AirPods Are Here To Stay
I have had my AirPods for a month now, and I have a few thoughts. Are they necessary? No. Are they pretty? Debatable. Are they convenient? Absolutely. The tiny, previously useless pocket in your pants, will never be lonely again!
Yes. I own them. In a perfect world, they would come in a selection of colors, like black. Alas, that will probably never happen, but if you have the money, you can always go shop at Colorware. For the rest of us normies, it will just look like you broke your EarPods, but left them in your ears anyway. Even with that minor quibble, they are still worth the price tag.
Luckily, I had a gift certificate that helped with some of the price, but I would have bought them anyway. Now, before you get carried away accusing me of being an Apple fan boy, yes, I am to a degree, but I don't blindly buy. I have watched the evolution of the AirPods over the last year, and my friends can tell you, I maligned them up until about a month or two ago. If they were simply a terrible product, they would have died by now, and I needed a solution. You can say that Apple 'dongled' me into the purchase.
The audio quality is pretty decent, better than EarPods, much better than my other cheap Bluetooth headphones, but woefully lacking in the audiophile department. This isn't a purchase that is made for the purpose of audio quality, though, it is one of convenience. Audio quality streamed over bluetooth is already getting a kick in the pants simply by the medium over which it is consumed. Wireless will never beat wired in pure quality, it just can't. A lot of people think that streaming music is the same quality as CDs or vinyl. They are misinformed. Again, for pure quality, analog will always win. But that's not why we are here, is it? Convenience is, period.
The speed with which the AirPods pair with your phone, is astounding. So is the wonderful, but not advertised fact, that simply by pairing them with your phone, it also simultaneously pairs them with any device that is signed into your iCloud account. For me, that was both Apple TVs, iPad, MacBook Pro, Watch, and Phone. All in one go! Simply awesome. Yes, you read that correctly, they even work flawlessly with your Apple TV.
Next, convenient feature is that you can set each Pod to respond to the two tap command differently. Aside from auto-pausing music and media if they are removed from your ears, you need more control. My left is play/pause, the right is Siri. With that done, you can effectively just leave them in to work, manage media, communicate, etc. ... all while looking like you have broken EarPods.
The noise cancelling is great, battery life is awesome, and now I don't carry a dongle. I just took a 2 week trip up to Canada for work. I used the AirPods constantly. Whether it was for Netflix at night on my iPad, commuting to work, in the airplane, or checking a reference track, for the show I was music directing, it was always with the AirPods. Convenience is key. That is why these are selling out everywhere, and will continue to do so, especially once the case is wirelessly chargeable in the next version. Take my money Apple.
- Hans
