacturing house upset your schedule due to retooling-problems or materials shortage or some local holiday you didn't know about... or whatever. Which would you rather have as part of your narrative?
-rozzin.
That might be true, but I am mostly talking about the difficulty of a good implementation and not so much the rational of the feature(s). Latency can be a tricky issue when both software processing and error correction of radio signals is involved, let alone battery issues.
A sloppy implementation may be relatively easy, but Apple high standards in general.
Table-ized A.I.
wire.
cheap 3rd-world manufacturers (C3WM)
He defined the term before using it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?