So the Tetris Spin and Go promotion ended yesterday and I'm sad to see it go. It was a fun promotion, all be it a rather random one, but nice to have something different happening in the Spin and Go's space.
The promotion ran from Feb 15th- March 28th, in that time I managed to play just shy of 3100 games.
On the 2nd day I did try playing the $1, $2, $5 and $10 stakes to get on all their leaderboards but came to the conclusion that it took too long and wasn't worth the time.
With 3 weeks left I thought it would be profitable to try and make the leaderboard on $5s and $10s. I would play the $5s until I "Game Over"' and then play the $10s as normal.
In theory this was a good idea but the reality was that I didn't run good in the $5s and I barely made the leaderboard for that stake, only once for a min cash of $10 lol. My run in them was rather breakeven, and this in turn sacrificed my rakeback I could have gotten by sticking with the $10s. I don't really mind tho, its was kinda fun to play in the $5s, there are so many more recreational players there.
My results;
7 leaderboard cashes for $410
Best result was 11th in $10 leaderboard
My best result, I remember winning so many flips that session!
Its a shame its ended coz during the end of the promotion I had patched up some leaks and was making deep runs more consistently. Once you reach 100k points in the $10s you should be guarenteed a cash prize. But at that point the games can be pretty cut throat in terms of Game Over'ing, 3-4 losses can make you go from green to the end!
Some of the 1st places' scores are insane thought. Because of the way the scoring scales up, most occasions I've seen 1st place be almost 1/3 score to 2nd place... something like 256k 1st vs 180k 2nd place! Each extra win you get when you run deep give you an insane amount of points!
Here's my 2 cents on the promotion;
PROS:
Bigger field of randoms to game (in theory).
Better and fairer way of getting on leaderboard. Sure, there's luck on the multipliers but because of the larger sample size needed good players will reach the prizepools more often.
Graphics look great espectially the new skin with moving pieces in the background and the leaderboard information.
I found it fun and exciting to participate in. Strange to want to get 2x multipliers but at same time feels like win/win to ship a higher multiplier too. Quite a buzz when you run deep, feels like your in an MTT.
Great background skin with moving Tetriminos
CONS:
Lack of proper marketing. I have not seen any promotion of this whatsoever. I have even seen some Pokerstars ads on TV actually promoting Spin and Go's but no mention of the Tetris promotion. Seems strange considering the Tetris trademark is clearly part of this which must have been a lot of effort to negotiate using it.
Doesn't seem to be relevant to anything and date seems arbitrary? Could have attempted to tie it in to some significant time period like Xmas, Halloween, or maybe coincide with the Tetris online world championships?
Rather complicated to understand and their webpage is confusing.
2x games are harder as players get the most line clears by winning it. So although the promotion might attract more recreational players, their looser shoves might not happen as often in the 2x mutlipliers of which before they wouldn't have cared about.
I've tried to look around to see if the traffic for Pokerstars is higher during this period but could not find any data. It would have been interesting to compare it although this time last year was pre-pandemic and one would think that traffic should be lower.
Without the numbers it's really hard to say whether this promotion gained more recreational players then usual. From my experience I don't think it did, if anything I think it brought back regulars since this promotion is good for skilled players.
Overall tho, I'm happy that it did happen and it shows that Pokerstars is willing to get creative and mix things up in the space which is good to see. I look forward to their future promotions!
No doubt in Feb I was really up for the grind putting in a lot of volume and hopefully seeing the same great results. But things didn't turn out that way and got crushed.
However I did learn a few things and also allowed me to experience the potential swings of what Spins would be like.
This month I've been focusing on a few things, took a break and dropped my volume, going from 3 tables to 2.
I've been adjusting my ranges, and working on my postflop play so that its up2scratch
Week 1 going crazy on grind;
Redline is so bad, those are non showdown values. Meaning bluffs not getting through
Week 2 taking a breath, dropping 3 to 2 tables
Much better redline and chip ev (orange) and actual ev (green) is much better and closer
It was important to slow down and take a breath, and take a break every now and then.
I've also been experimenting with doing some standing up during sessions.
For now I've been propping up my keyboard and mouse on small stools and switching my monitor to the top one, then standing up and playing. I have a 2 vertical monitor setup so its quite easy to do. Its been quite good to mix it up and also helps in the afternoon when you get food coma from lunch.
Now I really want a standing table now where you can adjust it up and down... maybe it will be a gift for myself at the end of the month if I get a good month.
Its back! Actually its been back since December 2020 and I didn't realise...
Nearly 10 years since the last series, High Stakes Poker is literally what it says in the title. Super rich people playing poker for tens of thousands of dollars in each hand.
However its not just random people, there are famous poker players, businessmen, sports personalities and amateurs too.
Episodes have Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza commentating on the hands, to try and guide the viewer through the situations and explaining each player's thought processes.
The game itself is rather casual with players chatting about random things and shooting the shit. Most of the time they're not even talking about poker! Which is what makes it entertaining, as its not just all about the poker.
For any poker fan of the old series, they would remember the legendary moments of the previous seasons, Tom (Durrr) Dwan being insanely lucky, Daniel Negreanu being insanely unlucky... multiple times... in multiple seasons, Mike Matusaw running is mouth and needling other players and Phil Hellmuth complaining and being teased (most of the time by Matusaw).
So what of this season? I'm only in a few episodes so far and right now its a spoonful on nostalgia.
They brought back the 2 original commentators, as previous seasons only had Gabe by himself. The format has also been restored to its original version, same music, same casual music, mostly same branding. No awkward interviews on the side with a sexy lady anymore, just literally recording the action and keeping it all casual.
Didn't really like the graphics showing players and bet sizes and at first but now quite like it, and its nice that there's that added production value. Also finally they do a much better job of making the viewers know the stack sizes of each player in the hand and when there is a straddle too, which used to be quite confusing.
Personalised avatars and poker information look modern!
Of course not all things are same, times have moved on, and so has poker. The plays itself are agressive and you wont see a 7 way limped pot, there's plenty of raising and re-raising before you see the flop.
Bet sizings are interesting too, from the usual pot sizing to 1/2 or even 1/3 pot happening. I'm no cash game player but it seems that even the amateurs are able to understand how to extract value and they're not scared to bluff big as well.
So far really enjoying it, I think some would be disappointed with the lack of action, but for me that's what makes it great, it doesn't feel forced and I love the casualness of the table. It not reality tv, its kinda more like a documentary.
Tom Dwan is much more muted compared to his previous seasons, but still a strong winner.
Never heard of PokerGo before but they seem to be doing a good job. Understanding their audience and keeping in mind the fans that love the old show, but also updating what needs to be updated.
From the same channel it has created another series which is really interesting called the High Stakes Duel which is Heads Up (2 players only) cash game with 2 legendary poker players. The first season featured Antonius Esfandiari vs Phil Hellmuth, and next up is Daniel Negreanu vs Phil Hellmuth.
Hoping that High Stakes Poker will keep going on and have many other seasons to come!
No doubt I ran insanely good in Jan and I was pretty scared of the inevitable run bad. I also didn't get as many chests at all as Diamond ones take ages to get enough points, so not much extra profit from that.
Red line indicates that my non showdown winnings are low, it did seem that players didn't fold as much to my bluffs
Last week I had a long stretch of no chip ev as well, it happens.
To me, this seemed like it was mostly about the tale of two different 5x multiplier EVs;
February's 243 5x multipliers EV graph
January's 191 5x multiplier EV graph
The 5x multipliers are pretty important in Spins, as they help you climb upwards in your sessions. Of course it is possible to do that without them, but with the 2x's being only a double buy in, it makes it very difficult because your winrate would need to be over 45%+ consistently. There's no doubt that there are things I need to improve on but with this high variance system you are at the mercy of how the cards fall, especially heads up.
Interesting how many more 5x's I got this month compared to last month, however I did get one less 25x so feels like that kinda balances it out. Just didn't work out due to the bad run tho.
I managed to ship 8 out of 20 10x's tho which is pretty good! Seems like I have a better winrate in those then the 5x's.
I was very close last month to take a shot at the $25s actually, but I wanted a bigger buffer since the jump is quite large from the previous stake. Would have been interesting to see what could have happened but in a way this has helped prepare myself mentally and bankroll-wise for what a long stretch of variance is like... and its not fun.
I'm sure there are aspects of my game needs improving and its likely a lot of regs have adjusted to some of my plays. Hopefully March will turn it around.
So last week Pokerstars released their promotion Tetris Spin and Go's combining the much loved block falling puzzle game with their lottery Sit n' Go's.
Despite their attempts at explaining how it works, I feel that their attempt was quite insuffiencent and so I'm going to explain it better here.
To start the challenge go to the Spin and Go lobby, pick the stake you want to play and click join. For each different buy in of Spin there are different leaderboards so you will have to join them seperately to enter each one. Once you've clicked join then you will be entered in the challenege each day without needing to join again.
As far as I know, the first games you play each day will count towards the challenge.
Start up a Spin and Go to start!
When the Spin and Go loads up you will see a banner which tells you how many line clears you will get for winning it.
So winning this Spin will earn you 4 line clears.
Line clears are the lines in Tetris that disappear so the more you have the higher your level will go, and the higher your score will be. Your level goes up every 5 lines clears. You accumulate more points for being at higher levels.
Example of what the Tetris board looks like
You can view the Tetris board as a new tab on the bottom left of the game, where the chat and game info are. Here you can see your level, lines and current score.
As far as I know, the board is just a graphical representation of your board, it doesn't actually drop Tetrimanoes like the game.
The lobby will also show the same board, but I've found that it doesn't update as quickly. Usually the most newly opened Spin should show the most current board.
I prefer the minimal theme but otherwise the table looks pretty cool with Tetriminoes moving around in the background;
This theme can be disabled via the "Table" dropdown on the top left corner where you can click the "Disable Optional Graphics" setting
Depending on the multiplier and finish position you will get a certain number of line clears.
The score is calculated after each spin and it goes as follows;
The board will show its status of how filled up it is. There are 3 statuses, green, amber and red. Above it shows the green state. The more your board fills up, the higher the status it goes. Once it goes past red it is Game Over and the challenge ends.
Example of Amber board status
Red board status, nearly Game Over!
What the board shows once the challenge is over
Depending on the finish and multiplier, the board state will change accordingly;
Table showing how the status changes depending on your level
As you can see, the higher the level the harder it becomes to improve the board status meaning that you will Game Over much more quicker, meaning fewer bad placements can end the challenge.
The leaderboard tab will show your current standings in the challenge.
From my experience for the $10 stake, 100k+ points should land you in the top 50 for $50.
I managed to a top 10 finish already which was great, I absolutely ran like god winning every flip and then demolished my opponents heads up with double stacks.
Getting this score took about 30 Spins. A colleague created a simulation and it showed that it
16 hours later, I came top 30th if I recall correctly for $50 which was nice.
The interesting dynamic that this promotion brings is that it gives more meaning to the 2x multipliers, which tend to be softer then the higher ones due to the fact that you can win more. So in theory, this should make the games harder as players will be tryharding more then usual in those games.
However this should bring more recreational players to the games, but from my one week's experience this hasn't seemed to be the case for me, it seems the same. This might be due to the lack of proper marketing for this promotion.
This strange video was the only main thing I found to promote this, and it doesn't really seem that related to Tetris at all apart from the number 4.
This promotion will last until the end of March, so check it out!
It was bound to happen, I've been paying back the run good that I had in Jan...
Last week I was 74 buy ins below what I was expected to lose
It can be soul crushing to happen but it is an inevitability. According to this post, using a Spin and Go simulator running 10k games and a player with a 36% winrate (my Jan was 39%), 40% of players had a low point of losing 63 buy ins, 20% was down 111 buy ins!
The tough thing is to keep playing, keep hitting the tables every day and when things are going bad its hard to find the movitation. All you can do is keep studying and keep playing. You can take a break, which is what I used to do, but if you don't play you don't get paid!
Another persepective is that variance keeps you grounded, and I've been studying more and looking for ways to improve my game. I think I'm out of it now (touch wood) and gonna try and get back on track.
This morning I saw some tables with "Line clears" on them which was strange but apparently there's a new somewhat random promition combining Tetris with Spin and Go's.
Why is there a random guy there? Couldn't they have designed this better?
New Spin lobby look!
You get this "board" whilst doing the Tetris leaderboard challenge
Anyways, this thing seems brand new and is a bit buggy (leaderboards got taken down for a while). The instructions are confusing as hell you can try and translate it;
Will keep an eye on this promotion and probs blog about it next week. Seems strange how Pokerstars didn't really promote this much at all, what's going on with their marketing??
Pokerstars has a daily challenge for Spin and Go's where you can win money if you make the leaderboard you can win money.
The way it works is you play 10 Spins and for each multiplier type you get that many points and you will get another amount of that multiplier if you win that particular Spin. You can choose when to start the challenge but after that the next 10 Spins is what counts.
For example;
You start the challenge and get 10x multiplier and win it. 10x multi = 10pts, winning it = 10pts, total is 20pts.
The points are capped at 20pts per game though.
The best strategy is to start the challenge just as your about to win a 10x. It only starts counting once the game closes, so if you can remember to start it then you guarentee 30pts immediately.
55pts should guarentee a prize which is top 50 at the $5/10 level.
Looks like 48pts should get top 50 at the $25 level.
Last week I managed to get top prize after winning two 10x's which came up in my challenge. When I saw the first 10x I started the challenge, then another one popped up!
Was given quite the gift in the 2nd one as what I thought was a good reg decided to rejam his 43 into my TT for some weird reason.
The next few games were a good number of 5x's and 3x's and I shipped some of them too to finish with 75pts!
It's a weird system honestly, but I guess Pokerstars wants the recreational players to have a chance at it too, if they manage to win a multiplier then they could be on the leaderboard as well.
I had previously made the leaderboard twice, so it has been quite a bit of bonus money to add to my bankroll.
Things are going well with the overall grind, my plan is to get abour 150 buy ins before moving up to the $25 stakes, it will be quite an adjustment to get used to the bigger swings moving from $10s to 2.5x that amount so I want to have a decent buffer.
I decided to move back home last month and work on my pokerings again after a long hiatus. The past 3-4 years I have been life skilling it up learning coding and working in that industry. Whilst there, I started playing again pretty casually about 6 months ago.
This month I had been working on adjusting a few things in my game and doing more studying. Last year's results have been poor and things really turned around this month. Surely its gonna be hard for 2021 to be worse than 2020 right?
60 Chip EV in Numbers
One of the frustrating things from researching Spin and Go's was to actually get some real numbers in relation to Chip EV. I am aware of SwongSim which is a Spin and Go simulator which gives you a good idea of the types of variance one might get. For more information I found this post helpful, as well as this video by Coffeeyay. So here's some real numbers...
I spent the first 9 days playing $5 spins building the roll, before taking a shot at the $10s. This was my 2nd shot and it went much, much better then the first time. One thing to keep in mind moving up was that the biggest daily downswing I had at $5s was 16 buy ins, so it was important to mentally prepare for that.
I managed to play just shy of 3k games in total this month.
815 x $5 Spins (7% rake) @46 chip ev
2163 x $10 Spins (8% rake) @66 chip ev
Hours played: 114
Total: $1650
1sts: 38.9% (HEM3 Says 39.3% not sure why)
2nds: 31%
3rds: 29.8%
Winning days: 23 of 30
Losing days: 6
Breakeven days: 1
Winning day streak: 11
Biggest winning day: 45 buy ins
Biggest downswing day: 14 buy ins
Highest ITM day: 50.4% over 113 games
Lowest ITM day: 23% over 65 games
Biggest Chip EV day: 170 chip ev over 96 games (16k)
Spin Challenge leaderboard cashes: Top 5 twice $37.50 each
Multipliers above 5x's:
3 x 25x
8 x 10x
Rakeback (Diamond chest): $700
$325 in starcoins
15 x Free $5 Spin Tickets winnings: $125
$250 cash prize wow
Max diamond chest gift on my last session of the month!
Final total: $2425
Soooo yeah I ran pretty good lol. Not that I didn't work hard at it, I've been studying a lot of spots and also been using ICMizer daily to make sure I'm not missing end game heads up shoving.
These changes to my game have for sure changed my non showdown winnings, which is debateable in the Spin community as to whether it makes a difference or not. Either way, I do believe that getting these extra folds leads to a bigger stack, which in turn should give you the lead more often then not.
This month's Chip EV
Terrible 2020 6k game sample
3k games is a small sample, but hopefully things can continue. I'm aware that I ran good, and am pretty scared for when that variance happens. Would really like to reach the $25 stakes.
I hope that this post will help others see what kind of variance and money to expect. Money will be completely dependent on the frequency of high multipliers you get and ship though, so its always best to look at the Spin God stat CHIP EV to get an idea of how well your playing.
Happy grindin' peeps, have a great Feb and for the love of God let this pandemic end soon...
Literally a month ago there was excitement in the Vue.js community that Vue.js got more stars than React.js on github. Stars like Hollywood stars? Really, no lol, but maybe metaphorically… or philosophically?
Github stars is a way for developers to effectively bookmark that page so that they can refer to it later on. What does this mean? That Vue’s popularity has surpassed React, a symbolic handing over of the frontend baton, if you will.
As of 16th July!
So everyone is using Vue.js and its more popular then React? Well no, stars don’t mean usage, but we can look at npm downloads which is what is used to install these and see that Vue is still pretty far behind;
With technologies being used all the time, businesses have to decide whether it is worth their time and therefore money to upgrade to more newer ones. Trends may be all the hype, but there needs to be a pretty big reaseon to need to switch to a better technology rather then continue with their current one.
Meaning that all businesses that use React may see the advantages of using Vue, but it just isn’t worth the change and carrying on with what they have will suffice.
I thought that it would be a good idea to expand my skillset by checking out React in more detail, and see what differences it had to Vue. This is what I discovered… explained in very simple terms.
Setup — Create React App
One of the more frustrating things with learning React when starting out was using outdated tutorials. One of the biggest skillsets of developers is being able to solve problems by finding solutions online. But its also important to be aware of the age of these solutions. Quite a few tutorials were out there, but they are outdated and can lead you down a rabbit hole before realising.
Facebook’s repo create-react-app is the best way to start. Its minimal configuration, fully templated starter kit to get you going straight away. I’m all for simple and hassle free, so this is brilliant.
Once you npm start, a localhost server is started and you’ll see React’s example page on your browser…
You’ll see a spinning radioactive React logo in your localhost browser…
Classy Structure
Man the puns! ES6 is prevalent in React, so make sure you got these down before you jump in or it will be confusing as hell!
Like Vue, we’re working with Components. Components are the whole reason we love React and Vue. We are splitting up our website into Components that are reusable. We are having our Frontend Refactored (shameless plug to my other post)!
I decided to make a simple bookmark manager where a user can save these links onto a page. Remember those days when we had to do that? No? Crap, I feel old… O_o’’
Aight, lets make a plan. Like with pen and paper… you remember those things too?
Don’t ask me why I write in ALL CAPS
import React, { Component } from 'react';
import './App.css';
import BookmarkForm from './components/BookmarkForm';
All components roughly follow this structure. You have your imports at the top, a component class which contains everything, then your export.
Inside the component class you will almost always have a render function which is the stuff that gets parsed to the page. The render function always returns JSX code which will contain everything you want to render.
Inside the render function here we got divs, a h1 tag, and ‘<BookmarkForm />’ which is another component.
There are also other in built functions that you can use that are on the same level as the render function, but still within the component class. You can also have custom functions that you may want to use.
Whats great is that these functions are limited to this class component scope, meaning they can only be accessed within this component, unless you want it not to do so.
Probably the most common question for learning React is… what on earth is JSX??
JSX — Everything is Javascript
ES6 controversially introduced Classes to Javascript due to demand. But really under the hood it is nothing more then syntactic sugar. Meaning it looks and acts like Classes in other languages but its actually not doing anything different then it was before.
This is the same with JSX. It acts and looks like HTML, but really its Javascript that is translated to look like HTML.
let newDiv = document.createElement('div');
newDiv.className = "hello";
Is the same as
<div class="hello"></div>
JSX in its most simple terms will apply the Javascript but still look like HTML.
But in JSX class is a reserved keyword so we use ‘className’ in React as to not get it confused with actual the HTML, so for JSX we’d write it like this;
<div className="hello"></div>
Since JSX is Javascript, we would like it to use Javascript sometimes so we need some syntax to help it recognise that we wanna do that.
Here the onClick attribute runs the function clicked created in this component when the div is clicked. As you can see Javascript is explicit for this.clicked as it is in between two curly brackets.
Passing Info Around
One of the things we wanna do in this awesome world of components is to be able to information around so that our components can be flexible.
So lets create some state(data) that will hold the list of our websites. In the class, we add the constructor to initialize our state. Super() I’ll explain later on…
We store our state in a hash. Now calling this.state.websites will output the empty array. Props allows this information to be accessed when passed down to other components.
In the render function, we assign the variable ‘websites’ to the array in the state. Then we loop through the array with map and for each single element in the array (a website) we return the component WebsiteChoice and pass in the name of the website as a prop as a custom attribute that WebsiteChoice receives.
This sounds kinda crazy! In simple terms, this means we are passing the name of the website down to the WebsiteChoice component so that we can do something with it, and let the WebsiteChoice component handle it rather then the parent.
Here we pass in the name of the website by calling ‘this.props.website’ and set it to the href, and render it to the page, thus allowing this component to be responsible for anything to do with each individual website.
Save Yourself This Dot Headaches
One of the interesting parts to Javascript is using the keyword this. This, is a way of referring to things within a certain object. This blog explains it super well.
So when we are passing around these bits of information via props, we can also pass functions too which can sit in the parent component but be called in the child component.
However, since we are passing around objects, the keyword this can be referring to the wrong objects. So its super useful to know ES6 arrow functions here, since they allow the this keyword to not refer to the function object that’s created.
So instead of
function doSomething() {
// some code
}
use
doSomething = () => {
// some code
}
to avoid scoping problems. This allows a child component to be able to call the passed down this.props.doSomething from its own component.
If you remember above we had that weird ‘super’ keyword with props inside it.
In React, when you call super with props. React will make props available across the component through this.props. This allows us to call this.props.websites when the data is on the parent component.
Deployment to Heroku
There’s a lot more to the code but this post is starting to get a bit too long. Once I was happy I wanted to see how easy it would be to upload my code to Heroku and have it working. I was interested in seeing how much configuration was needed, especially after using create-react-app to setup my template.
I uploaded to Heroku the same way I would if I was setting up a new github repository, and followed their instructions.
Once uploaded, I soon realised that you needed to add a node buildpack, which effectively does an online npm install to install all the dependencies. This was under your app/settings on the heroku website.
npm install on Heroku!
Once done, voila! It was up! Super simple and really I think create-react-app is an awesome template that helps developers right out the box. Feel free to check it out here and the github repo is here.
Ugly, but functional working prototype!
Final Thoughts
I think that React.js is a great framework and once you get your head around JSX syntax the potential is huge.
However I do think its quite hard to get into at first glance, the readability of just doesn’t compare to Vue.js and it also has some exception case rules that you basically just have to memorise like using className instead of class which seemed like a foresight in its design that they just kept.
Documentation is ok, but there is a lot of old answers out there and there is a danger of always implementing an old way of doing things. That being said, the community is huge and with Facebook’s ‘backing’, its surely still quite a safe bet that it stick around for the foreseeable future.
I think that being able to use ES6 is almost a must for react, considering the scoping problems that you will get by using traditional non arrow function functions, dealing with putting binds everywhere to control your this’s!
For me, if Vue didn’t exist I’d probably be a satisfied developer with React, but it was hard for me to code with the knowledge that things could be done in a much easier way…
I want to end with a pretty cool series video of what its like to develop a project from start to finish, concept to working prototype. I really love the way they plan it out, and include all the blockers that they had through the process. This can give a good insight to what a developer goes through when creating a product.
I had been milling around thinking about buying wireless bluetooth earbuds for a while now, and had my set heart on jaybirds as it sat on my amazon wishlist for over a year. But in the end, the Apple Airpods won me over in the very last minute, literally photo finish style, and here’s why;
And feel free to skip to the end if you want a TL;DR version this is an in depth review…
They’re finally here! But did anyone notice?
Whats Your Fad?
When it comes to reviews, I think a lot of places make huge mistakes with trying to categorise everyone into the same column. When you do this, it means that you are looking for the absolute best of something that for fills all categories for all people.
We’re not all the same, so why do we rate these products as if we are? (Amazing movie too btw)
Its super important to distinguish what you know is important to you, and then find the best product for those needs. That’s why there are so many varieties of products out there that all sell well.
A classic case of finding the “best” product would be Android vs Apple phones. Whilst for one person customisation and fast battery charging may be important to one customer, for another having something easy to use and setup with less hassle with the backup of genius bar might be more appealing to a less tech savvy customer. There is no overall best.
So here’s the categories that are important to me;
My War Against Wires— Must be wireless. Still blows my mind how we can have data travel through the air to our laptops and yet in 2018 we still use wires all over the place.
EZ Setup and Usage — Must be easy to use and no lengthy nightmare pairings and disconnects please!
Portable and Light —Would love it if it could fit in a pocket. Don’t want a big bulky thing in my bag.
Charge Em Up! — must be easy and please, not more extra wires.
Mic - Bonus, but not required necessarily!
Notice that there are some major things that aren’t that important to me, but I can imagine that it would be for others;
Sound quality being a huge requirement for others, but I personally don’t really care about it that much. I just want something that is able to play videos/music on my phone whilst I commute to work.
Battery life can also be a do or die category for others. But I find that there is a group of people that choose not to charge their appliances every night when they go to bed, because of the argument that it wears down the battery of the product. Whilst this is somewhat true, I find that with products having warranties they can easily be replaced, and I would much prefer having a well charged appliance over saving its lifespan by a few months.
Robustness is an important category to consider, if you know that you are a rather clumsy person and are prone to dropping /losing things all the time. I’m quite reserved so I hardly ever lose things and my phone is nearly always in my pocket so I never drop it, I don’t even have a case on it.
Answering The Most Common Question About Airpods;
I will now devote this section to answering the most common question about Apple Airpods (Drumroll please….)
Q. Does it fall out of your ears?
A. No. It is securely there.
There. Done. Right, moving on…
Design
When it comes to designs there are 3 types that I’ve noticed;
Earmuff style headsets — Great sound quality Bose or Seinniser headsets are truly wireless, but rather bulky and no microphone for calls. Also pretty expensive.
One of the best wireless headsets for sound quality and noise cancellation
Earbud with neck wires — These sort of solve the problem of losing separate earbuds my basically connecting them with a wire that hangs on your neck.
Other earbud designs seem to be bulky and cumbersome looking?
Separate Earbuds with case — There are some other designs that have done this too, but none as small and lightweight as Apple’s. Just don’t lose the case!
My initial beef with the Airpods was that it was ugly and looked strange. Ugly in the fact that they looked exactly like the Apple wired airpods but slightly longer. It just seems that Apple just doesn’t seem to want to take risks by changing their designs that much these days.
However, after a while when I saw more people with them, and then looked around to see the other designs that were around it actually didn’t seem that bad comparatively.
Some designs are super bulky and look cumbersome
Another reason I chose them was that they were “true” wireless. The Jaybirds had raving reviews but I did wonder about the fact that it still have a neck strap wire, and man am I done with wires.
The design is simple and pretty basic, nothing really to rave on about. But when you consider the extra features that it contains, from gestures, microphone, the bluetooth connection and the way it charges, it does seem impressive the amount of technology they had fit into it. It might just be Apple’s most expensive product per square mm.
Making its Case for Charging Differently… Literally
Having a charging case for the airpods is really going against the norm compared to its competitors. With the case, it tackles two problems — A place to put the separate airpods as to not lose them, and also allows a more portable way of charging them.
The airpods ‘click’ in magnetically, and the case lid opens and closes with that satisfying noise too. Opening the lid close to the iphone brings up the pairing image on the phone and then it is paired!
Alternatively you can use mission control, go to music and hard tap to see whether it is paired or not. Pairing is super easy, and reliable. You will hear a nice futuristic sound when its successful. I’ve also managed to switch from iPhone to my laptop bluetooth with ease too. I’ve also heard that its not bad with Android phones as well.
Airpod Gesturing Tappy Tap!
One of the benefits of having its own W1 Chip in there is that it allows so much more potential.
‘Gestures’ are available for some wireless commands. I think by default tapping twice brings up Siri… shame that Siri isn’t that good.
Point being thought that these can be customised, and also set to different sides too. So right now I have my left double tap be skip track forward, double tap right side call up Siri, and single tap is to stop the music. You can customise your choices in settings/bluetooth/apple airpods once you pair them.
You can customise what commands your double tap does, for each side
One negative though is that there is no volume control gesture at the moment, which is quite disappointing as most of the neck wired bluetooth earbuds have it, usually by using a physical dial or slider. Surely Apple can think of a way of gesturing that? Maybe a ‘long tap’ or ‘force tap’?
There are sensors on each airpod that can detect when its in your ear or not. Taking one out will stop the music automatically. It will also turn itself off when unused for a while.
Micro-ma-phone
A deal setter for me was the fact that it has a working microphone. For something so small, with so many features on there already, its impressive that they have a microphone as well.
The feedback I get from the receiver is that the sound quality is pretty good. I mean considering the mic is so far away from your mouth, that’s a feat. I do wonder if it has something to do with the way sound travels like in whispering galleries, but I’m not sure.
Apple’s explanation is that it detects certain vibrations to know that it is your voice
But there’s no doubt that having wireless airpods for phone calls makes it so much more convenient. You don’t even have to be that close to your phone, and you can keep multi-tasking other things whilst chatting away.
As a mini experiment I wanted to see if it was possible to link it up to my PC and do some gaming with it. I dreamt a dream of a wire-free gaming experience!
Since my ancient 2010 PC didn’t have bluetooth on it already (or did I take it out for some reason?), I bought myself a usb bluetooth dongle. Installing was a little confusing, as I needed to google the driver but eventually I managed to get it working.
Apple Airpods are badly represented by some Bose headset!
It definitely took some tweaking, and once paired I had to set my Windows sound to Airpod as well which is pretty annoying, but it was totally worth it!
Interestingly, it was also possible to use the microphone too, but I found that because it was going through one channel, it took away from the audio and my friend said that the mic sound was terrible.
Still, great success! I was happily playing overwatch without wires going all over the place. Now just to have a plan for all the other millions of wires connected to my PC…
Support As Per Usual
Apple has built up its brand with its appeal to non techhies with friendly no-question-is-a-stupid-question genius bar helpers. So of course, with this product you get all the perks of prodding them if there’s a problem.
However, its one year warranty only covers defective battery case, and other things such as loss will still cost ya. If you lose one airpod, it’ll be half the original price to get another one!
Battery life is shown on the phone when paired, and you can see it on the notification screen with all your other widgets. This shows the battery life of the case, and each airpod separately. This is especially useful for those who use the ‘life hack’ of only using one airpod at a time, whilst the other one is charging.
iPhone will show batteries of left and right airpods, as well as the case
The airpods are also supported by the totally inappropriately named ‘Find My iPhone’ app. Just like your other products, like laptops and ipads, this badly named app will also add the airpods to the list as well.
This is super useful of course if you have no idea where they are, but it probably wont zoom in enough to help you realise its stuck in between your couch cushions. This could be a huge plus for those who feel like they lose things, it will save you a lot of money.
Add your airpods to the list of Mac products that can be located with the Find My iPhone app
Steve Jobs Understood Hype
I rewatched the launch of the airpods and what was apparent to me was that post Steve Jobs, they just don’t know how to create hype, and what to emphasise.
The iconic ‘One more thing’ section has all but disappeared
Products of great importance always had a great introduction, then a video, then a live demo. Here there was no demo and the whole presentation lasted 5 mins. Oh, and not just that, but they also used that time to promote Beats headsets as well, for some weird reason?
I could totally have imagined Steve Jobs coming on stage, wearing the wired earbuds, and then suddenly dramatically the wires drop and the new airpods are revealed! Then a video, and then a live demo showing how easy it is to pair, how it doesn’t fall out, showing the gestures and the charging case.
There is a lot of hate towards Apple moving towards removing the headphone jack from their products, and this was meant to be the counter argument. A convenient wire-free solution to not needing wires anymore. An expensive one, but a solution none the less.
A five minute presentation on a product that their “Engineers had been working on for years”, which just didn’t give it justice and in the end misinformed a lot of potential customers from wanting this product.
The Beats headphones promoted along side the Airpods devalued its importance
As a major Apple user, this definitely happened with me. I heard about the airpods, but didn’t really know about the extra features and basically just thought that it was some overpriced overrated product that wasn’t that important. For its time in the limelight was so small, it just didn’t give out the hype that Steve Jobs created so well when making revolutionary releases.
Overall Final Thoughts TL;DR
DO BUY if you want a lightweight, truly wireless, easy to use and a mic.
DON’T BUY if you are all about sound quality, and/or tend to misplace things a lot, and don’t like to charge things every night. Bose/Sennheiser headphones might be a better option.
Overall I’m very impressed. I look forward to the next model and I hope that they present it in a better light. It is an expensive product at £159, but comparing the price of headphones these days and considering all the extra technology and extra features that are provided it might be worth it. Just make sure you keep these things on a leash and don’t lose em!
