"lost faith in their ability to rely on... marketing"
What is this magical, legendary ability to rely on marketing for that they speak of.
Apple has failed to get a class-action sueball over its allegedly "shoddy" headphones dismissed – but the plaintiffs have been told to amend their claims. A group of people last year filed an action accusing Cupertino of false advertising, claiming the Powerbeats headphones they bought had poor battery life and were not sweat …
Marketing can't outright lie. If a statement is obviously meant figuratively then they may be able to. There is also a world of weasel words to give you the impression of one thing and delivering another.
As an example "Red Bull gives you wings" is considered OK, since one cannot expect a soft drink to in fact allow you to grow wings. However "Red Bull gives you energy" is problematic, since why it may literally be true (if it has sugar in it) stimulants != energy.
"Marketing can't outright lie."
Sure it can. It lies all the time -- often enough that my default assumption is that any piece of marketing I see is deceptive.
Doing so may expose them to some sort of legal liability, but the odds that they'll suffer any sanction that exceeds the gains of the marketing are very low, rendering sanctions merely a component in the cost of marketing.
"Apple had also argued that the plaintiffs could not seek an injunction against what they allege is false advertising, saying the group could not prove imminent harm."
Is that how American consumer law works, that Apple is free to lie in a product's advertisement as long as no one gets hurt?
"Personally, I wouldn't rush to bin £100+ of bluetooth earphones."
I would !!!
As they 'sure as hell' would not be mine and anything left lying around with a 'Fruit' based logo is of no interest at all !!!
Of course, the apple acolytes will be more than happy to buy another to support the 'Cult' as they need all the money they can get to fund the conversion of the great masses that are missing out :) ;)
I have just been granted the patent for the solution to the problem.
It consists of a wire between the headphones and the device they are wirelessly connected to. It allows the headphones to use the other device's battery, which is bigger, instead of their own. That should also limit power consumption - I am not an expert, could be wrong, but they look nice so sod it - because there is no need to keep the blue tooth switched on in both devices. If you rest the wire along the perimeter of the device, it acquires visually pleasant round corners.
@Solmyr ibn Wali Barad - "Maybe using jack-type connectors on both the wire and the iDevice"
But that could give the consumer the idea that any accessory with a similar jack-type connector could be plugged in, which could be dangerous [to Apple profits].
a result of the normal degradation in lithium ion & lithium polymer battery performance over time/with use.
Charging to 100% and discharging to near-empty significantly accelerates this.
I suspect many were run flat often and left charging overnight etc... with such a small battery the degradation in battery life would have been obvious.
The partial solution, with my cheap £20 Bluetooth headphones, was to take them apart and fit a bigger battery.
I also make heavy use of wired earphones but soon that'll be a thing of the past - my Huawei Mate 20 X has a headphone jack. It's successor, the 5G version, is the same size but drops the jack. Interestingly they also reduced the battery from 5000mAh to 4000mAh.