Apple Delays AirPods Beyond Original 'Late October' Window (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple's new wireless, $180 AirPods have less than a week to meet their original shipping target of "late October," and now the company has confirmed that such a launch is officially off the table. A Wednesday statement, given to Ars Technica just one day ahead of the company's latest Mac-related press event, confirmed Apple's decision to delay the wireless headphones' launch. In the statement, Apple tells Ars that the company "needs a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers." "The early response to AirPods has been incredible," the Apple statement reads. "We don't believe in shipping a product before it's ready." Apple declined to offer any estimate or release window information about when to expect the AirPods' official launch.

Comments

Courage

[Jason1729]

Timmy needs to find the courage to get his supply chain under control.

Re: Courage

[Anonymous Coward]

I know first hand. The battery tech isn't completed. Right now, the prototype EarPods only last 15 minutes. The right EarPod with the controller and button lasts only 10 minutes. These also heat up quite a bit during discharge specifically with phone calls.

We were hoping the new battery tech would be ready lipo2 but the fast charge capabilities of the battery greatly reduce the endurance.

We are now trying a much slower charging lithium ion tech but requires a change in the weight and form factor.

An idea for Apple

[Bueller_007]

Next time you feel like doing something brash, like removing a ubiquitous, standardized, and completely functional feature from your products, such as the headphone jack in order to promote wireless listening, why don't you go ahead and make the Bluetooth headphones available FIRST?

Or better yet, don't eliminate the jack at all. This isn't the 3.5" floppy in the age of CDs that we're talking about here. The headphone jack works well, it's standard, and it's on literally almost EVERYTHING that outputs sound.

And now Apple is set to announce tomorrow that its professional line of laptops will be moving completely to USB-C.

This company has lost its way and its mind.

Re:An idea for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet iPhones users have been buying/using 3.5mm corded headphones by the hundreds of millions, WHILE bluetooth has been available.

For something soooooo superior, you'd think no one would be using corded headphones.

Yet another device to plug in, and other synced devices to pull away the iPhone from your bluetooth headphones. That simply means it's not ready yet.

Re:An idea for Apple

[jabuzz]

Right because fully waterproof to IP68 3.5mm jack sockets have not been available for years already?

Sony have been doing waterproof phones now since early 2013 at the latest with waterproof jack sockets that required no plug and/or cover. By the time they got to the Z5 they even had waterproof microUSB sockets that don't need a cover as well.

The claims about needing to do it for waterproofing is just utter rubbish that Apple fan boys lap up because they don't know any better.

Re:An idea for Apple

[ausekilis]

Most iPhone users just use the ones that came in the box. And they'll do the same with the Lightning ones.

This right here is the rub. Apple made a huge deal about removing the headphone jack (COURAGE!) and suggesting the real replacement for their iBuds (or whatever) were to be these bluetooth headphones for $169. They manufactured an inconvenience to entice their customers to spend more money. It's really like getting that new shiny $2000 MacBook, then they say "Oh, you want to be able to charge it? well, we can sell you this $500 wireless charger because we did away with the charging port. We needed the space to put in this handy piece of plastic."

So now they are saying "Remember all that courage we showed when we removed the headphone jack and promised that these $170 headphones of the savior would be all you need? Yea... about that.... the headphones suck and we can't sell them to you yet".

They don't want to hurt iPhone 7 sales

[HumanEmulator]

My theory is that the headphones are ready, but Apple is worried that when people realize Bluetooth headphones are fundamentally unreliable, it will hurt iPhone 7 sales. Better to wait until further into the holiday shopping season and prevent any bad press or YouTube videos from impacting phone sales, then drop the headphones closer to the holidays so bad reviews haven't had time to sink into the public consciousness to hurt the gift-giving headphone sales.

It's not that I think these are going to be bad headphones, as much as Bluetooth headphones just don't work a lot of places and a lot of people are going to be disappointed.