1. pair instantly without problems to my apple devices
2. intelligently know when to switch between my phone to my laptop
3. intelligently know when to switch from car bluetooth to headphones
4. is compatible with "Find My"
5. has magsafe charging
6. has same sound quality and sound cancellation with above features
these are all very important to me and my experience with literally any other non-apple device has been awful
It is extraordinarily difficult to do correctly, and once your brain has adapted to the Apple acoustic transformations, they’ve achieved near-indistinguishability.
I have non-Apple Bluetooth earbuds and they pair simply fine to my Apple devices (and others). Apple oversell the shit of their iCloud "auto switching" (that often do not work) but what you actually want is Bluetooth multipoint, a feature that many headphones in the price range of Airpods have.
Find my and MagSafe charging are very odd, Apple marketing induced request, and Apple definitely doesn't have a lead in sound quality at the price they sell their stuff. If anything, their sound quality is extremely disappointing considering the price. Funny thing is that for the price of a set of Airpods, you can get 2-3 equivalent competitors' products. So much of the stuff you say matters is largely irrelevant.
Before calling me a hater: I'm an Apple customer since the PPC days and bought both first iPod and first iPhone. But I am currently leaving the Apple ecosystem precisely because their pricing is not grounded in any technological reality, and mostly about fashion/social statuts.
Person 2: Those "features" are arbitrary stuff Apple told you to care about through their marketing.
How wildly condescending lol. “You don’t actually like those things. You just do as you’re told, puppet.”
AirPods have no way to stream lossless music, so you didn't mention that feature (yet they sell it with Apple music). It does exist in competing implementation of wireless earbuds. I guess when Apple do finally implement the feature you will care about that.
You went on and listed an arbitrary set of features and use that as a rationalization of your choice. Just like a hiring agent crafting a job proposal that could possibly only be met by one specific individual.
It's your right, you can make whatever choice you want and be happy with them. However, you can't argue they are inherently better than some other choice that would offer a different set of features, especially not without putting everything into the pricing context.
Apple Airpods are ok. For the price they are sold at they are very mediocre and the "features" they market as something customers should care about really do not pass the sniff test. Its ok if that's what you prefer, but you can't claim there are no other options that can provide a similar if not better experience. Of course, requiring a perfect 1 to 1 equivalency will get you nowhere...
