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farewelwilliams

Suspended
Jun 18, 2014
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As per title.

I can't stand having to:

1) double tap loads of times, if I'm very lucky it'll work, mostly it doesn't.

2) when double tapping it makes my eardrum feel like someone had banged the side of my ear. Repeatly doing this increases my tinnitus for the day.

3) volume control via Siri is too painful: double tap several times (see point 1!), audio pauses, ask it to lower volume, it gets it wrong. Repeat until right...60 seconds later, if I'm lucky.

All these are deal breakers for me, I've already had enough of the things after significant testing over last couple of days, to come to the conclusion that they'd drive me mad.

Bye bye Airpods, hello £160 again. Annoying, but that's the way it is.

PS. Yes, sound/fit were fine, tap is what I'm on about in this thread please. So don't come on THIS particular thread talking about anything but the tap issue. Thanks.

This will be a bit of a stupid question, but how hard to do tap them? I've found that you actually need to tap them pretty firmly for it to register. Firmer than you may think!

Some have said the tapping is fairly gentle to provoke a response from Siri. If they improve on the EarPods in the future, I would like to see some form in line controls. Or a single tap, double tap, etc.

what side do you tap? right?

I've noticed it has more response when on the right than left.

I'm not getting mine until Christmas day, but I am not looking forward to the clunky control method - I think I'll just use my phone or watch to control them rather than bashing myself around the head :)


had the same issue. i found that if i tap near the top almost to the point where i'm tapping downwards onto the pod (like clicking a pen), it works 100% of the time. just tap normally as you would like an ipad touch screen. no need for special "force" tapping.

also make sure the "stem" of your airpods are pointing downards and not forwards like a dumb bluetooth ear headset piece. that was causing the issue of airpods not resuming my music when i put one airpod back into my ear. make it point down and you should be fine.
 

Puonti

macrumors 68000
Mar 14, 2011
1,567
1,187
also make sure the "stem" of your airpods are pointing downards and not forwards like a dumb bluetooth ear headset piece. that was causing the issue of airpods not resuming my music when i put one airpod back into my ear. make it point down and you should be fine.

That result is likely due to individual differences in the shapes of the ears, as the AirPods do not care about their orientation. Each AirPod has two IR sensors (dark circles) on opposing sides of the part you insert in your ear, and both sensors on both AirPods need to register contact for them to resume music.

It's likely that if you point the stems forward one of the IR sensors is not registering contact due to the shape of your ears, but as you noted you found an orientation in which they work fine. For myself, orienting the stems down and forward provides the best fit.
 

jsmitty

macrumors 6502a
Sep 18, 2016
557
540
NC
I've had no issues. The key for me is that it is not a double touch but a double tap - a little force behind the touch.
 

Larry The L

Suspended
Jun 9, 2016
263
615
As per title.

I can't stand having to:

1) double tap loads of times, if I'm very lucky it'll work, mostly it doesn't.

2) when double tapping it makes my eardrum feel like someone had banged the side of my ear. Repeatly doing this increases my tinnitus for the day.

Double taps work for me 99% of the time. All that's needed is a very gentle tap. Frankly, I find your observations sound a bit hysterical and vastly exaggerated. You are supposed to tap with your fingers, not a hammer. And there is essentially no way that a tap on the airpods will increase your tinnitus for the day. That not the way tinnitus works.
 

ipedro

macrumors 603
Nov 30, 2004
6,329
8,852
Toronto, ON
I'm not getting mine until Christmas day, but I am not looking forward to the clunky control method - I think I'll just use my phone or watch to control them rather than bashing myself around the head :)

It's not clunky if you use your Watch. AirPods were clearly made with AppleWatch in mind as the replacement for inline controls.

Tapping works well once you get used to it. Make sure you're tapping on the ear bud portion, not the stem. I don't have to tap hard, just firmly on the earbud portion.
 

TurboPGT!

Suspended
Sep 25, 2015
1,595
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Cool story.

1. Double tapping is easy for me and has worked literally every single time.
2. I love having one simple way to interact with everything.
3. Siri volume control is just fine. No complaints about it. Better than fumbling with awkward buttons on the buds themselves.
 

Cogsworth

macrumors 6502
Feb 7, 2015
380
271
I was having trouble with the double tap too, thought it wasn't working at all. Then I figured out I wasn't tapping quite hard enough. It's almost more like slapping it with your finger. Now it works great. I'm not sure how exactly other people are describing it as "gentle" but I guess everyone has their own idea of what's considered gentle LOL.
 
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Arran

macrumors 601
Mar 7, 2008
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Atlanta, USA
...i found that if i tap near the top almost to the point where i'm tapping downwards onto the pod (like clicking a pen), it works 100% of the time...
Thanks. Yep, that's exactly where the guy on Apple's video taps: http://www.apple.com/airpods/

And it's also shown on this diagram (from: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207010)

airpod-activate-siri-tech-spec.png


Works great for me.
 
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MrXiro

macrumors 68040
Nov 2, 2007
3,850
599
Los Angeles
As per title.

I can't stand having to:

1) double tap loads of times, if I'm very lucky it'll work, mostly it doesn't.

2) when double tapping it makes my eardrum feel like someone had banged the side of my ear. Repeatly doing this increases my tinnitus for the day.

3) volume control via Siri is too painful: double tap several times (see point 1!), audio pauses, ask it to lower volume, it gets it wrong. Repeat until right...60 seconds later, if I'm lucky.

All these are deal breakers for me, I've already had enough of the things after significant testing over last couple of days, to come to the conclusion that they'd drive me mad.

Bye bye Airpods, hello £160 again. Annoying, but that's the way it is.

PS. Yes, sound/fit were fine, tap is what I'm on about in this thread please. So don't come on THIS particular thread talking about anything but the tap issue. Thanks.

I've had no issue with the tapping... but Siri is way too slow. Kind of wish we could go back to the previous offline voice control from the first gen of iPhone/iPods. Apple really needs to make Siri offline. It doesn't need to do any of the internet stuff but simple things like volume/playback control is a necessity if they're going to remove the buttons on the headphones.
 

tivoboy

macrumors 601
May 15, 2005
4,052
853
Yes the accelerometer is programmed just one way for the double tap. It would probably be good if in the future the settings for the AirPods allowed one to change the pace or intensity of the double tap to more suit their preferences. Hopefully we make it triple tap for single tap feature in the future. Since it is an accelerometer and a logic Chip, that should be possible in the future.
 

Ad13

macrumors regular
Sep 23, 2015
224
279
Manchester, UK
Double taps work for me 99% of the time. All that's needed is a very gentle tap. Frankly, I find your observations sound a bit hysterical and vastly exaggerated. You are supposed to tap with your fingers, not a hammer. And there is essentially no way that a tap on the airpods will increase your tinnitus for the day. That not the way tinnitus works.

Your comment about tinnitus is incorrect. From my own personal exprerience, some factors make mine worse or increase the awareness of its presence. Repeatedly tapping your ear does actually increase awareness and the ringing does feel worse.
 
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jimthing

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 6, 2011
2,089
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As per title.

I can't stand having to:

1) double tap loads of times, if I'm very lucky it'll work, mostly it doesn't.

2) when double tapping it makes my eardrum feel like someone had banged the side of my ear. Repeatly doing this increases my tinnitus for the day.

3) volume control via Siri is too painful: double tap several times (see point 1!), audio pauses, ask it to lower volume, it gets it wrong. Repeat until right...60 seconds later, if I'm lucky.

All these are deal breakers for me, I've already had enough of the things after significant testing over last couple of days, to come to the conclusion that they'd drive me mad.

Bye bye Airpods, hello £160 again. Annoying, but that's the way it is.

PS. Yes, sound/fit were fine, tap is what I'm on about in this thread please. So don't come on THIS particular thread talking about anything but the tap issue. Thanks.
Double taps work for me 99% of the time. All that's needed is a very gentle tap. Frankly, I find your observations sound a bit hysterical and vastly exaggerated. You are supposed to tap with your fingers, not a hammer. And there is essentially no way that a tap on the airpods will increase your tinnitus for the day. That not the way tinnitus works.
Your comment about tinnitus is incorrect. From my own personal exprerience, some factors make mine worse or increase the awareness of its presence. Repeatedly tapping your ear does actually increase awareness and the ringing does feel worse.
Absolutely. Tinnitus is not one kind, but several different kinds, and can affect different people in many differing ways. For me, repeatedly banging any piece of plastic hanging on the outside of my ear can help irritate my eardrums. Though it's hard to tell, as tinnitus is as much about your brain processing ambient noise, as much as it's about actual damage to inner ear hair thus missing frequency response.

One gets used to it –living in a big loud city one has to (and living in so-called peace and quiet is likely worse as you perceive the inner white noise even more in such quiet surroundings)– but at least trying to not aggravate ones hearing more than necessary is preferable.
[doublepost=1483016538][/doublepost]I actually just bought a pair of wireless Bose QC35's yesterday on Apple Regent Street, and I'm testing them over the next few days to see if I can justify the large-ish £290 price tag. From my initial testing they are amazing at both sound isolation (they have 5-6 hours of battery for noise cancelling, but even with it off they are still good, being around-ear), and the sound quality at this price is a astounding. Also, physical button controls on the headset make volume, ff/rw, and answering calls very easy.

It's a catch 22 of course.

While the QC35's are not absolutely massive for what they are, they're still rather bulky and not exactly pocketable for commuting without carrying a bag to keep them in when not in use (may be doable if one has to carry other stuff anyway, but conversely it's not really convenient when one doesn't have to). Also, one doesn't have the problem of dropping and potentially losing them too (was shopping the other day and a couple of times the AirPods got knocked-off somehow or other). However you get amazing sound blockage for pure clean listening, with great sound quality so yo can enjoy what you're listening to in really great quality. Though perhaps at the expense of not hearing that train announcement telling you the train has been cancelled and please find an alternate route, that happens all the time in London, lol!

Whereas earbuds like the AirPods are small, convenient to store in a small coat pocket, and good battery life. The downsides are obviously, controllability being fiddly at best, sound isolation is low in loud places like trains/planes/automobiles (but at least you get to hear that announcement, hey!), and personally I prefer not having things hanging off or actually deep inside my ears/ear canals.

A halfway between the two would be nice, if only Apple would license the W1 chip to other manufacturers, but I suspect only Apple/Beats (Beats I hate, yuck!) are going to get the great sync-ability in the near future.

Can't really justify keeping both (£450 for both Bose and AirPods is just a little extravagant for me!), so will have to think about it further – I may keep none, if my real world usage makes them both too annoying to use in differing ways. I still enjoy my good old industry standard 20 year old Sennheiser HD25's, as they're tough as old boots, while lacking the features of newer stuff. And to be honest, the wired EarPods are still cheap and cheerful for buds usage when wanted, making replacement easily affordable if ever lost or damaged.

I don't know about you guys, but the price of earphones/headphones in general over the last few years still astonishes me. While EarPods are just £29, the wireless version AirPods are over 5 times the price at £160, and sure they have a few more conveniences, but it's still a lot for what they are offering the user IMO. And yes, I know there are many other wireless buds in the marketplace at same or more, but to me that just means they're all very high in price for what they are.

Hate the phrase 'first world problems', but I suppose this would count as one, haha! Mmm, choices choices...
 
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Arran

macrumors 601
Mar 7, 2008
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Atlanta, USA
What about Bose SoundSport? Same price as the AirPods, noise isolating but not cancelling, earbuds wired together, and I find the wire sturdy enough that I feel comfortable just rolling it up and stuffing it into my pocket.
I really like having no wires at all, but if Apple could make AirPods out of their (isolating) In-Ear headphones, I'd be delighted. I.e., a completely wireless version of these:

maxresdefault.jpg
 

TrueBlou

macrumors 601
Sep 16, 2014
4,531
3,619
Scotland
Tried both sides, similar results.

Should have used a proper touch thing rather than accelerometer. But then that'd open another can of worms, no doubt.

Surely someone else hates these things for the tap/volume control issues, or it's just me then. Haha.


Nope, not just you. Granted I'm still waiting on mine but I don't need them to know that I don't want to use Siri to control them, I'll be using my Apple Watch to fulfill those functions most of the time, with maybe only popping my hand into my pocket to adjust volume using the buttons on my iPhone when that's an option.

Maybe in the house it's not so bad asking Siri to skip a track or something, but I'm not wandering around talking to myself and getting increasingly annoyed when Siri doesn't understand me for the umpteenth time :rolleyes:

It won't stop me buying or using them, like I say there's other options than Siri thank god.
 

jimthing

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 6, 2011
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Nope, not just you. Granted I'm still waiting on mine but I don't need them to know that I don't want to use Siri to control them, I'll be using my Apple Watch to fulfill those functions most of the time, with maybe only popping my hand into my pocket to adjust volume using the buttons on my iPhone when that's an option.

Maybe in the house it's not so bad asking Siri to skip a track or something, but I'm not wandering around talking to myself and getting increasingly annoyed when Siri doesn't understand me for the umpteenth time :rolleyes:

It won't stop me buying or using them, like I say there's other options than Siri thank god.
I don't have an Apple Watch (don't like having things on my wrists generally, and especially when I'm typing on keyboards where they get in the way) so won't be using that, but granted that would be an efficient solution for those that do.

The only problem is that if you're out in public you don't want to be using Siri to communicate with the AirPods, as some people may not want to look silly talking to themselves an/or disturbing others around them (though in this day and age, people don't care about talking to themselves al the time, so it's less of an issue, lol!), but more importantly because it's too loud on the street or in a busy office environment to use. So really, double-tap is best used for play/pause ability rather than Siri and its volume control...still, only if it works though.

Might have to try out some other ear/head phone solutions though. ;)
 

farewelwilliams

Suspended
Jun 18, 2014
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18,041
That's possible, but I wasn't responding to concerns about taps. My reply was about the IR sensors and playback auto-resume.

i've never had an issue with the sensors/playback when airpods are inserted/removed.
[doublepost=1483032439][/doublepost]
Thanks. Yep, that's exactly where the guy on Apple's video taps: http://www.apple.com/airpods/

And it's also shown on this diagram (from: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207010)

airpod-activate-siri-tech-spec.png


Works great for me.

nope. that was my first impression. hitting that spot works 50% of the time. I tap where the black spot is on top. That gets it 100% percent of the time.
 

TrueBlou

macrumors 601
Sep 16, 2014
4,531
3,619
Scotland
I don't have an Apple Watch (don't like having things on my wrists generally, and especially when I'm typing on keyboards where they get in the way) so won't be using that, but granted that would be an efficient solution for those that do.

The only problem is that if you're out in public you don't want to be using Siri to communicate with the AirPods, as some people may not want to look silly talking to themselves an/or disturbing others around them (though in this day and age, people don't care about talking to themselves al the time, so it's less of an issue, lol!), but more importantly because it's too loud on the street or in a busy office environment to use. So really, double-tap is best used for play/pause ability rather than Siri and its volume control...still, only if it works though.

Might have to try out some other ear/head phone solutions though. ;)


See that's my problem, well one of my problems with Siri, I'm not always in a place where I'd consider it good manners to be speaking out just to control my music/audio book/whatever. And being a person of a *ahem* certain age I was raised with manners and despite my somewhat chequered past, I know when to behave myself.

The other issue I have with the need for Siri is that then depends entirely on having an internet connection. That might not bother many people but I live in Scotland for god sake, 80% of this place has no mobile internet coverage. So Siri is a complete bust there as well if I wander outside of a town or city.

Like I say, I'll be using my watch I think, I've always worn a watch so I'm used to having one on, feel nakit without it.

But when all is said and done there's still no substitute for having at least a basic degree of control on the buds themselves. Don't get me wrong, I've been sent a pair of wireless buds to test just now and they have all the control you could want on them, they sound not too bad at all, but they are seriously fugly, the controls need to hard of a press so it forces them further into your ear canal (and I'm not a fan of those type of buds to begin with) and to top it off they are bloody uncomfortable after 10 or 15 minutes.

So I'm happy to sacrifice some things for a degree of elegance and comfort. Which I expect the AirPods to deliver on both counts, I've no issues with the EarPods.

But what I'd like added to the AirPods is just one simple thing to keep me pretty much completely happy. I can pause by removing one of the AirPods, ok I'm happy to concede to that, I can stick my hand in my pocket and press buttons on my phone for volume control (or there's the Watch of course) so I'm happy to do that.
But I'd like them to add in a tap sequence, three taps or something, to skip a track.

With that one addition I'd be able to do the three main things I want from controlling my music even when I'm wearing gloves and can't operate a touch screen on the phone or watch. Play/pause, volume control and track skipping. That'd make me a very happy chappie. I've a feeling they'll add something along those lines before too long. In the meantime, or if they don't, I'm sure I'll cope. I've managed with significantly less convenient things over the years.

Bloody hell I ramble on when I'm sleep deprived :D
 

Puonti

macrumors 68000
Mar 14, 2011
1,567
1,187
also make sure the "stem" of your airpods are pointing downards and not forwards like a dumb bluetooth ear headset piece. that was causing the issue of airpods not resuming my music when i put one airpod back into my ear. make it point down and you should be fine.

i've never had an issue with the sensors/playback when airpods are inserted/removed.

Not to nitpick, but it seemed to me like you were having an issue there. Perhaps your point was unclear.
 

friedmud

macrumors 65816
Jul 11, 2008
1,415
1,265
As per title.

I can't stand having to:

1) double tap loads of times, if I'm very lucky it'll work, mostly it doesn't.

2) when double tapping it makes my eardrum feel like someone had banged the side of my ear. Repeatly doing this increases my tinnitus for the day.

3) volume control via Siri is too painful: double tap several times (see point 1!), audio pauses, ask it to lower volume, it gets it wrong. Repeat until right...60 seconds later, if I'm lucky.

All these are deal breakers for me, I've already had enough of the things after significant testing over last couple of days, to come to the conclusion that they'd drive me mad.

Bye bye Airpods, hello £160 again. Annoying, but that's the way it is.

PS. Yes, sound/fit were fine, tap is what I'm on about in this thread please. So don't come on THIS particular thread talking about anything but the tap issue. Thanks.

Note: It's not a double-"touch". It's a double "move". The tapping is accelerometer based.

After a bit of experimentation I don't have any trouble registering the gesture. I kind of come "down" on it from above... firmly _tapping_ it twice with the tip of my finger.

Also: the taps don't have to be too close together... like you don't have to do it too "fast". A slow double tap will get it done.
 
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