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Transcript
Okay, good evening everybody and welcome to our March Apple Bites with Herbie Allen. Just a couple of things before we begin our presentation. I would like to just let everybody know that this meeting is being recorded. If you are on a computer, iPad or iPhone, you do need to go to the Got It button and you can tab over to that Got It button. If you are on your iPhone, you will get a message that will let you know, just click on OK or yet you accept and then you’ll be good to go. If you do not get to that Got It button, when you are asked to unmute, you will not be allowed to unmute. So it’s really important that you hit that Got It button. Okay, I’m going to very shortly turn this over to Herbie, but before we do that, I’m going to ask President Erlene, who happens to be here with us tonight, to give an introduction. Hello, hello everybody. For those of you who have not been to BITS presentations before, if you would like to learn more about BITS and BITS presentations, you can join the BITS announced list by sending an email message to bits-announce +subscribe@groups.io. Again, that is bits-announce +subscribe@groups.io. And we also have our BITS chat on Friday and Saturday night, and everyone is welcome to join us. It’s not just for BITS own members only, it’s for everyone, and we welcome anyone who would like to talk with us. We talk about all kinds of things, not just technology, but if you do have a technology question, you’re welcome to come into the BITS chat and ask your technology question. And now, thank you Rosanna for inviting me to give that brief set of announcements, and I’ll turn it over to you so you can introduce our presenter. Thank you. Without further ado, I’d like to introduce our one and only, Herbie Allen, who will give us our March Apple Bites. Welcome, Herbie. Well, thank you Rosanna, thank you Erlene, and welcome everybody to this presentation for Apple Bites for March. Can you believe, folks, it’s already March 22nd of 2022, March Madness. And by the way, what better way to listen or to watch March Madness with those AirPods? Yes, indeed. And why is it a good idea to watch them with the AirPods? I’ll get to that in a little bit. So yes, indeed. Today, we’re going to rotate the Apple a little bit. We’ve been taking a look at the soft side of the Apple, but we’re just going to take it and spin the core around and take a look at a harder side, aka the hardware, and specifically the AirPods. So are you confused with the different types of AirPods that are out there? Well, what are these AirPods anyway? Why should you get them? And what is the difference between the various models? I hope that tonight’s presentation is going to clear up the confusion, not make it more confusing, but I’m definitely going to make sure that you all have time for questions as well. The AirPods, let’s just talk about what they are. First of all, so there are currently five models out there. AirPods, AirPods 2, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, and AirPods 3. And I gave them to you in the order that they came out. And the first set of AirPods came out in 2017. I think that’s when they first came out. It was 2017 or 2018. I’m pretty sure. Yeah, it was 2017. So the idea of the AirPods is they come in, they are completely Bluetooth. We’ve had Bluetooth headphones for probably as long as we’ve had Bluetooth. I definitely remember Bluetooth models for even the old style cell phones well before the smartphone. But these are a new type of Bluetooth because they have some extra stuff built into it, basically kind of a head detection software. So they can determine when they’re in your ear, when they’re not in your ear, and that can be useful for you don’t have to worry about on/off buttons or anything like that. You put them in the case, they completely power down. You take them out of the case and you put them in your ear and they just immediately start working. You can put one earpiece in and/or the other. That’s right. The AirPods were the first completely detachable Bluetooth headphones that were not all one single unit. They come in two separate pieces, a left rear piece, a right piece. And they were a very revolutionary concept. So what do they look like? Well, let’s start with the original AirPods that came out in 2017. So what you got in the box was a charging case that just has one button on it, which was a reset button. And sometimes you’d need it if they weren’t pairing or whatever, or if you needed to reset the device, the AirPods or whatever. And then two earpieces. The earpieces, if you’ve seen the Apple EarPods or the old style earpods with a 3.5mm jack, they look like that only they are wireless and you control them with the stem. The stem is the part that hangs down from the headphones. I take that back. The original AirPods, you did not control with the stem. That actually wouldn’t come until the Pro. This is where it gets so confusing. So what you could do is the AirPods had several built-in controls that you can modify and still can. So you could, for instance, have your left side be your play pause and your right side be your Siri if you wanted. Or you could have both sides be play pause or vice versa. There are several things you could do. And you control this. In fact, you still do with the AirPods, AirPods 2 and AirPods 3 with touching a… There’s like two little holes at the top. And you basically, you know, you touch the hole where the sensor is on the top of your ear. And that controls the function you want. So you’d hold it in if you wanted Siri, play pause, or you could rewind fast forward. So that was with the AirPods, the AirPods, and that’s still with the AirPods 2 and the AirPods 3. When you put them in the case, not only does it charge power them down, but it also will charge the earpieces. And so you have to be careful because if you just have one out, then the other one is going to… It’s going to be at a lower battery level than the other one. But you do have to remember to charge the case. Now, what you can do, by the way, if you’re not sure of the battery level of your case, it doesn’t make any sounds when you have it plugged in. But if you open the lid of the case and you have your phone unlocked, a pop-up should appear telling you the charge status of the case complete with the left side, the right side AirPods as well. So that was the original AirPods. Apple no longer sells them anymore, but the oldest model they do sell still is the AirPods 2, which are the cheapest and you can get them for about $129. Now, I don’t recall if the original AirPods do this or not, or did this. And by the way, you can use AirPods with other devices too. They may not work as well, but they can definitely be used with other devices and you may not get some of the features that you completely get with Apple. And yes, you can also make phone calls with them as well, like I said, their Bluetooth headset. And AirPods 2, they came out a year or two later. They had some vast improvements. Like I said, they for sure, they now include the H1 chip, which allowed for higher bandwidth Bluetooth, which meant less latency. Though I was impressed even with the original AirPods and the latency not being so bad on that. What I mean by latency is your response time with voiceover and doing an action on the phone and you hearing it back through your AirPods. Like if you would type a letter, if you’re just using your phone, you get immediate response with a Bluetooth headset. You can maybe have to wait like a second or two for it to come back to you. So, but what these also do for sure, like I said, I forget if the original AirPods did this. And they actually pair in the cloud. So what this means, if you have multiple devices, an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple Watch, a Mac, Apple TV, you can actually switch your AirPods to any of those devices. And that really made it possible, especially if you wanted to like use apps like Audible or Apple Music on your watch, you can listen to them with your AirPods or some other Bluetooth headphones. And unfortunately, what can happen is sometimes the devices will fight over who’s going to be connected and when. Usually you can tell them to remember your last remembered connection, use that and that will fix that particular issue. The AirPods 2 have better battery life than the standard AirPods. But one of the weaknesses I definitely found with the AirPods 2 and even with the original AirPods, they are not good at blocking out sound. And you really notice this, like say if you’re on a paratransit ride or public transit life, it’s like there’s loud people, loud music and you’re trying to listen to your own music or whatever. Like there’s no barrier. So you have to hear it all simultaneously. And that can be a rather frustrating experience. And so I’ve definitely found that to be the problem with the AirPods 2. I believe the earpiece is a little bit smaller than the original AirPods as well. So then Apple finally introduced in 2019 something a lot more revolutionary with their AirPods design. And before I forget, I believe AirPods 2 also is the first to feature a wireless charging case where you can put your case on a wireless charging pad and charge it that way. But the wireless charging cases were sold separately and were more expensive. Otherwise, you plug it into a regular adapter, like you would the same kind of adapter that your smartphone, iPhone uses, whatnot. So finally in 2019, Apple really gave us a reason to be excited about AirPods with the AirPods Pro design. And the reason why these were revolutionary is they offered a brand new design and some new features. Let’s talk about the design of these. So now instead of the flat earpieces that go into your ear, now we get customizable ear tips that maybe not be the most comfortable at times, but it’s still an improvement over the original AirPods. And they come in medium, large, and small. The medium ones are what are fitted to the AirPods by default. And with these ear tips and all that came two brand new features to the AirPods. Well, three actually. First, a redesigned stem. So remember I was talking about stem control. So no longer are you tapping the holes on AirPods, the earpiece itself. Now you’re using stem motions to control your AirPods. And you could actually have several actions with the stem. And also we got two other brand new features, noise cancellation and noise transparency. And let’s talk about them. Noise cancellation is kind of obvious what it can do. The idea of it is to where you can cancel out your noise. So finally, you can go on a paratransit ride and have quite a bit of peace and quiet. It was really nice to be able to use the AirPods that way. The case is a little bit longer, by the way, to on the AirPods Pro because the AirPods themselves are a little bit wider so, you know, to customize the way they fit. So you had finally noise cancellation on noise transparency. This was another wonderful feature because what it does, it allows you to hear your surroundings while still listening to stuff through your AirPods. And it can get a little bit loud if you’re in a loud environment, just a fair warning. But it does have its limitations. It’s not, I did not ever find it the greatest for like if I was doing mobility. It was still, you’re hearing everything through headphones. And while you’re hearing it in stereo, it’s still not the same as hearing it in real time. But one thing I found early on that really worked well for me, if I wanted to listen to something and know where I was going, I found I could wear one ear pod and have my other ear open and have the one ear pod in transparency mode. So I felt like I was hearing everything naturally, but I was still listening to whatever it was in my AirPod. And I could still get to where I was going. And what I would do is decide where I was trailing a wall or whatever. That’s the one I would have open and have the other air pod in my opposite ear. So usually if I’m trailing to the right, I’d have the left ear pod in. And also improved battery life. That was another key feature. And but that was not the only thing they had for the AirPods Pro. In 2020, they introduced something brand new for the AirPods. And I don’t want it. It’s not quite new for headphones because there’s been surround sound headphones for a while. But they introduced a brand new concept called spatial audio. And at first it was limited to three apps. TV, Disney Plus and the music app. Now, one thing that is still true that you need to know about with the music app is you first of all have to have Apple Music. And second of all, it only works in tracks that are encoded in Dolby Atmos, which there are a lot. And so basically what spatial audio does is it’s it’s called head tracking. And so it tries to put you in the center of the sound. That’s how Apple describes it. I personally could do with less of the head tracking and more of the Dolby Atmos myself. But I think visually it is a little bit more appealing for the head tracking. But what it does is it puts everything in a surround sound format so that you are completely immersed in the audio. Now, if you’re wondering, OK, should I ever try this while doing mobility? My advice is only on a very low volume level because you are going to be completely lost, especially if it’s a really good movie that has a lot of effects. You’re definitely going to hear it’s going to sound like you are in, like I said, it’s truly immersive audio. And so that was something that they introduced to the AirPods Pro line in 2010. I’m sorry, 2020, 2000. I don’t know why I was thinking 2010. But so we got the that. Another thing they introduced for the AirPods, and I think we actually have this in AirPods too as well, but definitely in the AirPods Pro lineup, some interesting functionality with Siri. I forget off the top of my head when we could do Hey Siri with the AirPods, but they introduced some other interesting things for Siri where she can actually do some things for you when the screen is locked. For instance, she can read parts of your text messages. She can’t read the entire thing if it’s a really long message, but she can read short ones. And so you can be listening to your music on the AirPods and then you’ll get a notification and it’ll say message from blah, blah, blah. Did you pick up the milk today from the store? But if you get a really long message instead, why didn’t you pick up the milk from the store and the eggs and the bread? And why didn’t you take out the dog and take out the trash and bring in the cat? It’s going to say you have a message from blah, blah, blah, and you’ll have to go read the message manually. Another thing it’ll do is if you have if somebody sends you an audio message, it will play the first minute of the message. And this was really great at first because Bluetooth audio quality was not the greatest with the AirPods. And that is something else I’m going to talk about in a minute. So it was nice to at least have them in a little bit better audio quality the way it played the messages, but you’d still have to go listen to the message. Another thing you need to know if you’re like me and you have your audio messages set to expire after two minutes, you still have to play the message in the messages window for that to happen. Otherwise, it’s still going to be there and be considered unread even though the AirPods played the first minute of the message. And like I said, you can now use Hey Siri as well to respond back to the message. I’ve had a little bit of fun with that. It could be a little bit better in that what I don’t like is if it misreads my tech dictation with the message or whatever, I can’t delete what I said. So all I can do is cancel the message and I have to go manually reply. I’ve had some issues with that. But once she understands me when I want to reply to a message, it really works great. Again, the environment that you’re in is going to help with that. One, let’s talk about a bit more about audio quality with the AirPods. One drawback with them is the way the mics are placed. Again, if you’re in a quiet environment, it’s not so bad. But if you’re in a noisy environment, sometimes it can be hard to hear the person wearing AirPods. So if you’re in a noisy environment and you’re wearing AirPods and you’re talking to somebody, you’re going to be better off most likely using your actual phone instead. So just keep that in mind. It’s great if you know if you’re in a situation where you need to have noise canceling on so you can hear the person that’s, you know, understandable. But another myth I want to really quickly dispute too is somebody said, people have asked if having noise cancellation on affects the microphones of the AirPods in any way. And the answer is no, it does not. So another thing with AirPods that they introduced in 2020 was the hearing adaptations where I’m not going to talk too much into that because I’m not hearing impaired. So I’ve not played with that too much. But you can do some audio adjustments to where you can like they can actually kind of help with hearing a little bit. Some other things you can do is you can also adjust in the hearing where you can actually affect how the AirPods sound a little bit. You can make them more bassy or add in a little bit more treble. I should actually really play with that a little bit more. But if you are hearing impaired and you want to know more of what the AirPods can do with that, look in the hearing section of accessibility. And there’s also some noise recognition tasks that can do like, it can recognize some common noises like sirens, smoke alarms or whatever. So there you go. They’re trying to make the AirPods, you know, more accessibility friendly. So how cool is that? All right. Next, though, with the AirPods came my personal favorite. And by the way, the AirPods Pro are a little bit more expensive. I forget the current price. I want to say around 200. But if you go to the Apple Store app and you just type in AirPods, capital A-I-R, capital P-O-D-S, all one word, it’ll bring up the different results. And you do get free engraving, by the way, in case you’re interested. But another thing AirPods do is they, and I think I know I talked about this when I did the Find My demonstration. They are part of Find My as well. OK, so just to recap, in case anybody’s joined us late, we talked about AirPods, which are the original model, the AirPods 2, which are an improvement on the original model, and then the AirPods Pro, which were a completely revolutionary design in the AirPods with the custom ear tips. And if you don’t like Apple’s ear tips, by the way, you can buy third party ones off of places like Amazon as well for the AirPods Pro. So that’s something else to make note of. But finally, they introduced something totally revolutionary and expensive with AirPods, and I was so happy to still get them as a Christmas present last year, the AirPods Max. A lot of people gave Apple crap for these with how they looked, especially in their original design. I guess they looked like tuning forks with things attached to them. And not to mention the price tag the final product has. I would be the first to tell you that, you know, somebody with not any money, yeah, cheaper than being cheaper would definitely be awesome. I am, like I said, I got lucky that I could get them as a Christmas present myself. But yes, they are worth the $535 price tag. You will pay for them. They have terrific sound. So but let’s go back to what they are. They are over the ear headphones and they come in a different type of case. It’s not a true charging case, but the case does have, I guess, a magnetic thing that powers them down when they’re in it. The AirPods come, you get detachable ear cups, which you can wash. And they actually, they can get a little bit sweaty easily. That’s one. There’s some things I don’t like about them. They can definitely get sweaty. They’re not good with odor absorption, but you can remove them. And there are specific instructions on how to wash them with basically just a damp washcloth soaked in the laundry detergent. They recommend a soft one. The AirPods Max have two buttons on the right hand side. So there is a left and a right. And the right hand side, though, is the one with the buttons. You’ve got your round button, which is your Siri button slash play pause button. And you’ve got a rectangular button. I guess it’s more oval than rectangular. I’m not sure how to describe it exactly. That is your play pause button. And then the other thing. So another thing you have to get used to is these do not have a button on the case like the other AirPods models do. But if you need to reset them for any reason, like if they’re not pairing, then holding in the Siri and oval button and for about 10 seconds is the first way to reset them. And otherwise, you have to charge them for a few minutes. I have had some issues with them not wanting to pair right off the bat. And that’s one thing I don’t know if I like as much. But what I will tell you this, I have a pair of Bose headphones. And if you don’t know anything about Bose, the thing you need to know is they are really high quality. I would say that Apple knocks Bose well out of the ballpark. Much richer sound and much better both noise cancellation and transparency. Like listening to noise transparency on my Bose headphones, they have the model to is like listening to something on an AM radio. And your whereas Apple is like listening on a very clear FM radio. It sounds so natural that sometimes I can even forget I’m wearing the headphones. The downside to these is that they are a little bit heavy. And that’s one thing that some other headphone models like Bose, Bose especially is really good about being lightweight. And so that’s the one thing I don’t like as much about the AirPods is them being heavy. And they can be a little bit of a… they can be uncomfortable unfortunately. You can adjust them. There’s like a little there on the side there you can pull the bar. You can pull them out or pull them in. And it’s not just me that thinks this. I was very relieved to read a few weeks ago that the number one complaint about AirPods Max is comfort. And then finally Apple introduced one of their lineup to their AirPods, the AirPods 3. And these are an improvement on the AirPods 2. But one key difference really between the AirPods 3 and the AirPods 2 is A, they do of course have a little bit better sound quality. They have the improved Bluetooth codec which is something else I forgot to mention that the AirPods Pro have. They… Apple finally really improved the Bluetooth audio quality for when you’re talking on a Zoom call. And there you go. That’s something that’s really nice. So I’ve been more willing to go on Zoom calls now with them because while it’s not the best sound it definitely sounds a lot better. But the AirPods 3 have that. I can also tell when talking to people when they’re talking to me using them they definitely sound a little bit more bassier. And that helps with the crowded environments. And then last thing, AirPods 3 also you get the spatial audio as well. But you do not get the noise canceling. You do not get the noise transparency. And it is the type that are flat on your head. They do not have the custom ear tips. So that is the AirPods 3. They also have a shorter stem as well. So a couple of the things I want to talk about. I’ve never really had any problems with them falling out of my ear. But the downside is if you lose one it can be really hard to find. I think I’ve lost one of my AirPods Pros permanently. Maybe it’ll show up a few years from now. I had another situation where I lost my AirPods. Both of them and it took a sighted person actually helping me find them. I don’t think they were in Find My at the time. And this is the original AirPods. But another thing I’ve noticed with the AirPods and the AirPods 2. I’ve had issues where the headphones are supposed to be sweat resistant. But in the end water or something gets into them and they start sounding a little bit muffled. That is a problem I have not had with the AirPods Pro or the AirPods Max. And I have not bothered with the AirPods 3. Now Apple is supposed to come out with a new form of AirPods this year. That is the rumor mill. And one of the things that it’s supposed to be able to do is support Apple Music lossless quality in a much better way. So I would say, so technically it doesn’t support it. So Apple Music if you don’t know which. I’m going to talk more about that next month. By the way, Apple Music has a lossless quality now. And it does sound really good on AirPods Max. I will tell you. But apparently Apple is supposed to do something to really make it improved this year. So what will that look like? Well, that’s one reason why I originally waited on this demonstration. I wanted to see if they were going to talk about anything like that during the last Apple event, which they did not. So we’ll just have to wait. The other thing for Mac users, I have noticed when I’m using the AirPods with them, I do have a delay between voice over on my keyboard with a lot of things. I don’t know if it’s improved on the M1 models or not, but that has been my experience. Also Mac users, at least if you’re Intel based, you do not get the Dolby Atmos with the TV app you do with Apple Music Tracks. And you can also, by the way, get Dolby Atmos with music tracks on a lot of Beats headphones as well. All right, guys, I think that’s enough for me. I’m going to turn it over now and let’s see what questions you guys have. And Rosanna, how about letting everybody know how they can participate? And the first person we have up will be Richard. All right, Richard, welcome. I’ve got two questions. Yep. There’s no, that I know of, there’s no way to adjust the volume independently to each of them that I know of. I haven’t seen that. No, there is not. And the other question I’m going to ask you, you say you can hear the difference between, you know, being on AirPods, whatever, or other devices. Tell me, am I on AirPods now? All right. At the moment, you are not. But you were definitely on your AirPods this morning. I could tell because your voice was not as bassy and it was at a slightly lower bit rate. But you are definitely now on just your phone in general. And it sounds like you’re talking, you know, you could be on a head. I can’t. I think you’re actually wearing regular headphones, but you could just I think that’s what you’re doing. If I had to guess. No, no, no. OK. But you’re definitely not on the AirPods right now. So, oh, boy, how many tests am I going to get on that one tonight? That’s going to be interesting. Well, you know what, guys, I will actually tell you what. I’m not doing an audio demonstration. I’ve not really done an audio demonstration, but I will give you an idea of what I actually sound like on the AirPods. Give me just a minute, guys. OK. One other thing, a couple of the things I mentioned while I’m getting set up here is that the volume button on the AirPods Max is also a If you can also adjust the volume on the AirPods Max with the round button on the side. Again, it’s the same head detection. You put it on your head. It activates. You move the headphones when you want them to power down. You kind of like you rotate the cut the headphones like so they’re flat. And that will power them down. The other thing that we also have that works now in FaceTime with the AirPods is the surround sound with FaceTime. And that is very interesting, a very interesting experience. And one thing I’ve noticed, like if I answer a FaceTime call with the AirPods, I get the surround sound. But if I make a phone call with FaceTime, if I FaceTime call somebody, I don’t. All right, guys. So I am now talking to you on my AirPods Max. So there you go. You can probably tell how I sound. I hopefully don’t sound too bad. But I am on my AirPods Max. Some other things. Let’s see. Zoom doesn’t technically support this. If you’re on a FaceTime call, you can do like the transparency changes with your voice. That’s a whole other iOS demonstration. I can make myself sound a little bit better perhaps by turning on the original sound. So now I should sound a little bit clearer. So then you’re probably wondering, so I was originally on my computer. So then what do I sound like if I’m not in the AirPods, if I’m just on the phone? How can you know the difference? Well, here, I’ll make this a bit of a fair test. I’m going to turn off the original sound here. OK, so right now I am on the AirPods. And I should have thought about just doing the entire call this way. Oh, that’s OK. So I’m going to take them off. And power them down. Put them in the case. And now I am just on the phone itself. So well, here. So hopefully that gives you an idea of how I sound on the AirPods. So all right. Yes. OK, so there we go. Erby, first of all, the price points that I saw for some of them, I think I saw the Pro for $189 on Amazon. And I saw the Max for $479. Yes. So the the oval button on the Max. Yes. I don’t know if you were clear about that. That’s the noise cancellation versus. Well, they don’t really. Unfortunately, the Max does not really have transparency mode. Yes, I like the. Well, not as much as the pro. You don’t think so. No, because when when you go into the audio settings under audio visual, when you go into the settings where you can do a detailed audio setting, it says customize transparency. It says pro only. So, yeah, that is true. However, I personally have loved the way the transparency mode works on the AirPods Max myself. Really? Really. I thought it could be a little louder. I liked it. Maybe it could be. But I’ve always thought it was a very sufficient volume. Again, you just when you’re using it in transparency mode, you have to be mindful of the volume level of whatever it is you’re listening to. That’s going to affect the volume level of it. True. Yeah. So that’s something to keep in mind. But so what you’re listening to again, so the lower you have, whatever you’re listening to, the better you’re going to hear your surrounding environments. But yes, you are right. The button toggles that the three modes and. Is there three? I thought there were only two on the three because you can have an off transparency noise cancellation or noise transparency. Now, I thought off you had to actually go in the app like in the in the Bluetooth app, I think, or the audio visual app to do the off. So with both the AirPods Pro and the AirPods Max, you have to go into the AirPods themselves and swipe down to more. But you can customize the stem or the button depending on your pod to which modes to cycle between. So I made sure that off was selected in that cycle set. Oh, OK. OK. So that’s why. Yeah. So so so that’s why off is an option. That’s one thing that irritated me about like the Bose headphones is there is no way to turn that off. It’s either one or the other. Oh, and by the way, I’m talking on a Plantronics and all the one I was going to say, you don’t think you don’t think you’re on the AirPods. You’re on a lower. The Plantronics have a little bit more bass, but a slightly lower audio quality. So there you go. OK, great presentation. Well, thank you. Thank you. Debbie Downey is up next. Debbie asked to unmute. Kirby, I was on a short phone call when you were speaking about the AirPods 3. And so I don’t know if you mentioned it again, but you originally said that the AirPods 3 that you tapped on the top like the one and the two. Actually, I have the two and the three and on the three you squeeze the stem. OK, so they did move that. Yeah. OK, good. I think I like the old way better. This is a little bit. I don’t know. It’s not as I guess I’m just not used to it, but it took a little bit of getting used to with the AirPods Pro. I had to learn how to work the stem. And I think the stem might be shorter on the AirPods. It is. But so that could make it a little bit more maddening. Right. Right. OK, so yeah, that’s OK. So that that’s good. Like I said, I actually don’t have the AirPods 3. So I’d forgotten that about the features that they now use the stem for that. OK, thank you. Great presentation. Thank you. And one other thing I wanted to mention, hold on, real quick. So Marty had brought up another good point that I kind of accidentally glossed over and I do apologize, Marty. So when I was looking at the prices, I was giving you what Apple has them listed as. But you get definitely can’t get them from other retailers. And a lot of times other retailers especially will have better deals. So yeah, it’s cheaper right now to get the AirPods Max from Amazon instead of Apple. One thing, though, that you do need to be mindful of that some other people have ran into with AirPods is when you get them from a third party retailer, the firmware may not be updated on them when you get them in the box. And that can be a problem. The way you do firmware upgrade really on the once they’re paired, it just works in the background. There’s nothing you can really do. You can see in the software in the AirPods about firmware they’re on. But just plugging them in is really the best way to just let them find the firmware themselves. So that’s something else I wanted to mention. Okay, who do we have next? Yes, Tony is next. You’ve been asked on you, you should be able to. The question I wanted to ask is now I believe that I have the, Tony and I, we have the next generation. I think what my brother said it was the next generation. So I guess would be the iPods 2. I believe I’m not sure. But what I was wondering is, are they waterproof? So, um, that’s a good question. I’d say the pros are the most water resistant. They’re not waterproof, they’re water resistant. Like I said, I’ve had issues with the older AirPods where I feel like the earpiece gets a little bit muffled and I have to try to clean it out to make it sound a little bit better. Yeah. So that’s been my experience. So I’d say the AirPods Pro are really the best at water resistance and those are the ones with the custom ear tips. So now it’s kind of funny, but what I found was now when they gave us the AirPods and they told us, you know, in this little fancy schmancy white case, because I, what happened, I was at work one day and one of them fell out my hand, one of the pods fell out my hand and I couldn’t find it. I had to get my manager to make me mess up my pants. I said, well, it’s not messing up your legs. But anyway, she found it. But what I’ve also discovered is when they told us which ear, which pod goes in which ear, and when I tried it that way, it’s like, okay, it’s got good sound, but I don’t know, you hear no bassy sound or anything like that. So what I did was I switched ears and when I switched ears, I’m like, ah, that’s the sound I’m looking for. Yeah. Yeah. Have you found that to be the case? Yes. So I think like so which version of you think you have the AirPods to I believe so. Yes. So they like the flat. Excuse me. Are they like the flat earpieces? Like there’s no extra cushioning on them or anything like that, right? No, it’s like a flat earpiece. Yeah. I don’t know if you ever seen a I related to it’s got the stem in its shape like a piece. Yeah. So basically, yeah, you kind of have to have them. You wear them like regular the regular earphones like the earpiece, like the little hole on the side there kind of like facing forward towards your ear, like the top of your ear, not away from you. So that’s how you can know if it’s left or right. But yeah, how you wear them can definitely affect how they sound. So you want to make sure. And you can also find out for sure if you’re wearing them left and right to just, you know, assign something to the left stem or earpiece, assign something to the right earpiece and if the gesture carries over to the right one. That’s another way you can find out if you’re wearing them the right way round or not. Oh, OK. OK. Well, thank you so very much. You heard Tony. You have a question about your pons? No, he just answered the question. He just answered the question. Well, thanks so much, Erby. And great, great call here. Thank you for the M.O.L. play. All right. So be sure to join the Tony every I’m sorry, DJ every Monday at 10 a.m. Eastern for a message every other Monday. And you can also find him and Tony most days on the wake up morning call with ACB where we get some words of wisdom, inspiration and our woo window of opportunity. So there you go. Remember, I remember. Well, I hear it almost every day. Don’t know how I could forget. Anyway, all right, Rosanna, save us. So we have Tom Frank. Tom, I’m muted. Go ahead. OK. I’m unmuted here. I had originally I bought the the AirPods, I think the twos and I like them, but I have problems with them falling out of my ear. So just used them in the house. Then I got the AirPods Pro. I had a problem after a week or so, especially with the noise canceling. The hearing in my right ear started to get muffled like it was plugged up or whatever. So I stopped using them and I went to an audiologist who was right as the April when Covid hit. So it was hard to even go to a doctor. And your ear isn’t clogged up and it’s unplugged in about a month or two. And I said, well, maybe that was just a case that something happened. So about a month later, I put it back in and after a day or two, it started giving me a problem. So I simply swapped my son had twos and I swapped them. I gave him the pros and took his twos. Right. And that was fine. Now, I just bought the Maxis. I love them. And I’ll say the transparency mode, like you said at the beginning, it’s hard for me sometimes to remember. Do I have them on or not? Yeah. Because when I have them on transparency, transparency, when I take them off, the sound is identical is when I have them on. It’s hard. Do I have them on or off? The sound is excellent. The battery life is supposedly 23 hours. But the other reason I bought them that you didn’t point out, I’ll say I’m sitting eating breakfast or whatever or dinner and I have them off. And let’s say my wife calls. She hates it when I’m using like the I’m using my my other headsets that I have to excuse me. I don’t like to hold my phone. I got to pick them on. I got to wait until it pairs. I pick up the Maxis. I put them on my head. They pair immediately. There’s no she didn’t even know today when she called that I had put them on until I told her she has no idea. Yes. And that is a great selling point of them. And I bought them from Amazon for four forty nine as opposed to five. Right. Nine from Apple. So those. Yeah. So. And then. Yes, they do. Like I said, I’ve had some sometimes mine have been finicky where I’ve had some pairing issues, but that seems to have been resolved lately, especially as you heard tonight. But yes, when they do pair, they do pair really, really quickly. I totally agree with you on that. And my wife is happy too, because, you know, I’m willing to use them in transparency mode a lot too, because it doesn’t affect the generally that much the sound quality of whatever you’re listening to. And so I can listen to great music and still hearing my wife, you know, asking me something. So and you know, they say happy wife, happy life. So there you go. And I like and I like the other things I could also push the button. And do I hear somebody say something? Exactly. It works both. Yeah. It works both ways. It has to come attack me on the shoulder. Oh, you know, I you know, I actually I was at a doctor’s appointment yesterday and I wore them the entire time, you know, listening to my book and listening to the doctor and telling me all the bad news and I’m going to die horribly in a month. And okay, it wasn’t quite like that. But we’re home. Oh, that’s good. That you’re home. Whoever said they were home. But, you know, I could hear him just clearly while listening to my book at the same time that had space lasers going off and all that type of stuff, too. So what does that tell you about the AirPods Max? But the transparency, a little bit. I would not use the transparency mode in a mobility situation that I was not familiar with where I was going. I will say that much as good as they are. I do find them a little bit limited for if I’m in an unfamiliar environment. So that’s just me. But yeah, I use that case. I use my Sound Blaster jams because they’re cheap over the ear pads. And then I can hear what’s going on around while I’m using SoundScaper, one of those things. But then you don’t get the beautiful sounds of the AirPods Max. But yeah, I totally get it. Yeah. Okay. I’ll move myself. Okay. Thank you so much. I do not have any more raised hands. Is there anyone else who has a question? If anybody else has any raised hands, then that’ll be a good time for them to be raised. While we’re waiting to see if anybody else has any raised hands, one other thing I forgot to mention about the AirPods Pros is that one of the things they do, and don’t ask me to explain how this works. It’s Apple and that’s all that matters. They can do an ear fit test to make sure that you’re wearing the right sized ear pieces for your thing. And so, Tom, you mentioned your ears getting plugged up. No, I don’t know if you did the ear fit test or not, but I wonder what that would have told you. If Apple would have said that maybe you should have worn a different size or not. Also, it’s incredible to think about, like they talk about these AirPods, they have gyroscopes on them, they have multiple microphones on them, and just, wow, it’s like, you know, you know we’re living in the 21st century when you hear about all the stuff that you would think would be… Okay, real quick, do we have any raised hands? We have, is it Carl or Paul? I’ve asked you to unmute. Yeah, very good presentation. I was here a little bit late, but not by much. And I thought it was really cool to actually hear about the different types of AirPods and things like that. So, um, gosh, my speech was talking. Um, but yeah, so I really appreciate this because it’s really helpful to hear like what they used to be and what they are now and that type of thing. Do you think I’m on them? Yes, you are. Yep, you are definitely on them. Travis, you are unmuted. Do you want to go? Yes, sure, can you hear me okay? Yep, all right, I can hear you. Great. Hey, so great presentation, Herbie. I’m really impressed with you. First of all, I have the AirPod Pros and I love them very much. You were saying there’s a noise detection on the AirPod Pros that you can use to detect noise? Yes, it’s under hearing, yes. It is, okay. So, like, so if something went off, VoiceOver would tell me what was going on or something? Yeah, I’ve not played, like I said, because I’m not hearing impaired, I’ve not played with it that much. I know Jonathan Mosin has talked about it on some of his podcasts, but it’s supposed to be able to help people who are hearing impaired be notified when certain sounds are going off. And so, um, That’s good to know. Yep. Wow, that’s pretty sweet. It is. That’s pretty sweet, no. I’m definitely, I love my– No, I gotta ask, so guys, for those of you that don’t know, Travis works at the Home Depot. So do they sell AirPods at the Home Depot? No. No? Too bad. Well, they should, because I’m going to hire you to announce the sale of them, so. All right. Do you have any other questions there, Travis? No, but great presentation, I have to say. Thank you. All right. Richard, you have your hand up. Go ahead, Gerhard. I just wanted to comment that the pros were on sale on Amazon last month, down to $150, so that’s when I grabbed them. All right. Yeah, and be on the lookout for those sales guys if you want the AirPods and you can spend some money, but you don’t want to spend– You know, there’s definitely a lot of sales, so. All right, great tip there, Richard. Okay, anybody else? Yes, Marty’s iPhone. Marty. Yep. I wanted to mention, Herbie, that ear fit size tester, I’ve actually tried that, and I haven’t had the most– So what happens is you pick– I think you pick which ear– no, I think you pick which ear, whether it’s left ear or right ear. No, I think you just do it. And then what happens if you’re in transparency mode, it switches to noise cancellation mode? And it plays like a 10 or 15 second soundtrack, and then it will tell you how they worked out, like, you know, left ear, good or fair, and the same with the right ear. And then you can either try it again or get out of that menu. Yep. All right. Anyone else have a question? So while anybody else is deciding, you know, I want to refer back to something I mentioned at the beginning of the call. What does the AirPods have to do with March Madness? So remember what I said about the Dolby Atmos sound? We now have it, like I said, with the AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, AirPods 3. We do not have it with the AirPods 2, but– So a lot more apps now support the Dolby Atmos sound. So if you are watching on TV, CBS, TBS, TNT, and I’ve not tried TruTV, that’s the other TV station that streams March Madness games, you can actually get the basketball games in– you can actually watch those channels in the true Dolby Atmos sound. It’s very interesting hearing basketball in surround sound, let me tell you. The band’s going that really is interesting in the fan. It’s an interesting experience. Unfortunately, with TV, you are a little bit limited with the description, so that’s the downside. Another app, though, that does support surround sound is the SiriusXM app that does. It’s very interesting hearing music, especially in Dolby Atmos. And TuneIn supports the Utoons does. Netflix now supports the Dolby Atmos. Amazon Prime, last time I checked, they do not. Bard even supports it. That’s an interesting experience. And it does make things sound a little bit fuller, let me tell you, but it can be a little bit interesting at the same time, too. But March Madness, yeah, so especially if you are watching TV, you know, and you have a cable provider or a satellite provider, you have the correct AirPods models. You can get it in surround sound right in your ears. So I thought I’d mention that little tidbit. So baseball is right around the corner. MLB TV supports it as well. So a lot of interesting things for your ears to experience, let me tell you. OK, Rosanna. One more hand. Marie’s Mini. Marie’s Mini. All right. You are the last person. Yes. Ruby, I just want to say a quick thank you. You do a great presentation and let you know that I have the second generation AirPods, the third generation and AirPods Pro. And I’m thinking real hard about the Mac. Just don’t think just do it. I know my my biggest regret is like I had originally gotten the Bose with the stimulus money last week year and was like, no, I mean, I there’s a lot of things I wanted to get from my Mac as well. Software. So but my biggest regret was waiting until Christmas to get the Macs. I wish I’d have gotten the Macs a lot sooner. So. Well, I’m kind of waiting to see if I might win a five hundred dollar gift certificate. Oh, there you go. That that could help. That could. I’m going off your May. There you go. Well, they they are. They are worth the wait. I’d say, you know, personally, if you want my my opinion, get the Macs now and then you can spend five hundred dollars on movies that you can watch in the awesome surround sound of the Mac. That’s true. But I already have Netflix and Apple TV plus and Amazon Prime Video. Yeah. But well, yeah, those work. But like there is a movie, for instance, that I watched on Netflix and then they took it away. I was really upset about that. So I actually but they had it still on Apple and TV on Apple TV. So I actually purchased it because I still liked that movie. So but yes, I do see your point. Anyway, thank you again for a great presentation. Herbie, you do a really nice job. Thank you. I’m glad that you all enjoy the presentation. All right, guys, next month, it’s going to be on Apple Music. What I want the good, the bad, whatever. Why I personally think it’s the best and I’m probably going to make a few Spotify users angry, I’m sure. But that’s OK. You guys will come anyway just to hear what I have to say. I hope so. But I’m I’m definitely going to talk about Apple Music and why I personally am a big fan of that service. So there you go. That’s going to be next month’s presentation. And if you do have any requests for future presentations, I definitely do take them. In fact, AirPods was a requested demo. I had not even intended to do one of these. But somebody asked me off the call. Hey, could I do could we do one on AirPods? And I said, well, yeah, actually we can. So I do take the requests and the considerations. So I am a bits member so you can email the bits list just to help if you put Apple Bites on the subject line. So it’ll definitely catch my attention. But you can also email me off list herbie.allen. H-E-R-B-I-E dot A-L-L-E-N at Gmail dot com. That way works as well to or I message. You can do it. I don’t want. So thank you, Earline Rosanna, for the wonderful work you guys do and making this call and the others possible. And thank you, everybody who came. I do appreciate every single one of you. So thank you so much, Herbie, for your excellent work and presentation as well. And those of you who are BITS members, you will be able to download this presentation once it is put up on the website. You’ll go to the BITS website and you will be able to download not only this presentation, but any of the presentations that we have done. So this will probably be up on the website probably sometime next week. And thank everybody for coming. And we’ll look forward to seeing you guys in April at the next Apple BITS. Thank you and good night and be well.