[imoverclocked]

> I have no idea how they work

There is definitely some proprietary “glue” in there. One nice thing about them is that you pair them to one device and then all of your other iCloud devices can see them. I would not expect that kind of feature to work elsewhere for obvious reasons. I could be wrong?

They also support spatial audio which is now supported with Android.

There are definitely features of the AirPods which are new or were new when they were released. It’s up to Apple to support those features on their own hardware/OS. It’s up to others to add support to their own operating systems if they deem it worthwhile. Similar goes for other hardware. Yes, the hardware works differently than so many generic components out in the world but that’s kind of the point.

[chesc]

I have airpods and an android phone. They work well now (I really am not interested in spatial audio). They did however work pretty badly until I connected them to an iphone to allow the firmware to update. I dislike the ecosystem argument. They are just Bluetooth earphones... Quite expensive ones at that.