Comment by wlesieutre

To be more precise than "they don't work because Apple is terrible," the two competing pinout standards are CTIA (previously meaning Cellular Telephone Industries Association) and OMTP (Open Mobile Terminal Platform).

According to Wikipedia, the OMTP devices include:

    * old Nokia (and also Lumia starting from the 2nd gen)
    * old Samsung (2012 Chromebooks)
    * old Sony Ericsson (2010 and 2011 Xperias)
    * Sony (PlayStation Vita)
    * OnePlus One
    * Xbox One controller with head phone jack
    * iPhone sold in China

and CTIA devices include:

    * Apple
    * HTC
    * LG
    * Blackberry
    * latest Nokia (including 1st gen Lumia as well as later models)
    * latest Samsung
    * Jolla
    * Sony (Dualshock 4)
    * Microsoft (including Surface and Xbox One controller with chat     adapter)
    * most Android phones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)#TRRS_s...

I haven't personally tested most of those, but IIRC when I had a Surface Pro the iPhone TRRS earbuds worked fine with it.