Can people stop overusing and throwing the word “monopoly” every time they’re not happy with an Apple service or product?

What’s next? Apple is monopoly on ARM? Smartwatches? Monitors? Touchpads?

It sounds like a cheap internet attempt to bash a company using a lately popular but completely irrelevant word in relation to AirPods.

I use both AirPods and Bose QC35 II for years, everyday for hours, without any issues. I haven’t had my Bose quality of experience degrade, so I don’t know what you’re on about.

You enable pairing mode, select your headphones in list of Bluetooth devices, that’s it.

They even swap between Mac and iPhone without much issues.

Apple has not degraded 3p Bluetooth - that is bullshit. My Bose work just the same as they did years ago and behave similarly to my AirPods.

You cannot expect Apple to not develop better features in their own products.

This is not anything close to monopoly and it’s wild to say that.

> …Airpods have a ton of extra UX settings in iOS that are not available to other bluetooth headsets.

To be fair, AirPods have "a ton" of hardware capabilities built in that are also not technically available, but that's kind of exactly the point, right?

> My bose headphones that used to work great now don't work as well as airpods.

My AirPods experience has also declined the past couple of years so I think it's just over-engineering and ruining the perfectly functional Bluetooth and/or audio stack rather than an intentional attempt at ruining non-Apple headphones.