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AirPods Impressions: Potential 'Game-Changer' With Good Design, but Will They Stay in the Ear?

dbeattie said:
I thought what a great design...then I imagined biking down a long hill at 40mph and one popping out onto the road. Maybe the cheaper beats will be a better choice for exercising.
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When I walk, hike, bike, jog, my first and foremost mind set is my safety, concentrating on the activity and what is happening around me. I have a difficult time understanding the need for headsets playing music during these activities. To each his own.
 
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riffcat said:
That was my immediate thought when i first saw these. Some sort of tie that connect both devices and wraps behind the neck.
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How about extending it with a sort of string that reaches down to the phone and carries audio to the Airpods independently of the wireless connection, so you were no longer limited by 5 hour battery life?

Seriously - although looking at the pictures makes me skeptical I'm not going to assume bad design based on a photo. I'd give the "sticks" a chance - I could see how maybe they'll help rather than hinder. My real concern is the one-size-fits-all idea: personally, I can never keep earbuds in, and without a tethering cable fear that one of these would end up lost in short order...

Seems to me, the problems with these are fundamental to the concept of totally wireless earbuds: no space for battery, easily lost and where to put controls/microphones.

In the past, I've used Phillips noise-cancelling earbuds on long flights (not great audio but good enough for flights) - they had a neck cord, a "pendant" with the battery and electronics (& 3.5mm lead to the phone - but the same configuration would be good for Bluetooth) & each "bud" had a small cable leading to the neck cord - so you could just pop them out and they'd be safe. Those were vey practical for that purpose.

Oh, and if you're on a flight, what if you want to use the in-flight entertainment? My current full-size-ish Bluetooth cans also have a 3.5mm lead.

Still, horses for courses, and some people will enjoy pretending to be Lt Uhura... (Hey, the AirPods mark the 50th anniversary of wireless earphones!)
 
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Dominicanyor said:
Those wireless airpods should of came with the iPhone instead of people buying them separate.Not Cool Apple!!!!!!
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...and if they had, MORE people would have complained that they were paying $159 more than they needed to for a new phone.
 
Sunday Ironfoot said:
"rich, high quality AAC audio"

Does this mean that the raw AAC audio data is streamed directly to the AirPods and decoded on chip? Because *that* would be a game changer, no (additional) loss in audio quality introduced by the wireless connection.
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The signal has to be transmitted by Blue tooth Radio from the phone to the Earbud and then decoded. That means the bluetooth radio has to be modulated by the signal before it is transmitted and then de-modulated at the other end. it then has to be fed through a DAC "digital Audio converter" to convert it to Analogue audio which is the only thing that the human ear can hear. So to answer your question "NO"
 
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dbeattie said:
I thought what a great design...then I imagined biking down a long hill at 40mph and one popping out onto the road. Maybe the cheaper beats will be a better choice for exercising.
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Since when is listening to music a good idea when biking? That should be one of the last situations for music consumption.
 
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Maybe I'm just missing this but all the talk is around the design and ease of pairing. What I want to know from the bloggers who got their hands on the airpods is how do they sound. Are they identical to the sound of the cheap earbuds that come with current iPhones or do they truly provide a premium audio experience. You can buy several bluetooth earbuds on the market today for $150 or below. I need to know how these stack up.
 
Zirel said:
Maybe not, but the interception of those groups = MacRumors trolls.
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Well considering I just said the intersection of these two groups is essentially zero, and you're the one pretending everyone in either group is in both, where does that leave you?
 
turbineseaplane said:
No playback controls/gestures on the AirPods themselves makes this a non-starter for me.

I'm not interested in looking like a crazy person trying to "ask Siri to go to the next track" in public and pulling my phone out and fumbling around was long ago "sucky" (thus the inline mic/controls on wired models being so great...)
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True, I hadn’t realized that. My transit tunnels don’t have wifi so that means you’ll have to use another device to do just about everything with these and that greatly reduces their functionality.

If Siri is going to be need to even get basic function on accessories its about time that Apple has in phone Siri commands for those basic commands.
 
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npmacuser5 said:
When I walk, hike, bike, jog, my first and foremost mind set is my safety, concentrating on the activity and what is happening around me. I have a difficult time understanding the need for headsets playing music during these activities.
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Hear hear. I use headphones while sitting down and trying to concentrate/relax in noisy environments. Use while walking defeats one of the objects of walking, and use while cycling is just suicidal insanity (but then some cyclists have delusions of immortality).

Mind you, in some years time when they are decommissioning/refitting today's airliners, they're going to find a geological layer of AirPods lost in the inaccessible gaps between seats...
 
ericwn said:
Since when is listening to music a good idea when biking? That should be one of the last situations for music consumption.
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I bike on shared routes all the time and joggers and walkers with earphones who cannot hear my bell are a real problem. I agree with your comment but its bigger than just bikers.
 
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riffcat said:
They only work with Apple devices. And from what I can tell requires MacOS or IOS10, Siri and Icloud account.
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The OS updates are probably only necessary for the auto-pairing and -connecting features. It's possible that you can still pair them manually to non-Apple devices (perhaps opening the charging case with the earbuds inside puts them in pairing mode?).
 
maflynn said:
I'm not sold that these will be a game changer. I think the cost is too high, the battery life to short, not having them stay in your ear and it will be easy for you to lose them
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I think what people keep overlooking when they see the negative aspects is the research and development that went into creating these. Without the goal of developing these, the tech would not exist for the next generation that will only improve upon them. As Jony said, Apple is "just at the beginning" of this next stage of wireless tech.
 
isomorphic said:
Regardless of how good/bad the AirPods are, all other manufacturers seem to be saying "here, just shove this uncomfortable piece of silicone halfway into your ear canal." "And look, we've provided three silicone pieces to fit everyone's ears: 'pain', 'lots of pain', and 'falls out'."

Tinny though Apple's EarPods may be, they don't collect my ear wax or cause my ears to break out in sweat. I wish other manufacturers would continue to make earbud-style headphones without all the silicone plug garbage.
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You're just like me. I don't particularly like the feeling of rubbery silicone (which becomes gross rubbery silicone once you add earwax) in my ears. And yeah, my EarPods have always stayed remarkable clean (I also clean my ears, but hey).

I've always thought that EarPods, with those stems, would make for stylish wireless headphones if you simply chopped the cords off. Funny Apple did just that.
 
npmacuser5 said:
When I walk, hike, bike, jog, my first and foremost mind set is my safety, concentrating on the activity and what is happening around me. I have a difficult time understanding the need for headsets playing music during these activities. To each his own.
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lol you're afraid of not hearing the fire alarm when you're on a Treadmill? Or someone screaming at you while you're on the bike path on the beach? Or maybe you're afraid you won't hear a mountain lion scream at you while on a hike? I just want to make it clear what safety issue you're talking about.
 
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None of Apple-supplied earbuds ever fit it my ear and/or always fell out. The only time I used them was when they supplied the black foam (early generation iPod's). I tried Apple's first-gen in-ears but they were terribly uncomfortable. They are definitely for the casual user, granted they fit in your ear.
 
oneMadRssn said:
The most glaring omission for me is music control and volume control?

Using Siri, and all the baggage that comes with it, to do something as simple as raise or lower volume, or go to the next track, is not a good trade-off at all.
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Exactly, I've said this at the outset as well. 'Think different' is fine as long as you address the core usability. Sometimes I think Jony has run amok and projects are now simply for vanity sake.
 
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KylePowers said:
I like their direction, the custom silicon, and ease of connection.

Price isn't horrific, but $99 would've made them a quick top seller.

My only qualm is that these style earbuds suck in my ears. They also don't do a good job of isolating outside noise.

I'll stick to my Jaybirds for now
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Don't just them simply because of the category. Go try them, and then make an 'informed' decision.
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iLog.Genius said:
None of Apple-supplied earbuds ever fit it my ear and/or always fell out. The only time I used them was when they supplied the black foam (early generation iPod's). I tried Apple's first-gen in-ears but they were terribly uncomfortable. They are definitely for the casual user, granted they fit in your ear.
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So you're saying that Apple has not refined the design with this latest release? :rolleyes:
 
If Apple's real motivation was to genuinely move the needle towards wireless headphones, they would have included something more standard in the box. Earbuds like this are a bit of a novelty. They are way too small to be useful for all but the most fastidious of owners.

Apple missed the boat, IMO. The real game changer would have been a pair of perfectly serviceable wireless earphones (with a cable between the two ears). A small usb-c jack would provide connection, and a usb-c to lightning cable would have been included in the box. This cable would allow you to connect and automatically pair them to your device, charge them, and listen to them over the wire while charging. That same cable could be used to charge your iPhone on your new Mac which has only usb-c ports. That's what I expected from Apple. What we got instead were these expensive ear-cigarettes.
 
nebo1ss said:
I bike on shared routes all the time and joggers and walkers with earphones who cannot hear my bell are a real problem. I agree with your comment but its bigger than just bikers.
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Of course, the problem is not just bikers, they are just a touch more ridiculous than a pedestrian who decides to block out traffic noises.
 
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