This sounds like a great idea.
It's not a company unto itself -- you can't do subscription, do $3.99. There has to be some sheen of continued value generation on the producer side beyond maintenance and bug fixes to justify a subscription. Here, you're going for an impulse buy.
I highly recommend cutting down the word count for the description.
You want it to be a 10 second no-brainer, open link, read description, realize its well-founded and my $4000 MacBook Pro has a fundamental problem with my $200 headphones that I can solve immediately for ~nothing.
FWIW you lost my attention around here, though there is excess fluff throughout: "Since recently Shazam is built in into macOS and you can access it from the menubar to find songs, even with your AirPods on. It's fantastic, you should use it all the time."
In general, gotta be ruthless and cut everything out that isn't necessary. I don't care A) when Shazam was introduced B) I can use it even with Airpods on C) what you think of it D) what you think of how often I should use it. All you need is "You can hear the bug: with your AirPods on, play a YouTube video, then click Shazam in the macOS menu bar, then stop Shazam and unpause the YouTube video. How does it sound?"
You're not cutting it out because I don't care, you're cutting it out because you have about 10 seconds of attention if you're lucky, and if it runs out, you're done.
Note: I struggle with this 100% of the time :) key to understanding it more was realizing "I don't care" wasn't voiced in an aggressive way, like it would be in conversation. It meant "this was a sentence where I lost attention", and is a license to believe your message is 100% clear, in fact > 100 + x% clear and all you have to do is cut x% and you're optimal. Good position to be in.
This is really a Bluetooth issue. The same happens with any headphones that have a mic on any OS.
When Bluetooth mode is switched from Headphones to Headset (with mic), only much lower quality audio codes are used.
Does anyone know if Bluetooth 6 adds support for higher quality codes for Headset?
It's a big issue, in my opinion.
It was a Bluetooth issue years ago. Now it's only an Apple issue where it can't use a more decent codec. On Linux you can choose the mSBC codec and get decent two-way quality on a modern headset.
Bluetooth 5.2 was supposed to fix this issue. Indeed, my S22 phone with Jabra Elite 8s sounds great in calls.
MacBooks newer than 2023 SHOULD have better call quality. They have Bluetooth 5.3¹. Can anybody confirm this? I have been meaning to try pairing my earbuds with a floor model at a store and testing audio quality but's only to satisfy a curiosity for me.
---
I've always thought that my 3.5mm corded earbuds, with a mic pill that hangs near my throat, have great mic quality and even better ambient rejection compared to the distant mic buried in the speaker grille of my laptop. Importantly, it's not incredibly disruptive to type notes or use the laptop while in the meeting.
Is this specifically a Bluetooth headphone thing, or an "any headphones with a mic on any OS" thing?
Why is Bluetooth so bad? This, plus the literal second of latency to my car's speakers.
All these problems are solved by headphones with proprietary wireless dongles and they work great, so why can't Bluetooth incorporate those improvements so we can get them on other devices than desktop PCs?
Sounds more like a shitty-software issue. The Shazam function should turn the Bluetooth mics off after the song is identified. Why does it just leave them on?
Isn't that obvious, or is there some aspect to this I'm not aware of (I care about sound quality, so I don't use AirPods)?
> This is really a Bluetooth issue.
Yes and no. Part of it is also how the OS is used.
Sure if you want to use the mic on your headset you are forced to use a lower quality codec, but on my Fedora I select which profile I want to use on my bluetooth headset[1]. If I set it to AAC or APTX it will not activate the microphone.
And I can easily select which device is the primary device for inputs, outputs or individual apps.
[1] Typically using pulseaudio volume control which is compatible with pipewire (or rather the opposite).
It's not just codecs that are different between HFP and A2DP (although that is a big part of the issue). HFP uses an older way (SCO) of transferring the audio which gives much less bandwidth.
What we need is a new profile that uses A2DP in once direction and in the other for the microphone. I suspect the reason it has never happened is that there's a good chance of causing issues with existing devices that do at least work with HFP.
Samsung phones paired with Samsung earbuds also, on paper, support high-quality audio for calls.
- Menu bar only app, no option to disable and make dock icon app only - Subscription only app, forced to buy the subscription instead of offering no-credit card trial
I really do want to support devs and I appreciate another tool that someone created to solve a known issue so real kudos for that.. I just don't like the common bandwagon trends this one is jumping on.
"you want to hear from your AirPods but be heard from your internal microphone"
I wish all people would know this, I have CTO coaching sessions and when people attend with AirPods microphones, 60minutes is such a drain because of the bad mic quality of AirPods - and people seem not to realize this.
Are you the one doing the coaching? Wouldn't this be part of coaching them?
Usually, if I feel this, it means I have to get my AirPods cleaned (do it at the store, it's worth it). I have, subjectively, always felt that clean AirPods blow the Mac mic out of the water.
This.
It drains your airpods less too.
Internal microphone being what? The laptop or the phone? These have absolute shit input when sitting relatively far away on the desk or pocket.
In my own experience, AirPods offer the absolute best microphones for zoom calls, other than professional-level equipment.
Couldn't I just make an aggregate audio device which uses the mic on my MacBook Pro, and speakers of the AirPods?
You don’t even need it to be as complex as that, I just have an aggregate device which only has the MacBook microphone input enabled and no outputs, then you set this as your _input_ device in Sound preferences, but leave the output device as is.
It’s easy to create the aggregate input device, go to the Audio MIDI Setup app, in the audio window click the plus in the bottom right and choose “new aggregate device”, then tick MacBook Microphone on the right. Then to System Preferences > Sound > Input and assign this new “virtual” device as your input device. (You can rename it if you want)
Now your Mac will automatically switch audio output source as usual, but the input remains locked to the microphone so you don’t get this annoying problem.
That's exactly what I do - An aggregate device (called 'Forced Onboard Mic') with only 'MacBook Pro Microphone' selected.
This is configured from 'Audio MIDI Setup.app'
Apps configured to use that as their input device then don't reconfigure themselves whenever a Bluetooth input device shows up.
I dont add output devices as I'm happy for that to flip between speakers/headphones - whatever is available.
If you option click on the speaker icon in the menu bar, you can select which input to use. Takes a second and works instead of needing an aggregate device set up.
That’s a good idea, I will consider it. Should check it how it works with AirPlay and continuity though. AirPods are not simple Bluetooth devices, strange things happen when connecting/disconnecting.
That's a clever idea. I'm not in a position to try it right now, but would love to know if this works. I always use my AirPods + an external mic.
Also I haven't upgraded macOS to >= 13 yet on my personal laptop, so I can't use any of these apps.
Subscription discussions aside, if you're looking for more feature requests, one thing I'd love is the ability to completely disable audio input devices on OSX. It's something you can't do today. My monitor has an audio in, and shows up as a valid audio input, but there's no mic connected to it. Zoom loves prioritizing it as a device though every time I disconnect my microphone. Likewise other bluetooth headphone audio inputs. Would love the ability to completely remove those as an option in the sound settings.
A system-wide mute button and a system-wide setting to say "this is the only microphone I want to use and when it's muted I don't want another mic to be used" would be nice. Wired headphones often have a physical mute switch, but zoom will happily switch to another microphone the instant you use the mute switch.
Pretty sure you can do that natively; https://support.apple.com/guide/audio-midi-setup/set-up-audi...
A good trick to prevent this is to set your microphone to an aggregate device that you create with the Audio Midi Device tool that comes with your mac.
Open that, and create a new aggregate device with just the system microphone. Then set that as the default microphone. And now when applications access the microphone for whatever reason, your bluetooth headphones don't switch profile and keep on using the aggregate microphone device.
It's one of those obscure hacks that should just be default behavior. Why would I want to switch to a low quality audio codec when I have a perfectly good microphone in the laptop? Answer: I don't want to. Never. Loads of people use expensive headsets and they all sound terrible when they take their calls. It's not necessary.
> Why would I want to switch to a low quality audio codec when I have a perfectly good microphone in the laptop? Answer: I don't want to. Never.
Because you're in a noisy or semi-noisy environment.
In that case, even a low-quality codec for a microphone next to your head head will be vastly clearer than high-quality audio from a microphone several feet away from you.
If you're in a quiet room, though, yes the Mac microphone will be better.
Yep. If you want to avoid paying a monthly fee, I'd highly recommend this approach. I've shown a few of my friends this trick and its worked for years.
Interesting, thanks for the tip. Does it play nice with AirPods continuity?
Can you do the same with the iphone?
Subscription for an app that has no server component or ongoing costs? This is how you piss off someone to release a free version.
EDIT: seems someone already did long ago: https://github.com/milgra/airpodssoundqualityfixer
I wouldn’t be surprise if OP ripped off the code from here, changed some of the assets, and republished under App Store to get subscription $
it's funny how lonux just show you the codec in a drop-down next to the volume control. kde users living in the future as always.
Switching to headset mode has always worked for me, but switching back to headphones mode often ends up as a no-op. The button is there, but it sometimes just doesn't work. Perhaps that's why other operating systems lack this feature, they know their underlying stack and the hardware side don't make it as easy as it would otherwise seem.
Linux fanboys can't wait to talk about the one use case it's better than MacOS for
> Most of the time, you have much higher quality microphones built in, so in most use cases, you want to hear from your AirPods but be heard from your internal microphone
Is that true, have I been doing my google meets wrong this whole time? So you’re saying if I’m on my Mac and having a google Meet, and I’m using my AirPods, then I should have my mic input as MacBook and not as AirPods? Do you have any sources or your own empirical evidence that this would provide better sound for the other party?
Even if the microphones are worse on the AirPods (I believe that), I always thought the final voice output would be much better from the AirPods since they are much closer to my mouth and move together with the movements of my head, which I imagined would help with noise reduction / voice isolation.
Wireless earbuds microphones are famous for poor quality audio, even in the top of the line models. The microphone is indeed closer to your mouth, but the sound in the human speech range is quite directional, and does not travel to your ears as well as it does to a microphone in front of you.
Not to mention the quality of the parts itself is usually much lower than those in the external mics, or the MacBook ones for that matter.
There's a YouTuber called DankPods, reviewing all sorts of headphones lately, along with their mics. Can't recommend any particular video, as the microphone tests are only a tiny fraction of the content, but after watching a few tests this issue become very apparent. Easiest thing to do would be, as other commenter suggested, to test it out for yourself in the voice memo app.
“Do you have any empirical evidence…”
Ask yourself, “how easy would it be to test this myself?”
Now ask yourself, “how hard would it be for someone else to prove this and give me something that convinces me?”
Even people working in academia don’t say “show me empirical evidence!” This just feels standoffish.
Give it a try and see it for yourself. Open the voice memos and record a short message, change the input source and record again. Play the recordings and see which one you like.
To change the input source you can go into System Settings->Sound->Input
Mac microphones are quite good, see if that's the case for you too.
It depends if you sit for a long meeting or short but important, I’d definitively change the mic to use MacBook it’s not only your quality of mic for them, you’ll hear them much better too. Now if you want to be walking around while talking then obviously keep the default mic on the AirPods.
I do a lot of zoom meetings with people with lots of different mics including mac ones and various business headsets and laptops and yes, Airpod mics are pretty much the worst of the bunch.
Congrats on building and launching the app. Building a little tool to solve a problem you have is great.
My only issue is that I'm mostly using the AirPods mic for meetings. I don't want to use my laptop mic because my impression is that it picks up too much background noise. AirPods do too, but I think less so?
Thanks for the feedback, I guess it depends on which AirPods and which Mac. AirPods Pro 2 are notorious and even my MacBook Air M1 has an order of magnitude better microphone and background noise wasn’t an issue for me. Whatever works best for you!
The mic quality from my macbook is usually better for me than from headphones, but maybe it depends on the macbook.
I'd use it if it was on SetApp, probably not something I'd pay a dedicated subscription for though.
If people like the app and use it regularly, I will try to get it into SetApp. It's something thats on my mind.
I appreciate the effort but I’m absolutely not subscribing.
> if you use your mic to talk to people or record something, you will have better sound quality too.
How often do you talk to people or record something while listening to a streamed song on your buds, ... and which has to be uninterrupted and in high quality?
Post-pandemic, you'll find a lot of people using their computers in such a fashion. "hanging out" with people in a voice chat often involves prolonged periods of silence and it's not uncommon for some subset of the voice chat to be doing other things such as listening to music or playing a game.
Sometimes I'll take my piano or voice lessons remotely, and it's important to have decent audio on both ends. By far the biggest problem is software like Zoom filtering out piano as "non-vocal background noise", but switching to Element fixes that. If I used a Mac though, low-quality bi-directional streaming would hypothetically be a problem.
You can just alt + click the audio options in the control center to select the input source
Yeah. Every single time.
I don't have a mac or airpods so maybe I'm missing some context but paragraphs 2-4 seem to be a digression and actively confused me as to what this does. I would suggest removing or rewriting them for clarity.
Apologies for the bad writing, wrote everything at once and posted right away and looking back I see plenty of room for improvement.
The app simply sets the system default sound input/output device in a specific way depending on what’s connected. This fixes the sound quality degradation on Bluetooth headphones with mic. The issue arises when the computer tries to use the Bluetooth mic, in most cases it’s better to use the built it microphone anyway.
I would never use this because it's a subscription, but I do want to commend you for making it. Bluetooth's terrible two-way quality is a pet peeve of mine.
Do I need this if I already use something like SoundSource[1] to manually set the input source that's not the AirPods microphone?
No, and this just proves to the OP you can charge for an app and not have it be a subscription and it still be a viable business.
And SoundSource is way cheaper per year on average. Version 5 came 4 years ago as a $40 purchase or a $20 upgrade, so it’s about a half or fourth the annual price. It also has way more features and is far more tested.
If SoundSource is a one-time $40 purchase, I’d be willing to pay not more than, say, $5 one time for just this one of its features.
I was about to mention. SoundSource is such an amazing app that truly just works. Very reasonable pricing model compared to the greedy subscription model.
This is an interesting topic for a hearing aid user like me. For FaceTime and other calls on my computer or iPad/iPhone, I always physically switch from my Bluetooth hearing aids to AirPods, since the hearing aid microphone isn't that good for calls (other party has problems hearing what I say). Now, this could be a bandwidth issue. Apple Audio MIDI Setup shows the hearing aid microphone as an 8kHz/16bit mono input device, while the output is 2 channel 32-bit Float 44.1 kHz.
The switching is a bit of a hassle, since I have to remove and turn off my hearing aids (which I would only do in private anyway), before putting in the AirPods. And the reverse, after the call has ended.
Therefore, it would be very convenient if I could just switch to better input microphones, like the MacBook's. I'll give this a try.
If anyone knows if this is also possible on iOS, please leave a comment.
Edit: Thanks to other comments I've learned, that switching to another microphone is built into macOS.
yes - user-controlled microphone switching is my #1 iOS feature request
i find it very frustrating i can’t use my airpods on calls at all with full fidelity audio using a wired or built-in iPhone microphone, even though lots of the time on long calls i’m pacing around holding my phone anyway
i’m speculating, but iirc apple did put a lot of thought into the design, placement, and noise cancellation for airpods that just might not have been done for your hearing aids. an 8kHz sampling rate can still reproduce frequencies up to 4kHz, which is much higher than you’re probably speaking!
if you’re on a laptop, maybe try recording the audio yourself with both to get a sense of how they might sound and what (macOS) combinations work best
Great feedback, I should totally incorporate special needs features. Thanks for sharing.
Can anyone explain why something like this is necessary on a Macbook, but when I use my airpods with my iPhone I seem to get high quality audio and microphone usage at the same time?
> Can anyone explain why something like this is necessary on a Macbook, but when I use my airpods with my iPhone I seem to get high quality audio and microphone usage at the same time?
Are you sure? How often does your phone have the microphone active while simultaneously continuing to play audio? When the mic is active on a phone it almost always pauses music or video or whatever you're listening to. At that point it can switch modes and then switch back when you're done and go back to music.
On a PC (meaning the overall category of personal computers including Macs, not just a Wintel machine) there isn't that sort of integration. If you start a VoIP call with music going the music just keeps going, so the mode switch is obvious.
I believe it’s because macOS uses a worse audio codec: https://gist.github.com/dvf/3771e58085568559c429d05ccc339219
I learned something today! Didn't realize that the microphone could throw off audio quality indirectly. Sidenote: this might do well on SetApp.
There are two bluetooth profiles in use here: "A2DP" (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) and "HFP" (Hands Free Profile).
A2DP is how you send high quality audio over standard Bluetooth. The basic codec is OK, and you can negotiate much better ones. It's only one direction though, no microphone
HFP is the classic profile that's been around since the dawn of Bluetooth that allows you to make calls. You get microphone in one direction and (mono) speaker in the other, but it works in a fundamentally different way to A2DP and so the bandwidth and codec selection are much more limited.
Bluetooth devices can only do one of these at a time, so if you're just playing audio you get A2DP. But if there's a need for the microphone it has to switch to the other profile, and you get the low quality audio. At least these days software (usually) does do this switch seamlessly, it used to be worse...
This is more or less only (sadly) a problem with apple headphones.
You can switch the current microphone on Mac by ALT-Clicking the audio menubar icon. Normally MacOS will remember and follow your decision, except when you have apple headphones. For some stupid reason MacOS forces the headphone microphone on those.
Not true. I have a HyperX moc and it’s always the default, no matter what app I use. I have several Apple headphones, works that way with all of them. macOS 14.7 now, it’s always been this way.
I mostly use Zoom for work calls, you can select microphones and speakers individually. I found that if you select your Airpods as your speakers and your laptop as your microphone, the sound quality on the Airpods suddenly get way better.
Yes, because when you switch on the mic on most Bluetooth headphones, it will switch to the headset profile and use the SBC codec in place of AAC. Also see here for a longer description:
https://www.recadio.com/blog/why-is-bluetooth-sound-quality-...
Apparently newer generations of AirPods use the AAC-ELD codec which should improve this on Apple devices.
You should be able to see in Console.app what codec gets used.
I just learned about hammerspoon because of this, automate macos with lua, nice: https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon
I bought it and doesn't do what it says it does in my case.
When i connect airpods, it selects airpod's microphone every single time. in preferences I can't add a new mode.
Other than using Shazam, when is this an issue for people? On Zoom or Facetime, the audio connection is almost certainly using an HFP/SCO connection, which is going to downgrade to an 8K or 16KHz sample rate regardless of where the mic is coming from.
I don't use Shazam, but it doesn't actually make sense to me that you would even use Shazam while listening to audio in your Airpods. I thought that was for music you heard from something other than your own device. You are listening to music in your Airpods and trying to identify a song from another source at the same time?
This just isn't making sense to me.
AirPods Pro 2 mic is so, so bad. Went back to EarPods ($22 CAD on sale) -- the mic is practically studio quality now.
I love my EarPods except for the sticky finish on the cable - they snag and drag on everything. I’d desolder and sleeve with paracord if it weren’t so time consuming.
Is it the Mic or the fact that it switches to a lower-quality codec when the mic is also used. EarPods are wired, so don't have the same issue.
I had no clue the drop on quality was due to bandwidth. I don’t have AirPods but it’s something interesting to look into
I'm honestly asking this with minimal snark, but...
Does macOS not have a setting where the default audio out and in device can be selected and configured independently of the actual physical device connected? On Windows and LinuxMint it's a change in the settings app, and it persists between Bluetooth device reconnects. Windows abstracts the audio in and out away from the actual device, and they show up as two separate devices on my machine. When I re-pair my headphones I need to change the setting again, but that rarely happens.
This has been a non-issue for me for years. I have one bluetooth headset that does not play nice with MS Teams (Shox OpenRun), but I don't use it for calls any more.
It has, It's just that you have to do it every time.
This has been one of my fixations. That it‘s still an issue 20 years after Bluetooth audio has become a thing and 10 since telephony has become good quality is crazy to me.
It has been a few years since LE Audio has standardized and a lot of digging has led me to the conclusion that it should support decent audio with multiple channels (as it‘s not artificially limited like the Hands Free Profile). I‘d have expected Apple to jump on this to finally solve this stupid issue once and for all, but … nope.
I just want to listen to music while on a phone call. It’s not that crazy.
Yes, LE Audio is supposed to improve the situation in multiple ways (e.g.: lower latency, lower battery usage, multiple channels, etc) but sadly there is still no headset that supports LE Audio without hacks (e.g.: my wf-1000xm5 supports it but you need to flip a flag inside the app and it only works in specific devices and it also disables lots of features).
OT but another reason why I got wired headphones for my desktop :)
Personally I’m just tired of the many exceptions and areas of shitty UX in the Apple ecosystem. macOS itself has taken a real shitter in the past 5 yrs. Every new major upgrade manages to break my workflow. Which is why I have switched to waiting for 3-4 months before upgrading.
Nice job. Price seems fair to me. You’ve found a problem and fixed it. This crowd always bemoans paid (and closed source) things so I’ve come to largely tune that out because it’s just a given.
This seems like a $5/year app—not a $20/year one. Or, make it a one-time $10 charge; if future MacOS versions require significant work to keep it up to date, charge an upgrade fee.
Thanks a lot for the kind words. I totally expected the backlash, let's see if I can get some customers and I can make them stay.
A paid subscription... really?
I have initially thought this piece of software is going to fix my AirPods Pro noise issue :)
> I decided to go with a very cheap subscription model because I suspect further development might be needed as bugs emerge or API behavior changes
Right, makes me wonder how did companies even exist before the subscription model.
> I don't know what would the right price be for supporting an app for years to come and still have people willing to pay for it
Not to sound too negative, but your app might not even exist a year from today. It's a single utility app, let people buy it if they want to fix a bug with Bluetooth+AirPods, not to subscribe to a bug fix.
>Right, makes me wonder how did companies even exist before the subscription model.
They abandoned their products once the growth stopped and/or switch to subscription and gave their one time purchase makers a year of subscription to make it up.
One time payment for lifetime support doesn't make sense whatsoever. If it is a large company they have to employ people for a product that doesn't bring in money and for indies it means that they need to switch context from their current project, study their code and try to remember what they did and why they did it to fix a single line code.
Having a live product is a full time job even if you change a single line of a code once in a while. It's fine doing it for fee(in other words on your parents dime) when you are a teenager or when it is a passion project, otherwise its abandonware or your life destroyer(which is abandonware with delay).
Other options exist of course, like giving away the product for free then selling its control to people with other motives(widespread among browser extension developers) or sell services around the product like cloud something AI something (this one is nice actually, just not applicable to all apps).
Charge 80 bucks for small tools, or 800-6000 for other tools. And don’t forget to pay for upgrades
This just in: people do things to maximise profit.
I'm not going to compare this to a cup of coffee, as that analogy has been beaten to death. What I will say is that $20/yr is far higher than many apps, that are much more complicated, do a a lot more, and are self sustaining businesses.
Why would anyone want to pay 2x for this compared to what a really good podcast app costs? Or 7x what a good gif manager costs?
This app doesn't even do anything that native macOS tools can do for you with 2 minutes of work (aggregate audio devices, or a bit of scripting), and literally saves you from one extra keypress and 2 clicks.
Sorry, chief. I've been a macOS dev for 10 years now. I think charging a subscription for a menubar app with a singular use-case is just the absolute worst.
"not one time payment because I don't know what would the right price be for supporting an app for years to come and still have people willing to pay for it"
The right price would be about $5-10. If you want to be kind, $0.
Since this is hackernews, here's a free and open source version of the same that works from the statusbar.
https://github.com/Gaulomatic/AirPodsSanity
I didn't create this, but I do detest subscription models on bugfixes..
Love the app but you lost me at “subscription”. I would totally pay for major upgrades when fixes are indeed needed, but not per month or year by default.
I solved this problem six years ago although I quit apple since and you have to update/compile it for yourself : https://github.com/milgra/airpodssoundqualityfixer
This is great! I've been needing a solution to this problem. However...
I would pay $20 one time for it. But a subscription is a deal breaker.
My guess is you'll make a lot more revenue by doing one time fees tied to a specific AirPod version. So each time I upgrade my AirPods, I pay a new one time fee instead of the subscription.
Same can be achieved in a few lines of Lua using Hammerspoon and hs.audiodevice API.
local builtinMicName = "MacBook Pro Microphone"
hs.audiodevice.watcher.setCallback(function(e)
defaultMic = hs.audiodevice.defaultInputDevice():name()
if (e == "dIn " and defaultMic ~= builtinMic) then
local builtinMic = hs.audiodevice.findInputByName(builtinMicName)
builtinMic:setDefaultInputDevice()
end
end)
hs.audiodevice.watcher.start()
Well, one thought about your pricing model - you’re thinking that it might need work in the future, but you’re charging each month without delivering any additional value to customers. How about charging additional money for each new major version, corresponding to either new feature development or support for new versions of the OS?
I don't mind subscriptions at all, I pay for tons of them and am happy with them, but it's egregious to me that this would be a subscription.
Sorry to crash your launch but this is supposed to be fixed in the new version of MacOS Sequoia + AirPods 2
https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/07/apple-solves-bad-airpod...
I'm still on Sonoma for work reason so I didn't test it.
23€ per year for an automatic source switcher ? I understand it might be more tricky that it looks, but it's more than I am willing to pay, event for a lifetime license.
I'm not going to compare this to a cup of coffee, as that analogy has been beaten to death. What I will say is that $20/yr is far higher than many apps, that are much more complicated, do a a lot more, and are self sustaining businesses.
Why would anyone want to pay 2x for this compared to what a really good podcast app costs? Or 7x what a good gif manager costs?
Free alternatives:
- Intel (also works in rosetta): https://github.com/milgra/airpodssoundqualityfixer
- Apple sillicon native: https://github.com/Gaulomatic/AirPodsSanity
If I press the option key of the Mac and clic on the speaker icon of the menu bar, I can select the source of the speaker and mic as well. Am I missing something here ?
A subscription for an app that fixes what is considered a minor annoyance?
It’s a menu bar app at best. This should be a one time payment. If maintenance is required for future macOS versions, then publish new app and charge one time fee.
Many app devs use this same model with success (rogue amoeba comes to mind).
Don’t be greedy
I appreciate the effort (and unlike others, I like the lengthy explanation and supporting links), but you lost me at subscription. The model is untenable for the (average) consumer and I can't in good conscience support an all-rental future, however small this step may be.
I guess you need a subscription for everything these days
$20 per year subscription? That seems pretty steep for what the app does.
I often manually switch to the built-in mic of my MBP [edit: while using Airpods for audio output]. To switch more quickly, I found that when you alt-click on "Sound" while in the Control Center, you can select audio devices for input and output independently of each other.
Looks good but no way I'd pay a subscription for a utility.
There are other apps out there that do this e.g. ToothFairy https://c-command.com/blog/2024/03/06/toothfairy-2-8-4/
> CrystalClear Sound requires a paid subscription(a rather cheap one), which supports the development of the app.
Sorry, but I'll pass.
I'd spend a few dollars on a convenience app like this as a one-off purchase (it would save me from option-clicking the volume icon every once in a while), but what ongoing development or infrastructure am I paying for with a subscription here?
I think you may be underestimating the volume difference in paying users you're likely to get with a one-time vs subscription model. Looking at similar apps on the market, I suspect you would earn more revenue overall with a one-time payment (many more users paying slightly less each).
> it's not one time payment because I don't know what would the right price be for supporting an app for years to come and still have people willing to pay for it
I dislike this very, very, very much. You do realize that with this attitude, we'll soon be bickering with our toilets to please let the seat down without making a small 4$/month in-loo purchase first?
Subscription? Is that necessary?
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Please give a pay once option.
This is a tool to fix a problem, I don't want another tiny marriage.
If this is as effective as you claim it to be, then I look forward to Apple including it in the operating system for free in the future. You should consider applying there and making it happen!
This really should be a one-time-payment, not more subscription / rent seeking.
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