Wired Headphones Need Bluetooth

A crazy experience — I lost my earbuds in a remote town in Chile, so tried buying a new pair at the airport before flying out. But the new wired, iPhone, lightning-cable headphones didn't work. Strange. So I went back and swapped them for another pair, from a different brand. But those headphones didn't work either. We tried a third brand, which also didn't work. By now the gift shop people and their manager and all the people in line behind me are super annoyed, until one of the girls says in Spanish, "You need to have bluetooth on." Oh yes, everyone else nods in agreement. Wired headphones for iPhones definitely need bluetooth. What? That makes no sense. The entire point of wired headphones is to not need bluetooth. So I turn Bluetooth on with the headphones plugged into the lightning port and sure enough my phone offers to "pair" my wired headphones. "See," they all say in Spanish, like I must be the dumbest person in the world. With a little back and forth I realize that they don't even conceptually know what bluetooth is, while I have actually programmed for the bluetooth stack before. I was submitting low-level bugs to Ericsson back in the early 2000s! Yet somehow, I with my computer science degree, am wrong, and they, having no idea what bluetooth even is, are right.

A traveler in Chile tries several pairs of wired Lightning headphones at an airport gift shop, but none work. The shop staff insist that Bluetooth must be turned on, and the phone even offers to pair the wired headphones, making the technically knowledgeable narrator look foolish. The joke is an absurd technology misunderstanding where the supposedly ignorant group accidentally gets the correct practical result. EN: A traveler in Chile tries several pairs of wired Lightning headphones at an airport gift shop, but none work. The shop staff insist that Bluetooth must be turned on, and the phone even offers to pair the wired headphones, making the technically knowledgeable narrator look foolish. The joke is an absurd technology misunderstanding where the supposedly ignorant group accidentally gets the correct practical result.

• @gentoomemes / 11631 2024-06-03
• @dustinthehead / 20802 2024-06-10