Blankbaby

My buddy Jason Snell has written a great review of the Apple AirPods. You know, the Bluetooth earbuds that are totally wireless, not even a wire to connect the two to one another.

He likes them, and says:

Fundamentally, earbuds deserved to be treated as individual objects, not tethered together. That’s the premise of the AirPods as well as several other wireless earbuds of this type. Each earbud is its own separate entity, so you can stick one or both in your ears and truly say goodbye to dangling wires.

I haven’t used the AirPods, but based on my usage of my current set of Bluetooth earbuds (a pair of discontinued Jaybirds)this fundamental idea behind the product means I won’t ever be buying a pair for myself.

That wire between the two buds allows me to rip them out of my ears and just drop them. They dangle from my neck without me having to worry about putting them somewhere.

“But, Scott, how often do you actually do that?”

Everytime I use the darned things! Generally, I’m rocking the JayBirds when I’m working out. I get super sweaty and at the end of the workout I just want the damned earbuds out of my ears where they are acting like tiny dams for the sweat that has dripped all over my ears (gross, right? But it is the truth!).

That wire is a feature, not a bug. Oh, and the little control lozenge on the wire allows for me to change the volume of my iPhone even when I don’t have a network connection (the AirPods rely on Siri to do this, and if you don’t have a network connection Siri doesn’t work). Magic!

So I won’t be buying AirPods, because they don’t meet my needs. And that’s ok, not every product is designed for my use cases (if they were a lot more things would be available with orange as a color option).