This article is now available as a video!

https://youtube.com/shorts/mIlYuuoWZ4Q

So volume is pretty important right?

I mean if you listen at too high a volume for too long you risk permanent hearing loss.

But AirPods 3 have no wireless touch volume controls – controls that are on everything nowadays from cheap wired and wireless earphones to the premium TWS earphones from Samsung, Sony, Sennheiser and every other major manufacturer.

So how do you change volume wirelessly?

Like this

You have to talk to your phone to change the volume. And if you’re using your buds on another device, like a laptop, you can’t even do that.

But Apple is a pioneer right. After all it got rid of earphone jacks to make its phones slimmer and so you had to go wireless – and stop listening when your wireless buds run out of juice.

Unless you use a proprietary Apple lightning port to jack plug adapter:

which they charge you for.

To plug in good old fashioned wired Apple EarPods with inline volume controls

which they charge you for.

Or you can change volume by rotating the crown of your Apple watch

which they charge you for – handsomely.

But Apple has some grander vision right? A world where volume isn’t needed because its players auto level.

What like the “Normalize volume” setting in Spotify you mean?

Or maybe their vision is of a world where AirPods magically know how much volume you want at any time?

Erm they don’t – and they tell you how to change volume remember. You need to talk to it, or buy an Apple watch.

Or is it that Apple got it wrong – but they can’t admit that because of the God argument. You know the one: God can’t change because any change is for the better or for the worse. Ergo, Apple can’t change for the better since that would mean some goodness was originally missing. And of course it can’t change for the worse because that would mean it losing some goodness.

Or does Apple hold its users in some kind of trance, some kind of Apple reality distortion field. I mean, this is a chat with an Apple user I know.

But guess what, Apple gives you a feature request form

Though they don’t publish upvotes like Microsoft do (or used to) – so you can’t see how much discontent there is or demand for a particular feature.

So take a listen to some recordings of the 3rd generation AirPods

Or take a look at some of their flaws

and see whether things make any more sense – if they do please leave a comment there to illuminate me!