William N. Johnson

“None of most powerful tech companies answer to what’s best for people, only to what’s best for them.”

— Tristan Harris

Some nights you just want to relax, put on your favorite artist, and zone out. Then suddenly one side of your Bluetooth earphones shuts off. You know you charged them a couple of hours ago, so why is this happening? Now you are stuck listening to music from only one side and it is frustrating.

I still remember when Apple killed the headphone jack back in 2016. People were mad. It was one of those moments in tech history where everyone had an opinion. Somehow Apple made it stick, though, and now almost every phone maker has ditched the jack. Sure, there are wired earphones you can still use with the charging port, but then you cannot charge your phone and listen to music at the same time unless you buy extra accessories. Why does the world have to be this complicated? But honestly, that is not even the worst part. Phones last all day now anyway.

What really drives me crazy is how easy it is to lose these little earbuds. Fall asleep with them in, wake up, and suddenly one has completely disappeared. Then you are crawling around your room, tearing apart your bed, checking the floor, even retracing every step you took last night. Eventually you find it, but it is always in the most random place. At least wired earphones stayed together. You might get knots in the cord but at least you rarely lost them.

Another annoying thing is syncing. Try opening GarageBand or a piano app and playing around with music. Forget it. Bluetooth has too much lag and it just does not work.

And speaking of things that should just work, have you ever stopped to think about how Bluetooth even became a thing? It’s so ubiquitous now, you just expect it to be there, but it has this surprisingly cool and almost ancient origin story. It all started way back in the 90s, at Ericsson, when engineers were trying to find a way to standardize short-range radio technology to connect different devices wirelessly. And get this – the name “Bluetooth” itself actually comes from Harald Bluetooth, a 10th-century Danish king who was famous for uniting the Scandinavian tribes! The idea was that this new tech would, in a similar spirit, unite different communication protocols. Pretty clever, right? Eventually, a bunch of tech giants like Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba formed the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) to develop and standardize the technology we all rely on today. It’s funny how something so deeply ingrained in our modern lives has such a geeky, historical backstory, especially when it gives us so much grief sometimes!

But the most frustrating thing of all is charging. Half the time the earbuds do not even make contact in the case. I have had to clean them with isopropyl alcohol more times than I can count. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Most of the time I end up taking the rubber cap off just so it will actually charge. And losing those little rubber caps is its own special kind of nightmare.

In the end none of this really changes anything. I still use Bluetooth earphones every day. I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re more convenient, but I do remember the constant struggle with wired headphones where the cords would always fray or something, causing them to not properly get a good signal. No wires in my pocket, no cord getting caught on something when I walk past. But I do miss the headphone jack and how simple things used to be.