this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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I mean, this sucks, but Apple's Airpods are far more egregious, far more numerous (something like 550 million+ versus 10,000+ AI pins), and have spawned an army of copycats all which cannot be repaired and are just ewaste waiting to happen.
It's really that the entire fucking industry just doesn't god damned care and I can't even find places that reliably take electronic waste like desktops and laptops, let alone this fucking horseshit. USA produces massive amounts of ewaste and basically is like "fuck it" on creating a recycling industry around it.
This problems goes so far beyond these dinky AI pins.
Futurama was making jokes about the horrors of ewaste in its first return run in 2013, it's 2025 and it's only gotten worse.
Apple recycles AirPods. There’s no trade in value, but you can bring them to any Apple Store, or fill out the form for a mail in label.
https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in
It's better if you can just use the same equipment forever by replacing the battery.
What happens to them then?
I think the company behind Fairphone makes wireless earbuds as well with replaceable batteries. They are priced in the mid range segment but sadly not available worldwide.
It's irrelevant, people are going to replace them every other year regardless to get the latest and greatest
Grammar nitpick: "Whom" should only be used for people, possibly animals, and maybe other things in an anthropomorphic context like companies, robots*, etc. Extreme pedants would forbid its use for anything other than actual people.
In this instance, "all of which" would be a better substitute for "all whom" in this instance. In fact, that ought to have been "all of whom" whether "whom" was correct or not.
If you'd said "who" instead of "whom" it might not have awakened my inner pedant, but if you're going to use "whom", someone is bound to tell you the proper usage if you make a mistake.
* recyclable or otherwise
Okay I am gonna get very real with you for a minute:
Ever since I got cancer I feel like I am going crazy/getting dementia because I constantly replace words I mean to use with similar but not quite the same words. Sometimes I literally know a word but when I am actually speaking out loud cannot force that word out of my mouth, I am just stuck, blank, unable to speak suddenly.
Your inner pedant doesn't know what's going on in other people's lives so maybe take a minute and think "maybe I don't need to remind this person they are going crazy" and spend three paragraphs chiding them for something they cannot fucking control and depresses them deeply. Just step back a moment and realize your personal experience of being able to speak clearly is not everyone's personal experience and that maybe being outwardly pushy about it isn't helpful to them at all.
You don't know what is going on in other people's lives or why they speak the way they do. They could be a non-native speaker, or they could be having serious issues with their brain, like me.
So seriously take your pedantry and shove it up your ass. You still could understand what I meant. You didn't have to shove my problems in my face like a dick. I changed it, for what it's worth, because you're correct, but I often make those changes hours later after I've noticed them, you just happened to catch one I made before I went to sleep. I don't need dicks being pedantic dicks about it.
I'm sorry you're having a bad time. I can't fix it, but know that I wish that no-one had to go through anything like what you're going through.
Usually people who speak English as a second language are, somewhat surprisingly, fairly happy to receive correction. I see now that you're probably not ESL.
Since I've no idea whether someone is happy to receive correction or not, either I do so and hope for a good outcome - and maybe educate others along the way - or never correct anyone ever in case someone tells me to, well, you know.
FWIW, I do know what its like to not be able to communicate properly with that horrible tip-of-the-tongue sensation, and I also know what it feels like to lose one's mind as well as lash out in frustration. Been there, done that, with bells on.
Not cancer in my case, but I've at least one close family member who had surgery and was on chemo drugs, so I can somewhat relate to that as well.
And since I didn't quite say it initially: I'm genuinely sorry I upset you and made you feel attacked. It was not my intent.
Yes, whom was incorrect regardless. Who goes with he, whom goes with him. Who cannot be repaired? He cannot be repaired.
Yup. And the way AirPods’ battery life is, not only are they irreparable, they’re also kaput after only like 2 years.
At least they can be used for 2 years. What about single use vapes? Those things have a lithium battery but people throw them everywhere, instead of recycling them.
We can care about both. They are all awful.
While airpods are dogwater in terms of recycling, I have a 2nd hand pair or them and 2 years later they still work like in the beggining.
Because you don't use them enough to discharge them completely
Perhaps, I use them when walking around mostly or in the night. At PC i have dedicated headphones.