AirPods Slip to 4 Week Delivery Estimates for Most Countries

[juminoz]

I cannot imagine these staying securely in one's ears during exercise. Hope I'm wrong.

Just try with regular EarPods with wire that everyone has. I used to run 60 miles/week with them and not once that they ever came off. These are supposed to be exactly the same without the wire so why would it be any different? I understand the fear of losing them in case they come off, but if you shake your head hard enough, even those big headphone will fly off your head. I would say much easier than the current EarPods I'm using judging from the Bose ones I have used.

 

[adamjackson]

My second point, is that given that the hardware addresses so much of the user base, what is lacking is the software. .

Old Model
iLife-iWork for Amateurs / Home
Logic, FCP, DVD Studio Pro, Aperture for Professionals with Office simply being a necessity in business cases.

Then again, that Apple specialized in Pro-Apps also sold OS X Server, Xserve, XSan and a PowerMac that had accessible PCI, IDE, SATA and RAM ports that the user would upgrade themselves. Remember those PowerPC PCI Upgrade slots that used to be sold?

Was that because Apple was different or because the consumer was different? It's very easy to sell a million mass-produced leather wallets for $49 rather than 500 hand-stitched high quality American made wallets that last a lifetime for $499 a piece. It's also far more profitable.

Back a decade or two ago, there was a commonality among Apple customers. They drove BMWs, VWs and Mini Coopers. We were the kind of users who did our service on time at the dealership, that didn't mind paying 15% more for a car that still gets you from A to B the same speed as a Ford but has these minor aesthetic touches that made the experience better.

I don't think Apple has lost that at all. Their polish & aesthetic is still there. It's like if BMW stopped producing M-Cars or MB ceased the AMG line. Both companies would continue to be highly profitable and sell a lot of cars. Their vocal top-end enthusiasts would be pretty pissed but from a balance sheet, I don't think it would affect those companies very much. That's the route apple has gone.

 

[robeddie]

I was excited about these until I got my 2016 MBP. Using that bug infested POS for the past month leaves little doubt that this is a sinking ship. For those that cry about negativity, I'll just say check my previous posts. I've been supporting the MBP before it was announced, and well after. But a month of first hand experience tells me that Apple just wants to get products out the door and $$$ into their pockets. They'll figure out the rest later. User experience is NOT their first goal. Sales/profits are. TCook era is well underway.

Nice to hear you've seen the light.

Some of these fanboys are in denial. You can list off dozens of valid complaints and they'll just label you a whiner.
They're like scientologists - fiercly defending their illogical beliefs by attacking others.

 

[44267547]

What are they going for on eBay now? Maybe I'll sell mine...

You likely would make a decent profit with these on EBay, given the demand. You also take the risk of dealing with fraud when you do sell them, which the buyer could file a claim up to six months with Pay-Pal and then the buyer receives a refund and keeps the product. Now your out the money and product, all while they are re-selling them on eBay for a profit, being it's a hot product for months to come. I Wouldn't do it.

 

[robbyx]

Depending on when a customer who bought an iPhone 7 on release day heard that the AirPods, they've been waiting for since October, were shipping; they might not have them until 6 months into their ownership of the iPhone 7. If they upgrade every year, that's half the life of the iPhone 7, the first iphone that needed the AirPods, and maybe even the reason a customer bought the iPhone 7 in the first place instead of holding off. Apple sure knows how to play a customer to maximize sales and profits! ;-)

The iPhone 7 doesn't need AirPods any more than then iPhone 6 does. That's utter rubbish. But, by all means, please entertain us with how the iPhone 7 doesn't work correctly without them and how your user experience has been severely compromised by their late arrival. Please. Please tell us all about how having to use the supplied Lightning headphones or, gasp!!!, the standard headphone adapter has utterly ruined your iPhone 7 experience and devalued the product.

AirPods are an OPTIONAL accessory, just like every other Bluetooth headphone. The absence of logic is staggering.
[doublepost=1481733703][/doublepost]

Depends on what your needs are. A person who doesn't want to carry around adapters to use their old headphones...

Whine, whine, whine. Leave the TINY little adapter attached to your old headphones and get on with your life. Good lord, if such a minor issue fries your logic circuits so easily, I'd hate to see your response to something really serious.

Aside from not being able to charge and listen at the same time (which most people don't do anyway) without an adapter and the fact that a TINY little adapter is required for older headphones to work, there's nothing to see here...except a lot of entitled whining.
[doublepost=1481735576][/doublepost]

I think this image says a lot about where Apple is. You have to look at their product images to see their direction and while it's not one I currently buy into, it is much more mainstream than people on MacRumors are. Most of us are power-users but this is essentially Apple's way now.

An iPhone 7, Jet Black, no case, beautiful, thin and reflective. An eye catcher. an Aluminum watch w/ White sport band set to a very simple almost no value watch face..no widgets, guides, etc except how many times you moved today. AirPods sitting alone w/o any cables and a MacBook with an Apple Music subscription storing nothing locally, cloud, portability, not charging just sitting solo w/o cables hooked up to the Internet in full-screen mode (very iOS like).

Nothing about this image speaks to the professional in me with 8 external devices, a 1TB SSD, 32GB of RAM, all day battery life editing RAW images on an external display with a full-size mechanical keyboard and mouse.

It's almost like a fashion advert and not one on computing at least my definition of computing. But I am pretty sure Apple sells a ton of what's photoed here. The low-end apple watch, jet black iPhone, AirPods and the MacBook. This satisfied 99% of the computing needs for 99% of people who literally just use their devices for selfies, Facebook, Snapchat and youtube.

My GF has this setup except her notebook is a 13" MBP with the smallest SSD and 8GB of RAM and for her needs of shopping, emails and staying in touch with friends, it's overkill. She would be just fine with this setup. She is Apple's target audience.

I think we here on MR are out of touch with today's mainstream computing. No one needs 4 processor cores or 32 GB of RAM..not no one but the single digit percentage of us that do need these things is barely a blip on any company's radar when their goal is profitability.

Well said. I don't think Apple cares about the "pro" market at all these days. If anything, I'd almost argue that they're actively trying to push pros away with half-baked Mac hardware. I think the pro customer is too demanding for Apple. They have real needs and requirements and aren't easily placated or seduced by a good marketing campaign. Like you said, 99% of people are satisfied with less powerful hardware, so I don't expect to see anything "pro" from Apple again.

I just wonder how things will go once Apple has driven all of the pro/evangelist customers away from the platform. Mac users make up Apple's fanatical foundation of support, not fickle iPhone fans. Once we're all using Windows and recommending Windows hardware to our friends and family, I imagine Apple's overall brand loyalty will suffer, perhaps greatly.

I've been a customer for 34 years and I've never been as bored and/or underwhelmed by their products as I am today. Perhaps my expectations are too great, but my connection to Apple is the Mac, period. When I look at other smartphones and "ecosystems", the iPhone isn't really special or unique, so I have no brand loyalty there. Kill the Mac, as they seem determined to do with crap hardware like the new MacBook Pro, and there's no reason for me to stick with any of their products.

 

[dannys1]

I think this image says a lot about where Apple is. You have to look at their product images to see their direction and while it's not one I currently buy into, it is much more mainstream than people on MacRumors are. Most of us are power-users but this is essentially Apple's way now.

An iPhone 7, Jet Black, no case, beautiful, thin and reflective. An eye catcher. an Aluminum watch w/ White sport band set to a very simple almost no value watch face..no widgets, guides, etc except how many times you moved today. AirPods sitting alone w/o any cables and a MacBook with an Apple Music subscription storing nothing locally, cloud, portability, not charging just sitting solo w/o cables hooked up to the Internet in full-screen mode (very iOS like).

Nothing about this image speaks to the professional in me with 8 external devices, a 1TB SSD, 32GB of RAM, all day battery life editing RAW images on an external display with a full-size mechanical keyboard and mouse.

It's almost like a fashion advert and not one on computing at least my definition of computing. But I am pretty sure Apple sells a ton of what's photoed here. The low-end apple watch, jet black iPhone, AirPods and the MacBook. This satisfied 99% of the computing needs for 99% of people who literally just use their devices for selfies, Facebook, Snapchat and youtube.

My GF has this setup except her notebook is a 13" MBP with the smallest SSD and 8GB of RAM and for her needs of shopping, emails and staying in touch with friends, it's overkill. She would be just fine with this setup. She is Apple's target audience.

I think we here on MR are out of touch with today's mainstream computing. No one needs 4 processor cores or 32 GB of RAM..not no one but the single digit percentage of us that do need these things is barely a blip on any company's radar when their goal is profitability.

I do agree with your post and who the majority of the target audience is and there is no profit in making something like (for instance the Mac Pro)

But whilst the G5 got me into Apple all those years ago purely as a music production machine for the studio (I actually carried on using Windows for about a year at the time figuring I couldn't do all my day to day stuff on OS X!) I have to say that my iMac is the most powerful and capable Mac i've ever owned - music production is flawless on it and of course software has got better and more enjoyable to use in those 15 years since my G5, but Logic is the best version ever and paired up with Native Instruments stuff it's actually FUN to use. Now everything is 64bit I no longer run into the 4gb buffer I used to in 2012 and have Logic crash, the SSD is so fast (especially as i've added another few TB by way of Thunderbolt 2) that gigabyte sample libraries loads in seconds. There's really nothing it doesn't have to produce and record any music you could ever need, even entire film scores.

It's also great for Final Cut Pro and Photoshop/Lightroom (I'm not a huge users of either but I recently scanned in 3000 family photos from negatives and put them all into Lightroom for editing and colour restoration/correction and of course it worked beautifully)

And despite the hate, honestly the new MacBook Pro is my favourite MacBook Pro ever - it destroys my 2015 MacBook Pro would on merit was probably one of my least favourite MacBook Pro ever if only due to heating, cooling, throttling and fan problems.

So i'd really say that whilst there's little to no market for a Mac Pro now - that nearly all professionals CAN complete projects very well on what's currently available and the market for anyone who needs more than that is really probably 0.01% at which point they are looking at giant server rigs (which you can still do with macOS if required)
[doublepost=1481738186][/doublepost]

Depends on what your needs are. A person who doesn't want to carry around adapters to use their old headphones, or a second set of headphones to use with anything that doesn't have a Lightning port (as the included EarPods don't work with Macs or anything else), anyone who wants to charge and listen at the same time, or use any other Lightning accessory while using the earbuds ... These are concerns, Especially for anyone who has tried BT headphones and were frustrated with the pairing process, and the drop outs, reliability, and poor battery life that come with them. Anybody who has even one of those concerns "needs" the AirPods to effectively ameliorate the loss of the headphone jack.

You're still completely mis using the word "needs" no body with an iPhone 7 NEEDS AirPods at all. I have no intention of buying them, I just leave the adapter connected to my $260 Sennheiser IE80's instead. It's caused me literally 0 change to how I use any iPhone since the day I owned the first one.

 

[Mac 128]

You're still completely mis using the word "needs" no body with an iPhone 7 NEEDS AirPods at all. I have no intention of buying them, I just leave the adapter connected to my $260 Sennheiser IE80's instead. It's caused me literally 0 change to how I use any iPhone since the day I owned the first one.

I'm not going to get into a semantics war with you. Need is user definable. A sound Pro needs an XLR to 3.5mm adapter to hook his iPhone into a soundboard. But if that same soundboard has a Bluetooth dongle, it means I don't need it. Just because the sound Pro doesn't want to connect his iPhone via BT doesn't mean he still doesn't need his adapter.

So yes, conditional use = need. Someone who does not want to manage an adapter in order to use their old headphones, and buy another expensive adapter to charge and listen at the same time (I'm not even sure you can use it with any Lightning accessories at the same time), needs another solution. Someone who has used BT in the past, and is unwilling to use them based on their current limitations, needs the AirPods which solves the majority of those complaints.

 

[shareef777]

Nice to hear you've seen the light.

Some of these fanboys are in denial. You can list off dozens of valid complaints and they'll just label you a whiner.
They're like scientologists - fiercly defending their illogical beliefs by attacking others.

I'm lead to believe most people defending the 2016s either are just fan boys that don't even have the laptop, or are part of the Starbucks crowd that just want the latest "Pro" laptop but really don't need it.

 

[SaigoNoSamurai]

I think this image says a lot about where Apple is. You have to look at their product images to see their direction and while it's not one I currently buy into, it is much more mainstream than people on MacRumors are. Most of us are power-users but this is essentially Apple's way now.

An iPhone 7, Jet Black, no case, beautiful, thin and reflective. An eye catcher. an Aluminum watch w/ White sport band set to a very simple almost no value watch face..no widgets, guides, etc except how many times you moved today. AirPods sitting alone w/o any cables and a MacBook with an Apple Music subscription storing nothing locally, cloud, portability, not charging just sitting solo w/o cables hooked up to the Internet in full-screen mode (very iOS like).

Nothing about this image speaks to the professional in me with 8 external devices, a 1TB SSD, 32GB of RAM, all day battery life editing RAW images on an external display with a full-size mechanical keyboard and mouse.

It's almost like a fashion advert and not one on computing at least my definition of computing. But I am pretty sure Apple sells a ton of what's photoed here. The low-end apple watch, jet black iPhone, AirPods and the MacBook. This satisfied 99% of the computing needs for 99% of people who literally just use their devices for selfies, Facebook, Snapchat and youtube.

My GF has this setup except her notebook is a 13" MBP with the smallest SSD and 8GB of RAM and for her needs of shopping, emails and staying in touch with friends, it's overkill. She would be just fine with this setup. She is Apple's target audience.

I think we here on MR are out of touch with today's mainstream computing. No one needs 4 processor cores or 32 GB of RAM..not no one but the single digit percentage of us that do need these things is barely a blip on any company's radar when their goal is profitability.

One of the few wise comments around..