Airpods (should) go where they’re needed. They don’t.
When Apple first revealed that their new AirPods Pro headphones could jump between your devices, I was ecstatic. I often watch videos or listen to music on different devices, and being able to jump between them without effort sounded wonderful. However, it never worked. Audio jumps between devices. that part “works.” It’s just incredibly unpredictable. I could be watching a video on my Mac while scrolling a webpage on my phone and because there is a video present on the page on my iPhone, audio would jump over. Then I’d have to manually reconnect it to the Mac, because my iPhone thought it should have priority for a video that wasn’t even playing over a video that was playing on my Mac. Switching back was then another nightmare as I was still on the webpage demanding my AirPods switch back to my iPhone.
Alongside Handwashing on the Apple Watch, Apple’s audio jumping trick seems like nothing more than a gimmick that wasn’t properly tested. Are we going to see more softballs from Apple?
Fix It In Post (Release)
Modern software development wouldn’t fix the foundation until it falls.
The Handwashing Apple Watch app looks much different today than it did when it released just a few months ago. It still doesn’t work much better, but Apple is making efforts to improve it. The same has been true of many of Apple’s “version zero” releases. Apple called iOS 12 a bug fix release, with few new features, and people were genuinely excited to receive it! iOS 11 was such a bug-ridden operating system that even Apple’s commercials featured iOS bugs .This can happen when a company focuses too much on release notes that include big new features instead of fixing tech debt. The best way to describe it is a company trying to have the tallest building in the world, but not listening when architects say they need to improve the foundation. Most of the tech industry falls into this same trap.
Apple’s no different.
Fixes Maybe Coming
The audio switching feature of the AirPods is something Apple brags about. After all, you can’t get such seamless features from any other bluetooth device. However, you can’t always get them from your AirPods either. They cut off running video and audio, reconnecting to the original device doesn’t work, they switch over for audio that’s shorter than the time it takes to connect a bluetooth device, and the connection is unreliable. It doesn’t always switch over at all. I’ve already had audio switch over after a video had completed!
Of course, this is a stand out feature of the AirPods, so it’s something Apple will fix in future firmware updates. For now, I recommend most people turn the feature off. Unfortunately, you have to do this on each device. I had to tell my work Mac, personal Mac, iPad, and iPhone to stop automatically stealing audio from other devices because they tend to do it while audio is still in use. You can do this in the AirPods settings found in Bluetooth on your iOS device or Mac. On iOS, tap the ‘i’ icon next to your AirPods.
This seems like such a simple fix. Don’t swap out audio if something is playing. But Apple hasn’t fixed it in the months since release.
Maybe we’ll get something timed with the release of the AirPods 3 later this month. Due to the secretive nature of Apple, and the fact that they never admit they have a problem until they have a fix, we have no idea if Apple will ever fix their broken AirPods.
Seeing as I still have issues charging mine, my guess is it could be a very long time.